My UP adventure- Day 4

We woke up early in the morning at the Lake Superior State campground to catch a beautiful sunrise. A good bit of the shoreline up here is very rocky with all sorts of Rose Quartz and minerals.

The beach was very quiet with no other people around. The water temperature of Lake Michigan is around 55 degrees, so no swimming this morning.

Here in the distance you can see the Log Slide we were at the previous day. It is the patch on the right of the photo that looks like a shear sand cliff.

After one last walk on the beach we packed up camp and got ready for the days adventure. Just look at this beach, so relaxing and peaceful.

On the road again

I checked the map and found a "shortcut" we could take to get to our next destination. The roads were seasonal and not much more than just a dirt road.

After a short time driving on these roads we came to a logging area. The main road we were on was closed and we were detoured onto even worse roads. The signs said unimproved roads ahead and they weren't kidding. Several times along this route I thought we were going to get stuck in the loose sand.

For 2hrs we drove around these unimproved roads. Not seeing another car, person or cabin for at least an hour we started to wonder where we were. Luckily our car has OnStar Navigation. I reached up and pressed the OnStar button. We were greeted by a cheerful voice ready to assist. Not long into the conversation she said with a puzzled voice, "Where are you?"

We tried explaining to her we got detoured and ended up on some 2 tracks that had no room to turn around. She said we were miles away from the nearest marked roads on her map. We thanked her for the help and hung up. We decided to stop the car and figure out what to do. The Forrest is so thick in this area, not much light gets through. Our auto headlights were on most of the time. Here is a pic looking up at the tree canopy.

After a short time I remembered an app I had downloaded earlier in the year before another of our trips. It's called Offline Maps and can be found at the play store. It was literally a life saver. If you do back country adventuring I can't recommend it enough. Fantastic app.

Even with no phone service and the satellite radio not working, this app found our exact location. It didn't show we were on a road, but did have us on an unnamed line that connected to other lines. After zooming in and out trying to find our way back to some type of named road, we jumped in and headed out.

The roads didn't get any better. I don't have many pics from this portion of the trip due to trying to not get sucked off into the sand. Keep in mind we are in a 2015 Chevy Cruze, with the bottom of the car scrapping across everything along the way. To the best of my knowledge, this is the path we traveled until we made it back to Grand Marais.

Back to Civilization!

We lost a few hours out roaming the roads, but have a great story. We got back on the road and headed South. Our next destination was Tahquamenon Falls State Park.

After a little drive we were finally at the Lower Falls. This is the smaller set of falls but still really cool.

It has 2 different areas of falls. Here is a pano of the area.

Last stop Tahquamenon Upper Falls

This is the largest set of falls in Michigan. With 2640 Gallons per second falling over the edge, it's a really awesome set of Falls. It was a quarter mile hike in each direction to see these falls and the lower observation deck was down a set of 97 steel grated steps. It was a haul but worth every minute to see these beauties.

Here is from the farthest away observation deck.

Here are a couple shot from the lowest deck. This puts you right at the waters edge overlooking the falls. The water is a brownish color because of the Iron and minerals in the ground up here. Such an amazing sight to see.

Time to head home

We jumped back on the road and headed south toward home. One last trip across the Mackinaw Bridge before the 4hr drive back to the house.

They paint the bridge none stop year round. This forced us to drive on the grates of the bridge. The better half was not happy about this at all being terrified of heights. A short time later we were across and back to the Lower Peninsula.

I hope you enjoyed the last day of my UP adventure. We are hoping to get a few more camping trips in before the snow flies. Have you ever been to any of these places or even around Northern Michigan? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading.

---

Proud member of #steemsilvergold.