Wanderung 4

Toyota Tundra Tows Trailer!

Or: Following Fall Foliage with Family Flophouse Firmly Affixed!

September - October 2003

October 13 - Marquette Volksmarch and Iron Industry Museum, Michigan

When we went to pay for campsite in the morning, we were astonished to find out that the campground was closed! Despite the claim in our camping guide that the park was open to October 15, they apparently had just decided to close it early due to lack of demand. I learned two lessons from this. First, the information in the guidebook, especially a 2-year old guidebook, is approximate rather than exact. Second, locally-run campgrounds can close at any time, and the end of the season on the Upper Peninsula is apparently the beginning of October, which is a shame since the fall colors were quite beautiful all the way thru the middle of the month.

However, people up here are also hospitable and the young man we found at the gate said he would ask his supervisor if it was all right for us to stay for one more night. We really wanted to due the Marquette Volksmarch and, if possible, take in the Iron Industry museum in nearby Naugena, so we thanked him and drove over to the lakeshore to start our morning walk.

The Marquette Volksmarch really focuses on the Lake Superior shoreline and the Presque Island park on the northern edge of the city. The start box is downtown in the Landmark Inn, but then you have to drive to the parking lot just inside Presque Island Park to start the walk. The first 2/3 of the walk is an in-and-out down the lakeshore to a picnic area across from some large rocks about 100 yards out in the lake. Ordinarily, I would say that in-and-out routes are somewhat boring, but this one was not. We had a constant view out across Lake Superior, which was a beautiful deep blue color, and we had several points of interest including ore-loading docks, a power plant, and a small but quite pretty roadside park. Some of this might or might not be scenic from your point of view, but it certainly gave an interesting variety of things to watch. Indeed, we watched an ore carrier finish loading and put out to sea while we were on this section of the walk, as well as flocks of Canada geese practice formation flying just over our heads.

The last 1/3 of the walk was a loop around Presque Island itself. The specified route is the paved circuit road, but along several sections there is a parallel path along the lakeshore that offers more starkly scenic views. On some of our excursions along the shore we found at one point a cratered, basaltic-looking rock that reminded me of a moonscape, and at other points sheer cliffs dropping down 50-80 feet into the clear but very cold-looking Lake Superior waters. I was very surprised at one point to be following a path right alongside the cliff edge—one misstep and I certainly would have plunged right down into the lake with absolutely nothing to grab onto or break my fall. Falling into the lake is more serious than it sounds because the water is typically in the 40-degree range—hypothermia sets in mighty quickly. When we reached the end of that branch, I was not too surprised to see a warning sign saying something to the effect of “Danger, caving cliffs, do not walk here!” There were no warning signs at the beginning of that section of trail, however, so you must use common sense and back out of areas where you might fall off a cliff or where the cliff looks like it may collapse under you. But the views are really quite magnificent if you do venture out that way and we would certainly recommend this walk in general. If you add in the shoreline rock scrambles the difficulty level certainly increases and you need really good-gripping boots and sturdy ankles but if you choose the street the walk route is quite flat and nicely paved.

After our walk we turned in the start cards, had lunch at Culvers (as it turns out, pistachio nut ice cream works surprisingly well with caramel topping in a sundae!), and checked back in at the campground. There we met “Randy” who apparently ran the park, and he said we could stay another night. Reassured by the word from “the man”, we reversed course and drove back out to the Iron Industry Museum. This is a small but information-packed museum chronicling all stages in the history of iron mining in the Upper Peninsula. If you get out this way and stop off at the museum, don’t miss the 20-minute slide show that covers many of the main points of the regional mining industry with good pictures and narration.

I also enjoyed a time line that showed developments in mining technology from the origin of mining in the 1850s until the present. Changing ethnic populations employed by the mines have resulted in a rich ethnic melting pot in the Upper Penninsula including Cornishmen, Germans, Irish, Italians, Swedes, Finns, and Slavic populations. I noticed that from the beginning all these groups attempted to assimilate into mainstream U.S. culture and avoided any attempts at genocide, ethnic cleansing, pillaging or rapine. Each ethnic group had churches in their language, mutual aid societies, bands, and favorite bars, but still coexisted peacefully with each other. Hurray for the Melting Pot!

My only frustration was not being able to buy the reprinted instruction manual for the solar compass that was on display. The solar compass was necessary because all the iron ore deposits threw off the regular magnetic compasses used for survey work. The solar compass was developed to reliably give a true north indication using sun angle alone, and the display even stated the three basic operational steps, but I needed to get a table of numbers that was only available in this instruction book. They showed me a reprinted copy and said they used to sell them, but didn’t anymore. How frustrating!

However, the docent said the Historical Society downtown might still sell copies, so we hustled back downtown before 5 p.m and inquired there. We were disappointed to find that they also did not sell the manual but they did sell walking tour maps of downtown Marquette for $1. It was kind of a consolation prize, so we bought one of those and spent the next hour walking up and down the small commercial center of Marquette, finding very fine examples of late 1800s architecture in the old City Hall, the County Courthouse, and several old business buildings. After all this, we were pretty tired and returned to the trailer for our evening snack and a quiet evening listening to oldies on the radio, crocheting, and writing in the trip journal.

Copyright 2004 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

September 2003
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October 2003
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