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Saturday, October 7
Trip from Munising to St. Ignace
It didn't take too long, maybe an hour or so, to travel east to Tahquamenon Falls State Park. Tahquamenon Falls is supposed to be one of the largest waterfalls east of the Mississippi. It has an upper and lower falls. The upper falls resembles the mustache of a grey-haired man who spits tobacco, due to all the iron and minerals in the water. The lower falls was more attractive (in our opinion), although we had to view it from a distance since the walk to the viewing platform that was closer to the falls was 3 mile hike we didn’t have time for. There must have been another way to get there by car as well because we spied quite a crowd, and we couldn’t imagine that many run-of-the-mill tourists making that long of a hike to a viewing platform.
In any case, we didn’t tarry because we wanted to be sure to have time to see the Lake Superior Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point. The museum, although interesting, was much smaller than what we expected, and, as we experienced for much of this trip, not a good value for what we got. The fee to get in was $10 per person. It took us a leisurely hour and a half to see everything they had to offer—a small, one-room museum, a 15-minute movie about the Edmund Fitzgerald (the last large ship to sink in Lake Superior in 1975), and a self-guided tour through the reconstructed lighthouse, the first to be built on Lake Superior. George was disappointed that there weren’t any entire salvaged ships, but the Coast Guard has imposed an anti-salvage law that prevents anyone from doing anything but looking (no touching and certainly no taking).
Another name for Lake Superior is Gitchee Gumee (Big Water), altered somewhat from the name given by the Ojibwe Indians. And, according to an old sailor's tale, Lake Superior never gives up her dead. This is due to the temperature of the water. Normally bacteria feeding off a sunken decaying body will generate gas inside the body, causing it to float to the surface after a few days. The water in Lake Superior, however, is cold enough year-round to inhibit bacterial growth, meaning bodies tend to sink and never surface. Reportedly, most of the people who went down with ships are still down there, intact.
Back to St. Ignace and the End of the Circle Tour
Back at St. Ignace, the jumping off point of our trip two weeks earlier, we stayed at the same Comfort Inn with the same great view of Lake Huron. We had dinner at the Galley Restaurant. It was a family-run place—adequate, but not as good as the Mackinaw Grille we had sampled two weeks prior. The lake trout I had was too fishy (for me) and not seasoned enough. George wasn’t as critical, but nor was he effusive in his praise.
We ended the Lake Superior Circle Tour with a full moon shining over Lake Huron, and, after buying some of the area's signature fudge and beef jerky sticks, prepared for the two-day trek back to Virginia.
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