Moriah and I started our journey to the Upper Peninsula with a few obstacles to start out the day. Between late nights, waking up late and having to force Ella that cat into her cage, we were definitely ready for an easy ride up I-75 while listening to the audiobook, The Help and Ella meow the whole way. We were giddy the whole way up and were twitting all the funny things that happened to us/we said. Here are a few from the entire duration of the trip:
-"Do I have to claim this cat or something... like are there customs? Wait... We're in the same state" #UProokie #roadtriptweet
-backpacking the pictured rocks! #readysetgo
-*hear large bird call* "woah sounds like the Colbert Report is about to start" #backpacking
-42 miles later... DONE.
Finally we arrived to Grand Marais and immediately unpacked all our stuff and then repacked it into our packs so that we wouldn't have to worry about it until we left. I got the tour of Grand Marais and the Young Family property and we made some bunch dinners. Bunch dinners are potatoes, peppers, onions, tomatoes, and cut up hot dogs all mixed and wrapped in tin foil, then left over the fire for about twenty minutes. Yum! Moriah and I biked to the sunset, which we missed by a few minutes and then joined her Family at the music and art festival where her dad had a stand and sold blown glass that he made. We headed back to the house and sat by the fire for a while and talked.
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| Pickle Barrel House kitchen |
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| Jumping off the pier |
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| Moriah jumping |
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| Full Moon over the festival |
The next day Moriah and I slept to 12:15, which was a surprise to both of us. Mrs. Young made us an excellent breakfast (Mrs. Young is one of the best cooks I know) of eggs, hash browns, toast and homemade jams. We got our permits and then hung out downtown for a while visiting different museums including the Pickle Barrel House and Agate museum. We headed to the festival for a while and Moriah introduced me to the best cream soda float from The Dunes. We put on our suits and headed for the pier to jump off! It took a lot of courage to jump for the first time and we had to promise to go together, but once we had the first jump behind us we just kept jumping off. We cooked hot dogs over the fire and listened to The Help before we headed off to the festival again. That night there were fireworks and these cool lit lanterns that people sent into the sky. We listened to The Help again that night with Nolan who seemed to enjoy the book as well, considering when we about to turn it off he told us to keep listening.
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| Munising Falls |
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| Begininning of our adventure! |
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| Moriah's view throughout the trip |
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| Stuck |
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| Relaxation Point |
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| Miner's Castle |
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| Bald Eagle |
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| Massaging my sore feet |
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| Snadstone |
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| Waterfall! |
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Campsite #1: Potato Patch
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Moriah and I woke up bright and early to another great breakfast made by Mrs. Young. We then drove all the way to Munising from Grand Marais, the whole way there I was thinking about how we had to walk back each mile that we drove there. We hiked a small trail to the upper and lower falls of Munising with Moriah's Mom and then she watch as we walked into the wilderness and later said that all she heard as we walked into the woods were giggles. Along the trails were raspberry and blueberry bushes that Moriah and I helped ourselves to, they tasted fresh and delicious. Moriah and I stopped at pretty much every trail that lead toward a view of Lake Superior to relax and absorb the beautiful view. We stopped at Sand Point, and Miners Castle, where we saw a man there who told us about how he once stood on the top of Miner's Castle, which is now blocked off from public access. As we stared back on the trail, we spotted a bald eagle in the tree that was just chilling at the top of a tree. We relaxed and collected ourselves on a nice beach that had a really interesting waterfall off to the side that I took a lot of pictures of. The whole day we hiked about 9 miles on the trail, with some extra trails here and there. Moriah set up the tent and I made us some dehydrated Beef Teryaki for dinner. We met up with our neighbors, three guys from Indiana and sat around the fire talking for a while and eventually Moriah and I whooped their butts in euchre. That night we heard wolves howling as we were falling asleep.
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| The water is so clear! |
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| Sandstone drop off |
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| So cute! |
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| We made it out to the edge! |
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| Some coves |
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| Some guys jumping about 40 feet off a cliff |
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| Me and a kayaker watching the jumpers |
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| All showered and clean! |
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| Spray Falls |
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| Clear water |
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| Wooden bridge, one of the many places that we filtered our water from. |
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| "I'm not moving" |
Our second day of hiking was by far my favorite day on the trails even though it was an exhausting 12 miles. Mainly I liked our second day best because we hiked the Pictured Rocks portion of the trail, which is absolutely breath taking. Our first stop of the day was at Mosquito beach where we could walk out 50 feet into the water with the water at our knees and then there is a sudden sandstone drop off. It was cool to stand on the edge of the sandstone and look out at all the rocks way below us. I have never been in water that clear before. We kept hiking for a while, talking and talking, until we decided to stop to grab a snack and listen to our book. We stayed on this ledge that was nothing special for about a half hour and when we got started again, about 20 feet down the trail was this amazing spot with a magnificent view. It made us laugh. We walked about a half mile more and came to this open ledge area where Moriah and I took a lot of pictures and two really funny videos. One, she dared me to go out on the ledge and I attempted it only to scoot out 4 feet than run back. The other, I reattempted the dare (after watching some other people walk out on the ledge) and was way more confident in the rock below me! We spent a lot of time in this area and got a lot of good laughs. We continued hiking and came across another ledge that we got our picture taken on, although this one didn't protrude out as much it looked much less stable, so Moriah and I stayed in our comfort zone while the photographer encouraged us to keep moving over. More hiking. Then we met these guys that were all wet because they had been jumping off the cliffs into the water below, so we stuck around them for a while, waiting for each of them to make the 40+ foot jump. All four of the guys did it, except for Clark, who wouldn't even jump after Moriah and I told him we were lifeguards! That night when we finally got to our sight, I laid my stuff down and declared, "I am not moving", and I didn't other than to crawl into the tent and to watch Moriah put up the bear bag (which is always worth getting up for). I made our dinner, organized my bag, brushed my teeth, listened to our audiobook all from that spot.
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| Wooden bridge, one of the many places that we filtered our water from. |
As you may notice from the limited picture selection, our third day was nothing in particular to document. By this time Moriah and I were tired, sore, and running out of things to talk about. Considering we also spent our day surrounded by black flies on "12 mile beach" on a cloudless day, I personally felt like we were in the desert. It was a nice day of solitude, we spent a couple hours relaxing on the beach, listening to our book. At one point we saw people in the distance and decided to shower before they got near us. Funny thing, apparently Boy Scout troops walk really fast, because they passed us just as we were finishing our shower (still being swarmed by black flies) and decided to take a rest about 20 yards from our packs. That night we couldn't watch the sunset because when we walked out onto the beach we were immediately covered in so many flies, it was nuts! So we just listened to our book until we were ready from bed. That night I was super worried that a tree would fall on us because it was pretty windy and a tree fell close to us right before we fell asleep. It rained that night and I sat up at the first dropped and woke Moriah up so that we could quickly bring all of our stuff into the tent.
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| Shipwreck on the beach |
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| At the top of the lighthouse |
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| The lighthouse in the distance, making some serious progress! |
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| Sweaty back |
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| Debating going all the way down the log slide. |
Originally the plan was to spend two more days in the backcountry, after I brought up the idea of hitchhiking as a joke (kind of) we both broke down and decided we wanted to sleep in real beds tonight. About a couple miles after starting we came to the realization that we both felt like booking it home, which was a huge relief, and lifted our spirits for the rest of the day. So after complaining about how tiring 12 miles in one day was we committed ourselves to 14 miles. With cream soda floats on our mind, we picked up our pace and started talking again and had a pretty nice heart to heart. We walked by a shipwreck which was pretty erie to see. We walked pretty much nonstop to our halfway destination, the lighthouse, where we made it in time for a tour of the lighthouse. From the top of the lighthouse we could just see in the distance our final destination of Grand Marais. After the tour we arranged our packs and headed into the wild again. We made it to the log slide soon enough where we contemplated running down, but decided that it wouldn't be worth the pain of climbing back up, so we went halfway down. Moriah told me a funny story of how she once carried a large rock all the way up from the bottom because she thought it was an agate. When she got to the top her Mom said it wasn't, but Moriah was certain it was. Until later when she realized she just carried a regular boulder all the way up a steel hill. Too funny. From the log slide we could see the lighthouse in the distance, which made me feel like we were making progress! We asked these people if we could borrow their phones, because ours had died a while back, and we called Moriah's Dad and asked him to pick us up in 3 hours at the visitor center. We then walked the rest of the way, our only motivation to continue being cream soda floats. It was a long couple of miles but we finally made it. Well almost, about a half mile before we got to the visitor center we called her Dad and begged him to get us. When he agreed we took off our shoes and sat on the side of the road until he showed up. It was a glorious moment.
