Pictured Rocks

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On our way home ...

It will take us another 2 months to get home, but we have now headed west again. Reached our furthest point north in Michigan.


Wow - big triangle from AZ to Key West to the U.P.

My niece Kelsey and her boyfriend Dan were visiting her Dad, George and step Mom, Linda. We all took an incredible sunset cruise along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Breathtaking. Local cuisine - pasty. (Rhymes with nasty, not hasty.) Meat pie with potatoes and veggies. Good!!! Marquette is a beautiful city on Lake Superior. That's a big ore loader - loads huge river barges with coal. Our front yard one day. Gusty winds, wicked rain and neighbors trying to hold their campsites together. See the neighbors under their table cover? Lucky for them, it didn't last long and they succeeded. What the storm looked like out our front window... Gregg found a new reading room in the RV... More pictures of our front yard on the shores of Gitchee Gumee, the incredible Lake Superior, largest fresh water lake in the WORLD..

Fun in the U.P.

Last year we spent time on the North shore of Lake Superior in MN, this year on the South Shore in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.


Some day we would like to do a full circle tour of any of these gorgeous Great Lakes.


We spent some days in teeny Grand Marais, MN last year and some in teenier Grand Marais, MI this year. Lots of
photo opportunities!



We were in a municipal campground right on the lake and were lucky enough to be there during a big Kayak Symposium. Interesting!


Not a problem - that was a class in rolling in the kayak. No, I did NOT take that class!















There was a nice church right across the street from the campground that played beautiful bell carols every daylight hour. I felt like I was in Heaven!






















I have tried and TRIED to take photos of spider webs and finally got one...if you click on that, you can enlarge it. (then use your back arrow to get back to this blog)













Friend Linda was at the kayak symposium and had a break at the same time I was driving out to see rescued bears at a reserve. How fun! We got to pet the 7 month old cub - SO soft and SO playful!





We saw smiling bears,









and bears that pray.


Lots and lots of bears there and we saw them climb trees, run and play, swim, and pace. They look so happy!


I can't resist taking sunset pictures and pictures with long shadows. Here is how I look with lo-o-o-ng legs. Pretty weird. Guess I am glad I have short legs!

Nice agate beach..

and I was there...

Our yard

One thing we love about our wandering --- our yard keeps changing. And sometimes we get one JUST RIGHT. Loved this one in little Oconto, WI. Spotted it from the highway and pulled right in, stopped by noon. How lucky we are to be enjoying this flexibility...

We've been visiting friends in Michigan's U.P., Upper Penninsula. We've decided to call George our brother-in-law-twice-removed. He is the father of my nieces and nephew from Illinois. Have had fun with him and his wife Linda.

George and Linda's beautiful back yard on the Au Train River.

Linda preparing her kayak for a weekend long symposium in the same town we headed for next, Grand Marais, MI. We'll probably bump into her again this weekend. We're going to do a little kayaking here. Our AZ kayaking friends would love this place with hundreds of sea kayaks here for this big symposium.

Aren't these gorgeous??? No, we didn't buy them...

By the shores of Gitchee Gumee, by the shining big-sea water. We keep coming back to Lake Superior every year...so beautiful with its deep blue waters.

Our campground is right on the shore of Gitchee Gumee. This is our beach, our yard for now ...

Way Up North

I last updated this in Grand Marais, MN and can't resist adding a couple more pictures from this pretty little town on Lake Superior.

Then we headed further north where the highway caution signs changed...notice the red nose on the reindeer on the sign. (Click on the picture to enlarge it)

Mosquitoes grew bigger and a little thicker (though not too bad due to this very cool summer here). Here's how I like mosquitoes......smashed on the window.

This is the view we had from our campground in Grand Portage, just a few miles south of the Canadian border.

We climbed 175 of these steps to the top of Mount Rose to overlook Grand Portage Bay.

View from the top...

the building below is in the National Monument that depicts the life of the Voyageurs who hunted and trapped all over Canada to send furs to Europe. Grand Portage was the site of the 8 mile long portage used to get furs and supplies from Lake Superior into the mainland river system. That was necessary due to all the rivers here crashing into the lake from huge waterfalls.

John & Patti drove up from the Twin Cities to join us for 2 days in this area.

We all tried the beach chairs at the historic Naniboujou Lodge, once the playground of Babe Ruth and other notables.

But the really BIG attraction for all of us way up north was our day trip to Isle Royale National Park, one of the least visited national parks due to its remoteness. 3 hours each way on this boat to spend 2.5 hours on the island.

We braved clouds, mist, rain, cold and bugs and lived to tell our tale. It's a beautiful unspoiled place, lush like a rainforest, but I wouldn't want to live there! We took a hike of about 1.5 miles and were soaked through from the wet foliage along the 12 inch wide trails - not your typical national park! The bugs were so thick I hardly even stopped to take any pictures. We didn't see any of the many moose on the island but learned all about how they survive winters there with as many as 100,000 moose ticks on their bodies and their skin rubbed bare from the itching. Not a paradise here by any means!

Flower deep in the forest on Isle Royale. it was so shaded that flowers were few and ferns and leafy plants abundant.

Rock of Ages lighthouse at the western end of the immense Isle Royale. This is the largest island in Lake Superior which is the largest freshwater lake in the world.

Back to Grand Portage.

She politely waited for us to pass on a trail this morning before crossing to the other side... we are now in Duluth for a couple of days before we will head down through northern Wisconsin for the Door County area.