I'm Feeling LIghthearted

We were on the hunt again, looking for more lighthouses.  This time, we drug along Ron and Terri.  They did come willingly.  If you don't believe me, just ask them (and no, I won't give you their email address).

Ten lighthouses dot the Keweenaw Peninusula, but some of them have been converted into private homes or bed and breakfast places.  We were able to track down four during our two days of exploration in the area.  

The first one below is Eagle River, located on the mouth of Eagle River and decommissioned in 1908.  It's now used as a private home.

The photo below shows the Mendota Lighthouse, located near Bete Gris Bay.  It was much harder to find than all the others put together, and we had to walk along the edge of a river to get a half-way decent picture.  It was built in 1895, deactivated in 1956 and reactivated on the 4th of July, 1998.  It also is privately owned now.

This was a shot across the harbor since Copper Harbor Lighthouse is accessible only by boat, and there were no boats running the days that we were in the area.  After all, it was past Labor Day, when tourism slows down to a snail's pace.  I had to be content to look at it from afar.

Fortunately, we were able to tour the Eagle Harbor Lighthouse, which has been completely refurbished and furnished.  An added bonus was the fog signal building being converted into a small maritime museum.  That was included in the price of admission.

Inside the sitting parlor was The Lord's Prayer cut out of wood.  It must have taken an enormous amount of time to create this piece of work.  That would require a lot more patience than I have.

 Before we headed back to the Kapp house, Terri agreed to stand by this massive anchor, which allows you to see how huge it actually is.  This anchor was discovered in 1968, about 2 miles offshore Keweenaw's Great Sand Bay.

Four at the Fort

One of the reasons we decided to come up to visit Fort Wilkins State Park was because my curiosity was piqued by an article in a RV magazine this spring.  Seeing historic forts and buildings are much more meaningful than reading a book (at least it is for me).  It is one thing to read about a place and a totally different thing to know you are standing in the same place as a 19th century soldier or post commander.

In the early 1840's copper was discovered on the Keweenaw Peninsula, and the government was concerned about keeping peace with the miners and the local Ojibwa Indian tribe.  The fort was built in 1844 on the northern tip of the peninsula, between Lake Superior and Lake Fannie Hooe.  The fort was occupied until 1846, abandoned for a few years, then re-occupied from 1867-1870.

View looking toward Lake Fannie Hooe.   Since there was no indoor plumbing, soldiers would carry buckets of water from the lake for doing laundry and bathing.  But they went to Lake Superior for their drinking water because they thought it tasted better. 

Each cabin had its own outhouse.  Guess that would eliminate standing in line, especially during the long and bitterly cold winter months.

 This metal sign is over the powder magazine.  The building had a concave ceiling and walls of stone.  If any ammunition accidentally went off, the roof would be demolished, but not the walls.

For some odd reason, the family cabins were outside the walled in complex.  If they were attacked, the women and children would be in harm's way.  That makes no sense to me at all.  But the fort was designed and built by MEN.  That says it all...

 Wash day meant soaking wash overnight in lye soap, rinsing, boiling in a large pot (except for wool), scrubbing and rinsing again.  That would have been hard work and hard on the hands.

 Don and Ron checked out the room where all the bread was baked.  The practical way to tell the temperature of the oven was to stick your hand well into it and count the number of seconds that you were able to keep it there!  This would be the place I'd want to be assigned to during the winter, that's for sure.

The bread bowl on the table gave the basic ingredients for baking bread for the 120 soldiers: 100 pounds of flour, 7 gallons of water, 1 pound of yeast and 1 1/2 pounds of salt.  Maybe the rest of the soldiers didn't make a lot in wages, but the bakers were rolling in dough!

 Terri stopped to read one of the many informational signs.  The blacksmith shop is behind her, on the right.

I loved one of the signs about 1844 kitchen philosophy, "Remember that beans, badly burned, kill more than bullets and fat is more fatal than powder."  He never had a chance to taste my chili.  Maybe he would have said the same thing!

Harboring Good Thoughts of Copper Harbor

We discovered that there is plenty to see up in this neck of the woods, so to speak.  So much to see that we drove up to Copper Harbor two days in a row with Ron and Terri.   We toured Ft. Wilkins State Park, tracked down lighthouses, climbed on rocks to get a better view of the lake and enjoyed ourselves immensely. We were glad to have Ron and Terri as our personal guides, and they were happy to have someone to talk to (beside each other).  

One of the stops on our way up there was this huge meter showing the snowfalls for each year.  The record was in the winter of 1978/79 when 390.4 inches of snow fell!  Makes you wonder who in the world stayed up here to keep track of it!  That is over 32 feet of snow.  The arrow points to the snowfall last winter, which was a little over 16 feet.

 On our second day up we stopped to have Ron take our picture by the town (?) of Phoenix.  I don't know if it even qualifies as a village/hamlet/burg since there is only one small store here, a few homes and 2 taverns on down the road.  From the looks of the picture, we are a bit "off-kilter".  About par for the course for us! 

 We drove as far north as we could and found this sign showing this is where U.S. 41 begins.  It ends 1990 miles later in Miami, crossing through 8 states along the way.  The beautiful building below with the  ornate top is the Holy Transfiguration Skete Monastery.  They run small business across the street called The Jam Pot, selling jam and baked goods.  They are also have a green thumb with flowers, as evidenced by the beautiful rose in their garden by the road.                                                            

This picture was taken at the West Bluff Scenic scenic view.  Terri is telling Don something while Ron is content to read the information on the signs.  The last photo shows Copper Harbor on the left and Lake Fannie Hooe on the right.   Almost the entire town of Copper Harbor can be seen through the trees.  We we met a guy here who took off a month to ride his bike around all of Lake Superior.  Better him than us, I say.....

On to Ontonagon

Despite cloudy weather and a chance of rain, we made our way to Ontonagon.  Lake Superior laps at the waters edge of this village of about 2000 people.

We tried to find the Ontonogan Lighthouse by ourselves, but it is well hidden.  We wound up at the Visitor Center and signed up for the tour.  It was well worth the money.  The woman who did our tour was quite interesting and brought  little tidbits of unwritten information into her speech.  She knew all about the lighthouse keepers, their wives, children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.   I'm going to refer to her as Miss Encyclopedia Britannica...Brit for short.  She was a wealth of knowledge.

The first place that we looked at was the two-holer outhouse.  It is rather unique since most outhouses are made of wood and don't survive very long. 

A group of university students was given instructions to dig out and identify all the things dropped down the privy above!  I immediately thought this was totally gross, but by then, the remains had turned to compost.  We went inside the lighthouse and there was a shelf with all of the "finds".....a broken sugar bowl, bottles, broken dishes, etc.  Very interesting, but I'm still glad I wasn't one of those students!

"Brit" showed us the kitchen pump still worked.  It takes over 100 pumps by hand to fill up the kitchen sink.

Later on, "Brit" demonstrated the portable fog horn used by the Ontonogan lighthouse keepers.  We put our hands over our ears and it was still loud.

Time for a picnic lunch at a nearby park just off the lake.  

At least we had pretty good reception for Don's phone and Terri's I-pad.  She was helping him look up something on the Internet.

Our next stop was Porcupine Mountain State Park and Lake of the Clouds Overlook, affectionately called The Porkies by locals.  It sure was applicable for that day since it was cloudy and lightly raining when we got up there.  Terri was holding the umbrella over me as I snapped a few pictures.  By the time we got back to their car, we were wet, but not drenched.

Okay, what do you do when it is drizzling and you still want to go sightseeing?  Take a underground mine tour!  Although numerous mine tours abound in the U.P. we decided on the Adventure Mine guided tour.

Part of the fun was getting to the mine entrance.  It was an uphill, bumpy ride and we struggled to stay in our seats while holding on to the straps with one hand and our hard hats with the other.  It reminded me of the Indiana Jones ride in Disneyland.

I had to take an up close picture of the back of the jeep for our daughter, Heidi.

This is my favorite picture of Ron and Don together.  Notice anything similar?  About the only way you could tell them apart from the back was the color of their hair!   After not seeing Ron & Terri for over 20 years, it was amazing how much Don and Ron are alike and the same went for Terri and me.  We wore the same color and style of Sketchers one day!  I always knew she had good taste in shoes and clothes!

There were a lot of bats in this mine.  I got several pictures of single bats, but this group photo was my favorite.  I don't know if they smiled or not since their little mouths were facing the wall.  Maybe I should have said "cheese" or "mosquitoes" first.

A Skip and a Hop to Houghton

We arrived at Ron and Terri's cabin early Friday afternoon.  A short time later, we were driving with them to Houghton, the closest town of any significant population and learning that this area of Michigan is dotted with scores of old copper mines. 

Our first stop was the A. E. Seaman Museum to look at the extensive display of minerals found in the Upper Peninsula.  The large piece on display is an enormous piece of "float" copper, aptly named since it's  found loose or "floating" on top of the soil.  

We stopped at a pull out to look on Houghton (pronounced here as Ho-ton, not How-ton).  Did you know that people living in the U.P. are referred to as "Yoopers"?  And the Yoopers refer to people living below the Mackinac Bridge as "trolls"?

Here is a photo of a "troll" and a "Yooper" by the overlook.  It looks like Don is telling another one of his fish stories  "I'm telling you it was THIS big!".  Actually, I don't know what he was saying, but I don't think he could talk if he had his hands in his pockets!

Although it was 5 PM and closing time at the Quincy Mine, we managed to sneak into one of the buildings still open.  We made our own "mini tour".   The Quincy mine operated almost 100 years, between 1846 and 1945.  It was considered a great place to work in those days because the management built and maintained housing for the miners.

No. 2 Shaft Rock House can be seen from all over Houghton, since it sits on a hill and rises stories above the ground.  At one point in time it was the world's deepest shaft and went to a depth of 9,260 feet.  That is a long way down!

Ron stopped for me so I could take a picture of the  Portage Lift Bridge, which links the Keweenaw Peninsula to the main part of the Upper Peninsula.  When the bridge got stuck in the "up" position a few months ago, it created a huge problem.  Not only is this the only way people can travel to and from the island, but both hospitals are located in Hancock, on the north side of Portage Lake.  People with medical emergencies had to be transported by boat across the water.

Our last stop on Friday was Misery Bay.  A brisk wind was creating white caps on Lake Superior.

There aren't many homes up here, but we ran across a dish satellite on the beach, with a long cord running back to a cabin in a nearby wooded area!  Guess this was someone who wanted to live in the wilderness, but have all the creature comforts the rest of us do!  

Kapp Kamping

Who would drive over 2000 miles just to see former neighbors?  Us!  Ron and Terri lived next to us on Machiavelli Drive in Tucson and have spent most of the last 5 years in a small , err tiny ....very tiny town in the Upper Peninsula.  This is a place you can't drive to with GPS, even if you put in their co-ordinates!  Thank goodness for the very specific directions that Ron emailed to us!  

Ron was a school psychologist for Amphi Schools and Terri taught at CDO for many years when they lived in the "Old Pueblo".  Now they are both retired and are living on 40 acres of wooded land near Winona (population 19).  I just wish we would be able to have them as neighbors again.

We headed down the long, winding driveway until their cabin appeared.  It was built by Terri's father 35 years ago and her parents lived for quite a long time with only a log burning stove for heat, a wood stove to cook on and no phone.  They certainly were much hardier people than either of us.

The view from their back porch shows the lake, most of which they own.  The only sounds we heard were from the plethora of birds at her feeders.  We weren't there when they had a visit from a much bigger visitor....a bear earlier this summer!  One of Terri's shepherd hooks is bent down to the ground after he ate the bird feed.

This little fella was stunned after he flew into the window by the back porch.  You can see that it literally scared the crap out of him!  Poor guy.  : (

I should have asked Terri before we left what kind of birds these were (except for the Blue Jay).   They go through a LOT of birdseed and peanuts but if I lived there, I'd be doing the same thing.  I spent a lot of time out by their house trying to get good pictures of the various birds and the small chipmunks (Don said they were striped squirrels!) that hurried around gathering the food before the winter sets in.