Grand Island

Day 3 of our trip was filled with more adventures. In Lake Superior, 1/2 mile from the shore of Munising, is Grand Island, a 13,500 acre island which is part of the National Park Service. It's a rustic and remote area with no permanent residents, it has no modern amenities and can only be reached by ferry service. It has 41 miles of trails, is home to deer and black bears and so much natural beauty.

We heard about a bus tour that the Park service runs on the island and decided to take advantage of it.

We took the ferry to the island and then got on a small bus with 8 other people. The tour driver was a lady in her 70's who used to be a school bus driver. She was full of fun and information!

The view on arriving on the island.

This is the parks building on the island, a fitting style for this rustic area.

In the 1800's the island was owned by a corporation, and they had a few homes and cottages on it. The cottages are no longer in use.

The bus stopped numerous times, allowing us to explore and hik on the island. This is near an abandoned home.

The roads are dirt and only wide enough for one vehicle.

At one of our stops we hiked to this small waterfall.

This was one of my favorite spots; this old cemetery where there are 57 graves. Most of from the early 1900's from a family that settled there in the late 1800's. There are a few descendants of that family that were buried there up to 2020.  As you can see, it's left natural, and they still come to decorate the graves of veterans.

There are 4 spots on the island that you can pump water from artesian wells.  It was cold and good for drinking.

We stopped and had a picnic lunch at this site.

Another stop had us hiking to a small lake on the island.

We were able to tour this lodge. It was built when Teddy Roosevelt was president.  The owner was a wealthy man who started a wild animal preserve on the island. He had a lot of exotic animals there and people would come and stay at this lodge.

William Mather, the lodge owner and his wife.  A pretty dapper fellow, don't you think?

Some of the rooms in the lodge and the back deck.

The view from the back deck.

Our next stop was at this beach for a little rock hunting.

This is under water. I can't get over how clear the water was.

This was the last little hike we took, walking through the woods to a high cliff.

A cute little mushroom seen along the way.

This is where we ended up, such a beautiful view from up high.

Then it was time to get back on the bus and go to the ferry to be taken back to the mainland. We totally enjoyed ourselves on this island.

When we got back, we wandered around town for a bit.

They have these arty bikes scattered through town.  The DDA stands for Downtown Development Authority.

Here's a few of the fun murals we saw as we walked around.

What a fun day!

Shipwrecks and waterfalls

Our second day in Munising was another beautiful day.

This was the view from our room that morning.

We were scheduled to go out on Lake Superior again, this time on a Shipwreck tour.  We saw this on the way to the launch site, the remains of an old pier. 

Here we were, waiting to board our ship.  It was a glass bottomed boat, made especially for viewing things under the water.  Lake Superior is known as one of the cleanest lakes in the world, the water is very clear which makes it a good place to see things like this.

Here's an arial view of the first shipwreck with our glass bottom boat over it. 

We saw 2 shipwrecks, both were in fairly shallow water which allows the wreck to be seen quite well.  This ship is the Bermuda which sunk in 1870 in very shallow water. The top deck is only 12 feet below the surface. Because Lake Superior is usually very cold, the wood is preserved quite well.
The round hole in the bottom picture is where the mast of the ship was.  It's 8 feet in diameter.

While going to our next shipwreck, we saw this building on the mainland and were told it was our hotel!

We also passed this old Lighthouse.  It was retired from use in the early 1900's but is a favorite of photographers for its rustic, weathered look.

This is the second shipwreck, the Herman Hettler.  It sank in 1926 and the wreck is scattered over 1/2 mile of the lake bottom. You can see the anchor above. It's bigger than it appears in the photo, 8 feet long.

We were enjoying our time on the water and so were a bunch of people who were out on kayaks.

After our cruise was done, we had lunch at a local Pasty place.  The U.P. is known for their Pasties so we had to try them while we were there.

Munising has these Bigfoot statues around town for people to find.  Bob was having a little chat with this guy.

After lunch we went on some hikes in the area.  We walked to several waterfalls.  This is Wagner Falls.

Some beautiful tree roots we saw along the way.

This is Miners Falls.  It was a hike to get to it and then when we got to the site, you could barely see it through the trees.  However, if you went down a bunch of stairs you could see it. We did it and were glad we did, it was beautiful!

This is one of the rock formations we saw from our cruise the night before.  It's called Miners Castle.  Check out the water. I was often surprised by the water color as it looked turquoise in many spots - like it should be in the Caribbean.

Here's a better example of the water color.

We hiked down to Miners Castle to see it closer.

After enjoying that time outside, we went for supper to a nearby town called Christmas, Michigan.

We had supper at this old inn; The Brownstone Inn.

Since we were on the lake, where fresh fish is abundant, we both had fish for supper and enjoyed it.

And that was the end of day 2!

A little getaway

Last week, Bob and I went on a short trip to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. We went to Munising, home of Pictured Rocks. We live near Holland Michigan, which is near Lake Michigan in the Lower Peninsula. It's close to a 6 hour drive to get up to Munising.

We stopped at a few places along the way to break up the drive.  This was a spot that had a place to hike to a scenic view. It was a steep hill to climb, but we were rewarded with a big view when we got to this part.

After about 4 hours we made it to the Mackinac Bridge.  It's a beautiful, 5 mile long bridge that connects upper and lower Michigan. I'm not great with heights so I'm never thrilled about going across it, but I survive!  :)

Here's a view after we crossed, looking back at the bridge.

We got to our hotel about 3:30 and were thrilled to find we had a walk out room with this view of Lake Superior.

We had supper and then made our way to a boat launch where we were scheduled for a sunset cruise of Pictured Rocks. 
Before we boarded, they warned us that the waves were 2-5 feet and some people had been sea sick on the last cruise.  Yikes!  We boarded and hoped that wouldn't be us...

Soon we were seeing sights like this.

The crashing waves carve such interesting shapes and caves into the sandstone cliffs.

This one is called Indian Head Rock.  Can you see it?

We were cold out there!  I had a shirt, and hooded sweatshirt and a coat on and was still cold.  The wind was really blowing.

The formations are beautiful and so are the colors on the rocks, which come from minerals in the sandstone and in the water that runs down over it.

It's hard to see but there's a tree growing on that stone pillar, and it has a root on the left side, reaching over to the other stone cliff side.

This is Spray Falls.

It's incredible how some of these trees grow.

The sun had set by the time we got back to shore. We didn't get sick, although we know at least one person did.

It was a beautiful first day away!