As the last of the bags went in the jeep and the OzTent was latched down to the roof rack, we turned our attention to the day’s waypoints and our campsite destination for Tuesday evening. Luke Comstock pointed out several interesting stops that we would want to consider along our route towards the Keweenaw Peninsula. To me, the pure essence of what overlanding is and means was right there in-front of Rae and I that morning—We had only met Luke and his wife the night before, we had only vague plans for where we were going to camp later that day, and I was totally at ease with just going with the flow!
We headed out of Two Hearted Campground and were quickly consumed by extremely dusty conditions along Rt. 423 and 417 as we headed west. We were moving rapidly, almost rally driving, with speeds topping 50 and 60mph at points—the Fox Shocks and Goodyear MTRs sucked up the terrain – it was great to see what the jeep could do in these conditions.
After passing through Grand Marais, we briefly stopped at the Log Slide scenic overlook (46.65101, -86.11135) along the shores of Lake Superior. Quite frankly, I’ve never seen anything like the Log Slide! Taking a short 60 yard hike through the woods, you find yourself standing along a cliff with a vertical drop of over 400 feet into the lake. What you don’t realize is that where you parked, where you just hiked through and are now standing is actually a giant sand dune. Some people were venturing down the cliff to the lake—the thought of struggling for over an hour to climb back up defeated any ideas we had of joining those folks. So we continued on our journey.
As the day wore on, we made stops at Miners Castle Point in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore,
The view of Miners Castle
Munising Falls (46.42375, -86.62372), Roam Automotive’s shop in Munising, and had some Pasties for lunch at Muldoons. For those not aware, the UP has a large, well-established population of Finnish settlers dating back to the early 1900s. In most towns you’ll find various foods, souvenirs that, as an outsider, I just didn’t expect. After lunch, we pushed on for several hours to the town of Houghton. We completed some provisioning and checked out a few sites around town before making our final push towards that night’s camp.
At around 8pm, we turned off Cliff Road and headed straight up Cliff Range (47.37507, -88.31375). The range is basically a spine of earth that rises approximately 300-500 feet from the valley floor. Luke had mentioned that the campsite would be amazing and it surpassed all expectations. We quickly deployed camp, fixed dinner and enjoyed a campfire located in a bowl along the cliff. Luke shared some local history about the area and the mining community that used to once thrive during the early 1900s. I really appreciated receiving that perspective and getting a feel that even though we were in one of the most remote locations in the state, this area once was booming with industry and well over 100,000 people working the mines.
As mentioned in my last post, Michigan is BIG. For day three, we ended up driving a total of 275 miles with a travel time just under 10 hours (that includes various stops).
Couple tips to consider: if you see a gas station, fill up. After leaving Marquette, there are some stretches of the drive where gas stations are not readily available and if driving at night, you could be out of luck with a station being closed for the evening. Even though it was the middle of August and the day time temps reached the upper 70s or lower 80s, the overnight temps dipped into the 40s—come prepared
That was OUR Earthroamer! How cool to see you all…we didn’t see that many overlanders, which was kind of a surprise. We were going in the opposite direction…from CO to the UP to VA and back to CO.
Lou, it was a great surprise to see a fellow overlander up there as well. I was surprised that I didn’t see more folks out and about. We were definitely envious of your rig.