Marching through Michigan

By Michigan we’ve begun to realize how much the Great Lakes have to offer. And we’ve only seen two!

We worked our way up the west side and spent a few days in the Huron-Manistee National Forest. The weather was finally cooling down a touch and our new solar was performing admirably, so it was nice to relax in the forest for a few days.

Unfortunately, I relaxed my camera duty at Sleeping Bear Dunes, which was completely packed on a Tuesday. Gorgeous lagoons with clear water made us understand why. And by packed, I mean the National Park campsites were completely full (over 100 spots).

This left us to wander back down to some horse camps, which we had to ourselves.

We spent a morning walking around Traverse City, and then worked back up into the Upper Peninsula. Sault Ste. Marie became one of our favorite towns so far, although we’re visiting it in early August so a bit biased.

Up in that area is a gorgeous state park known as Tahquamenon Falls. This is another place where getting up early served us with a peaceful trip despite the crowds. We had the trail to ourselves but there were loads of folks coming in as we were leaving.

And of course; Lighthouses!

On the Lake Superior side of the UP is Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. See below:

The furthest point that we traveled from this end was Marquette, MI. We found signs of the heavy mining that built this area in the form of a heavy ore dock. These were for loading high-mass and low value ore onto ships to be carried to the steel plants. They look quite steampunk in person!

We found some great camping right next to the lake although pulled inland a bit upon reading about storms in the weather forecast. Too many downed trees to risk one punching through the fiberglass roof!

After eating some amazing whitefish in Mackinaw City we moved quickly back down toward Detroit and Ohio. Just a couple more nights in the horse camps!