Thursday, October 5

Munising
In Munising, we stayed at another AmericInn—for an unprecedented three nights! The first morning there, we woke to the smell of wood smoke—lots of it. In fact, when we stepped outside the hotel, the air was filled with it. We immediately thought that it was a forest fire, but we didn't see any emergency hustle-bustle. We found out later that someone had been burning some trash. Apparently the open burning of trash is not prohibited in this part of the world. Also, this was the first location of this trip where we preferred to buy drinking water rather than to drink the tap water, which tasted metallic. After all, Munising is in the heart of iron mining country.

Our first order of business was a boat cruise along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The cruise is the only way to directly see the cliffs facing the Lake. Unlike the Apostle Island cruise, this one was well worth the $30 per person fee. For almost three hours, we cruised along the cliffs, each one more picturesque than the next, with the captain even taking the entire boat into a small, tight cove. According to the captain, the PRNL cruise now goes farther than it used to, all the way to Spray Falls. The trip was well narrated and the rocks spectacular. However, live and learn. To really get a good view and good photo opps of the rocks, an afternoon trip is better as the sun is behind the rocks in the morning. A sunset cruise would have been ideal, but they had stopped offering those in September. Also, you need to sit on the right side of the boat to get photos without people heads in them on the way out. On the way back, the boat maneuvers closer to the rocks, but zips by quickly, so you’ve got to shoot fast. I shot an entire memory card on this boat trip, but was being very careful as my digital camera batteries were giving me trouble—found out once back home that my battery charger was on the blink. In any case, there are no camera shops (or stores that would carry the type of equipment I needed) within 100 miles of Munising, so I babied what little juice was left in the digital batteries in the morning and began shooting film in the afternoon.

After searching around for digital batteries, stopping at the grocery store for film, and paying a visit to the Chamber of Commerce info center, we had lunch at Dogpatch, a sad excuse for a restaurant. I’m sure there are plenty of people who like its 1950s ambiance and music, but we found the food to be lacking in quality, and the waitress unhelpful.

After lunch, we set out to hike the Chapel Falls/Chapel Beach area. It had turned out to be a beautiful day, despite an iffy beginning—not only had it been cold enough to warrant heavy coats, gloves, flannel pants, and hoods, but it had looked as if it might rain in the morning. By noon, all the clouds were moving off and the afternoon was bright and clear (as well as a bit warmer).

We hiked all the way to a beach we had seen from the cruise. The falls we saw along the way were insignificant, but the beach was nice. It was a fairly flat, easy trail, and we were able to hike over 6 miles in three hours. We returned to the parking lot just as the sun disappeared over the horizon.

We ate dinner at the Navigator Restaurant. Not much better than Dogpatch. There appears to be a need for decent restaurants in this town.

Friday, October 6

Our second full day in Munising dawned bright, clear, and cold. We spent the morning visiting tourist spots we had so far missed. We went to Miners Castle (part of the Pictured Rocks), Miners Beach, and Munising Falls. We stopped at Muldoon’s to eat pasties before boarding Shipwreck Tours' glass-bottomed boat to go out into the Lake near Grand Island and view three shipwrecks—the Bermuda (a 131-foot wooden schooner that foundered and sank on October 15, 1870 in Murray Bay), the Herman H. Hettler (a wooden steamer built in 1890 that was seeking shelter in Munising Harbor from a typical fall gale when a reported compass variation caused her to veer off course and slam into the rock reef off Trout Point, at the northeast end of the East Channel), and an unknown flat-bottomed scull that probably disappeared in a storm and was never reported missing sometime between the mid-1700s and the early-to-mid 1800s. The water in Lake Superior is amazingly clear. We were looking at wrecks 8 ft. to 30 ft. below. This tour cost $27 per person, and was well worth the money.

After the shipwreck tour, we did the 1.2 mile hike up to Miners Falls. We spent the rest of the afternoon until almost dusk stopping at the rest of the viewing locations in the area (that we could find)—Sand Point and Wagner Falls. We never did find Alger Falls.

By then it was time to hunt for food once again. We headed 5 miles out of town to the east on H58 following a sign we saw for the Bear Trap Inn. The name itself should have warned us off. This place was, not surprisingly, full of hunters. It was a dark, dingy, smoky, seat-yourself sort of place where the main decorations were dead stuffed animals and where the one waitress ignored us sitting at a table that had not yet been cleared off from the last customers—15 minutes and no menu in sight. We left. Out of desperation, it was back to Dogpatch. Sigh. But not before stopping to photograph a beautiful moonrise.