Houghton

Travel Day

Monday was a travel day - moving on from Marquette, a very cool town that I really liked, to Houghton. It was a pretty easy 100.7 mile drive that took a little over two hours, with a 55 MPH speed limit most of the way, so I actually got significantly improved mileage, all the way up to 9.8 MPG! (More on this later, I am a few fill-ups behind on updates here). The camp site at Houghton is pretty awesome, right on a body of water (Portage Lake? or some canal that connects to Lake Superior on both sides of the Keweenaw Peninsula through Portage Lake, which I think makes it more of an island than peninsula?): Each site has a back porch kind of setup, with some of them right on the banks of the canal (that’s what a local bartender called it): The sunsets from the back porch have been pretty incredible: There is a city park attached to the RV park with a pretty intense playground: . There is also a nice walking path along the canal, and it is only about a mile into downtown Houghton.

Tuesday

I didn’t have much planned for Tuesday, I just went to check out some of the local parks. Not many highlights, other than a silly story. I have been hoping to see the Northern Lights while I’m up here, so while researching that I came across two areas that were both recommended for viewing them: Breakers Beach (left pin) and McLain State Park (right pin): According to Google Maps, they are less than a mile apart, so I went to check both of them out during the day, just so I would have some idea of where to go in case the conditions were right for viewing the Northern Lights. As it turns out, while they are close on a map, there is not a direct route to get between them, so I drove from one all the way back through Houghton to get to the other, more than 20 miles and almost 40 minutes. It wasn’t all wasted though, Breakers Beach had a great unobstructed view west, so at least I knew it would be a good place for a sunset and potentially looking at stars or Northern Lights.

Wednesday

Wednesday was a special day, it was the first day I got a visitor on my trip! My friend Tracy works for a company that is based in Michigan, and she happened to be up in Michigan last week preparing for a conference. Since she was going to be “only” seven hours away, I suggested she come up to the UP, and fortunately she was down for the road trip, so Wednesday night she drove up.

Tracy’s Corner

An update of our activities from Tracy:

Hi, everyone! Tracy here to give you a special edition of Jason’s blog.

I did make the seven hour drive from Tawas, MI to join Jason in the UP. It was a beautiful drive and I only got pulled over once for speeding (oops). When I arrived to Houghton I assumed it would be another small town like the many I had already driven through that day. It’s not! To get to downtown you have to drive through Michigan Technology University including their fraternity and sorority row. I was shocked at the very modern buildings and how many fraternities and sororities they have at what I could only imagine was a small institution (more on that University later)!

Once I got to the RV park it was dinner time so we ate then went to a nearby beach to watch the sunset and try to see the stars. Well the sky was too cloudy for stars but we still saw a show. A high school show that is! You know those high school and college shows/movies that have kids hanging out around a fire on the beach? Whelp that happens in real life. Seriously, 3 different large groups were there playing games, drinking, and hanging out around the fire. So if you ever wondered if the movies were realistic, they are!

Note: If you decide to join Jason on the road, you’ll have many options for sleeping. You can sleep on the couch, the table turns into a bed, and he has an air mattress. I didn’t want to cause too much work so I said I’d sleep on the couch or the table-bed. He will, in fact, not let you do that because those are bad choices and then get out the air mattress.

Okay, what did we do on Thursday…

Well first we had to get me some coffee because HE DOESN’T DRINK COFFEE! Then we set off for Porcupine Mountains State Park. We decided to start at the Visitor Center and do a short loop hike. This trail that All Trails said was a 4 star was not even a trail! It wasn’t marked (first red flag) and the “trail” was tire marks that flattened the grass (second red flag) but we tried it anyway. We lasted maybe 5 minutes before turning around. Instead we made our way to the Presque Isle area in the park. We did a few short walks to see Manabezho Falls, Manido Falls, and Nawadaha Falls. They were beautiful and I would highly recommend them for all levels of wonderers. I also managed to get pictures of Jason for your viewing pleasure!

Manabezho Falls:

Manido Falls:

Nawadaha Falls:

We found a local bar and grill to have lunch. The pizza was good and the local color was even better! Close by was a sign that stated the “End of the Earth” was two miles away. We did try to find it but no luck.

After lunch and trying to find the End of the Earth we made our way to Lake of the Clouds. It was only a 300 ft. walk to see the amazing view of the lake and surrounding area. But we just had a big lunch so I made Jason do a one mile hike to see the “rustic cabin.” It was one mile downhill to not a historic cabin like I thought it would be but to a cabin people could rent by the lake. We looked at the cabin for about a minute then turned around to make the hike back up. (No pictures of the cabin because people were actually staying in it.)

We rounded out our day by visiting a local brewery, Keweenaw Brewing Company. A big shout out to our bartender, Casey, for telling us all about the town, University, and beer. He also let us borrow a deck of cards so I could teach Jason how to play rummy. I’m currently winning our ongoing competition!

Back to Jason:

Gas Update

Once I got to the UP, it has been nice since I could make the drive each day on a single tank of gas, so I have been able to fill up without having the trailer attached which just makes things easier. Here is a running list of fill-ups since the last update:

Total: