This post was originally written by a friend of Marla for friends who were planning a late summer trip to the UP.
Here is your Western UP dream trip all laid out.
General Info
Ontonagon County and all UP points east are EDT, the WI border counties are CD. The sun sets later here than in Holland as it is the same time zone, but Ont is about even with Rockford, IL. We usually take one whole day for the West County/Porkies, one whole day for Rockland/Victoria/South County, and one to two days for Houghton/Copper Country/Copper Harbor.
BRING BUG SPRAY! — and warm clothes. If we go up for Labor Day we bring shorts and swimsuits and jackets and hats and mittens. No joke. It can snow in Sept and this area averages 200-250″/year.
Other stuff
- There are lots of geocaches if you are into that.
- Make sure you have your MI state park pass in advance, cheaper and easier.
- I also bring a Brita pitcher for the cabin fridge as I am water picky.
- And my Instant Pot.
- And a small cooler to stock up on packs of Vollwerth’s hot dogs while you are there and freeze them. I
- f it is big enough, get a few frozen pastys too (from Syl’s, the Eagle’s Club if they are having a sale, or the church basement shop a few blocks behind Syl’s. Ask anyone).
Other UP sights and routes
Coming and Going
The Newberry route is about 20 minutes faster, but it is all inland junk trees and super tedious. The benefit of this route is going to Tahquamenon Falls and they are nice, but I prefer all of the other stuff over them after you’ve gone there once. I suggest going up through Kitch-Iti-Kipi and along the Lake MI shore and coming back along the L’Anse/Marquette/Munising/Seney/Blaney Park way. The Seney stretch is the equivalent to NB in the middle of the UP, everyone speeds through it. This plan will you give you maximum water views both ways. Take one whole day to cross the UP each way and sleep at the bridge, there is lots to see and do.
St Ignace and Mackinaw City
St Ignace is cuter, quieter, and cheaper than Mackinaw City. We stay at the Golden Anchor Budget Host (Hi, Lynnann!) and usually eat at The Driftwood or The Galley with Jilbert’s ice cream (the Marquette creamery) from Molly Moo’s for dessert. Our places to stop and look here are St Anthony’s Rock on State Street (a rock stack showing ancient geology and a past shipping landmark a few centuries ago) and Castle Rock, another mile past the hotel heading north on the main road. The kitschy gift shop is a wonder of ticky-tacky stuff.
Munising
Munising in general, especially the waterfalls and state park. Go see Miner’s Castle. I liked the Pictured Rocks boat tours, it was 2-3 hours but my kids, who are generally engaged, were bored out of their skulls. Only go if you love being out on the water. Whatever you do, DO NOT EAT AT THE DOGPATCH! Every few years I convince myself it can’t be as bad as I recall and then I am irritated because it always is that bad. Go anywhere else in town.
Our must-see stop on the way is a wayside park just west of Munising going down the hill toward the flat stretch of road on the lakeshore. On the lake side is a small parking lot with outhouses next to a beach. Go read the info sign talking about Powers Of The Air and The Face In The Rock and then walk east on the beach to see the carving. It is more to the right on the cliff face than you would expect and hard to spot. Then go across the road to Scott’s Falls and see if you can find any last thimbleberries. The trail above to the little creek over the falls is pretty. We love taking one last swim in Lake Superior here before heading home.
Marquette
Marquette in general, especially Summit Street, Presque Isle, and lunch and pastries (not pasties) at the Huron Mountain Bakery. Thomas Rock (formerly Gobbler’s Knob) near Big Bay and the Big Bay lighthouse and the Marquette courthouse, the latter built of Jacobsville sandstone (filming locations of Anatomy of a Murder).
Canyon Falls outside of L’Anse and other waterfalls
Map of Upper Peninsula Waterfalls | Waterfalls of the Keweenaw
Map of Upper Peninsula Waterfalls | Waterfalls of the Keweenaw
Bishop Baraga, the Snowshoe Priest, has a nice shrine right on the bay between L’Anse and Baraga. The driveway is right by the Holiday station.
https://www.baragacounty.org/member-detail/bishop-baraga-shrine-gift-shop/
The cheapest gasoline is at The Pines convenience store, tribal-owned, just 1/2 mile north of Baraga.
Kitch-Iti-Kipi Spring
Kitch-Iti-Kipi spring is really cool, we have only seen it once as it isn’t on our normal route.
Kitch-iti-kipi
Kitch-iti-kipiKitch-iti-kipi (“KITCH-i-tee-KI-pee” with short “i”s)[1] is Michigan’s largest natural freshwater spring.[1][2][..
Ontonagon Village and east
We always stay at Peterson’s Cabins–clean, close to town, private beach, kayaks, laundry. Please mention my name to Kim. Sarah has found some agates on this beach. The sunset view is spectacular.
River Street — Get a pasty at Syl’s Cafe (ketchup, not gravy, IMHO). Our favorite shop is the Nonesuch Gallery on main street as it carries primarily local/UP/north WI made items. Mention me to Edna Yonker if she isn’t too busy–she is from Holland originally and lives on the farm next to my uncle’s on Calumet Road. Labor Day weekend is the big weekend in town with sidewalk sales on Sat and a super cute parade on Sunday. Town used to have more to it, despite the dwindling population, but a large section of Main Street burned down Labor Day, 2008. They still held the parade on one end of Main Street while multiple businesses and buildings burned on the other end that year.
Buy groceries at Pat’s up the hill on the east side of town. The grocery closes at 9 or 10 pm, depending on the season.
Museum & lighthouse tour: My mom was the curator of the museum and she set it up in the current configuration. You get lighthouse tour tix at the museum ($5?) and there is a gift shop. The original Fresnel lens from the lighthouse is in the museum and that is the prized item. The UP was Lakota until around 1600 until the Anishanaabek drove them out to become a Plains tribe. Lots of Cornish and Eastern European miners came for the copper, Finns were the latecomers and all really just wanted some land to farm. The river mouth is why the town exists.
Ontonagon County Historical Society |
Ontonagon County Historical Society |
Lots of nice beaches, bonfires with driftwood are permitted everywhere on the shore. Please bring a jug to douse your fire with water from the lake, do not bury it in sand as people have walked over them and been badly burned.
The Adventure Mine in Greenland is a privately owned copper mine tour–about 10 miles east of Ont. Its is good, but it can’t compare to the Quincy Mine state park in Hancock in resources. This one will be less crowded.
West Ontonagon County/Porkies
Go to the Porcupine Mtns Visitor Center first, it is excellent.
The must see is the Lake of the Clouds escarpment. This park is the last of the original old growth white pine forests in the midwest, the rest of the UP was clear cut and poplars and birches moved in. Now it is warmer and drier from climate change and the birches are dying out and being replaced by maple through natural selection.
Check the right hand link on the page below to see what that week’s activities programs are. The rangers do bear den walks, nighttime bat hikes, history, river ed talks, etc. Family oriented, I still try to go to at least one each time we go up as they are so interesting and free. The programs change every week, covid may cancel them?
Michigan Recreation Search Site Details Page
Michigan Recreation Search Site Details Page
Our favorite trail is the Union Mine. Only 1 mile long, but river, falls, rocks, history plaques, woods, mine shafts–it is a microcosm of the whole park and it is just down from the visitor center. One sign shows you the old Nonesuch Road and talks about the Bigge Brothers cartage. My Rotarian friend Hugo Bigge (from when I was an exchange student in 1984) was born around 1900 and was a son of theirs. My mom’s church youth group used to go sledding down the Nonesuch Road. The trail around the visitor center grounds is also nice.
On the road up to the Lake Of The Clouds is a pull off with some cleared space on both sides of the road. On the south side is the entrance to the Carp Lake (original name of LOTC) mine and you can go down some stone steps–you used to be able to go in for 50 feet, but they had to block it to protect the bats from White Nose Syndrome. This mine shaft goes through the whole hill and comes out above LOTC when you look east along the escarpment. On the north side is a roadside plaque talking about the mine and there is a little apple orchard left over from the mine foreman’s house. The water runoff from the shaft goes under the road and makes a nice pond and a trickle–good and cold on a hot day to cool your feet and we like to catch frogs. There are outhouses. Go down the trail past the pond to see Lake Superior, the spit of land you are standing on is the slag dump pile from the mine.
The South Boundary Road (the old “highway” on the Porkies’ perimeter, the same road the Visitor’s Center and the Union Mine trail are on) has lots of waterfalls you can pull over to see, but they will be at low ebb in the late summer. The Presque Isle falls on the park’s west side are supposed to be good, I have never seen them. The park is very large, you would have to plan ahead to manage those.
If you want dinner out here, the food at Konteka is decent in White Pine just off of the straight south stretch of 64. They put trash out for the bears so you can watch bears in the evening while you eat. Konteka has lately embraced the Yooper tacky image and it pains me.
As you head north on 64 after White Pine/Konteka, it will dead end into the lake. West (left) for Porkies and East (right) for Ontonagon. A few hundred feet before that intersection, on the west side of the road, is a well traveled dirt track. Pull in there and park and you will get to Bonanza/Greenwood Falls. Lots of shale-y waterfall levels to clamber around, we once tried to swim & slide down it and picked up lots of bloodsuckers so you may want to skirt the water. The kind that look like mini-slugs, not the articulated leeches that look like aliens.
The beach at Union Bay in Silver City is very nice if you want to stop there, the waterfront in Ont Co. almost everywhere is all nice sand. The road between the park and town is getting a bunch of DEQ work to save the lake from eating it.
When heading east to Ontonagon on 64, look right away for the sign when you cross the Mineral River as there is an easily accessible shipwreck right there. Keep heading east until you see a sandy area where you can pull over and walk back along the beach. The closest spot where we used to park now has No Parking signs, you will have to go a little farther. You will see funny black stones on the beach as you walk west–that is coal, that cargo of the Panama that sank in November, 1906. More is apparent on the days right after a storm. It is quite hard after being submerged for 115 years, not dusty at all. Sometimes the water is fairly deep and I have had to swim or take a canoe out to the wreck. In more recent years I have been able to walk out to it. Wear water shoes for this, there is a lot of stone here under water. The whole crew walked and swam ashore from the wreck and lived. There are aerial shots of it at the museum.
Rockland – part I of South County
Drive straight south from the Holiday gas station (north side of Five Corners blinker) toward Rockland on 45. The little Assembly of God church immediately on the right (south side of intersection) is my family church and my grandfather and uncles helped dig the basement and build it. Don’t go there, try the brick Methodist church uphill behind the Holiday instead. Ask me about the church rose bush story.
As you reach Rockland after some 15 miles of fields and woods, look for a white roadside stand on your right, this is Al Wells’ stand. I have had better honey, but the jams and veg are good. There is a locked cash box with a slot, no change anymore as kids would take it. I was talking with him once at the Old Victoria Days festival and afterward Andy had to ask me what he had been saying as Al’s Yooper accent was so thick that Andy couldn’t understand a thing. I hadn’t noticed it.
Rockland has a small museum, I don’t know the hours. Rockland had the first working telephone line in MI because this is where the copper came from. More money was taken in copper from the UP than in the CA and AK gold rushes combined. Most of it went to the mine owners in Boston.
The food at Henry’s Never Inn is fine, I think they only take cash. There is also a small store on the corner in the middle of town.
Drive to the south end of Rockland and look at the section of barrel water pipe in the school yard on the left. Ontonagon power is hydro electric and this section is from the old pipe that ran from the old dam. I used to run up and down this old wood pipe when I was a teen, it had leaks springing out all over it. Charlie Johnson, the guy profiled on the info sign, was a brilliant lay minister and Sunday School teacher at my church and he died a couple of years ago at 101. His house (still for sale) is just a block away. He and his wife grew up in Victoria when it was a going concern for the power company and finally moved into “town” (Rockland) when they wanted their son to go to the bigger and better two-room schoolhouse than Victoria could offer.
Drive up hill on the village streets to the east of the school (not on the main road). Go the the east edge of town (3 little blocks) and you will find a dirt lane heading south up the side of the hill. Right there is the Rosebud (Roseland?) the Cemetery, fun to poke around. The kids always called it the Indian cemetery and I read somewhere that there were originally some Native American graves there. Go up the hill as far as you can by car and aim to circle around back north and west back to the brow of the hill overlooking town. You will need to park and leave the car at an “intersection” of dirt tracks (maybe at the Bigfoot Crossing sign) and walk the straight north rutted track up the hill and you will come to the Church on the Hill. This is a small replica of the Protestant church that the local mine owners worshipped at on this site. The town’s water tank is also up here somewhere. I drive over most any surface up here and Andy was appalled to see what I would do with the car and the kids when he wasn’t with me to supervise.
Go back down by foot and car and head south on 45 until it curves east (1-2 minutes). Pull into the Irish Hollow cemetery on your right (south) side. This is where the Irish Catholic miners worshipped and it is delightfully overgrown and great fun to wander in. It looks like a movie set. My eighth grade class found a cut off bear paw here, it looked just like a human hand when it was palm up and Heidi Johnson went off like a steam whistle.
Go across the road to the big pond, that is the bottomless water-filled shaft of the Minesota [sic] Copper Mine. It is said there are old building remains down in it, the water rose up when the pumps were turned off. There are all sorts of rocks and mine workings around it. The ridge of the hill above the pond (the south face of the one where the Church On The Hill is) goes east and when a white geologist came in the early 1800s he could see funny looking divots all along that ridge east to Mass City–those pits were prehistoric mine workings and that prompted him to dig for copper. UP vein copper is the purest naturally occurring copper in the world and some was found in Asia Minor worked in Phoenician designs (or so said my 8th grade history teacher–I can’t remember if my mom confirmed that latter bit).
Old Victoria/Dams/North Country Trail/waterfalls – part II of South County
Head back down into Rockland and turn right on the main road and look for the sign pointing west (left) to Victoria. You will cross the river and head up steep hills. Keep your eyes open on the right hand side a few miles in and you will see a pull out/hole in the green and a post and sign. This is the spring that was/is the water source for Victoria. You can refill your water bottles from the trickle or there should be a cup on a nail.
Keep going uphill, past Old Victoria and visit it on the way back down. Go straight up the graveled road uphill and just before you come to the crest you will see a trail on the west (right) side–look for blue diamond metal markers nailed to the trees and there should be a brown painted wood info sign. Park here. This is the North Country Trail and this 3/4 mile stretch to the west is a lovely short hike with great views. It takes you to the top of the same escarpment as LOTC, but 25 miles east of it. You get a great view of the Victoria Reservoir and can look west to the inland edge of the Porkies. Look to the “neck” in the lake on the far southwest corner–that is where the original dam was built in the 1930s for hydroelectric. Maybe a CCC project? That is the one where Charlie Johnson started out as a water carrier for the work crews when he was age 14. The current dam was built in the early 1990s and after it was completed they dynamited the top off of the 1950s one and the bulk of it is in the water right behind the current one. That is why there are nets and signs for boats to stay away from the dam when you get down to it.
Head back to the car and drive over the crest of the gravel down to the dam. You can climb downhill to the left and up on the “new” water pipe and re-create my youth.
Turn around and drive back down to Victoria. If you turn left at the intersection in town and head uphill to the left (this stretch of road was where my church youth group used to go sledding), you can wander around in the old mine workings and there is another slag heap overlook to the north with a massive view toward Lake Superior. Bring a metal detector if you are into that, you may find some copper. If you can spot a clearing in the trees far to the north east (inland from the lake, not at the shore), mark that as you will drive through it when you leave the county.
Go back down to Old Victoria, where the log cabins are. They are rebuilt from the the original timbers here at the mining location and are authentically furnished. The docents are pretty good and the stories are quite something. Ask about the Finn woman who ran the hot bunk boarding house for the miners. Log cabins were brought to the US by Finns who lived in Delaware, the Brits made plank houses that were too thinly built for the continental colder climate. They sometimes sell thimbleberry jam here, a UP specialty. They appreciate cash.
There was a mine strike up here in 1906 (maybe more on the Rockland shaft side) and the sheriff’s deputies fired some shots. Big surprise, they hanged the peaceful Finnish strikers and not the “English” deputies. An opera and a documentary were made about it recent. Opera in Finn is “oopera” and add “Yooper” and you get “Yoopera.”
Yoopera! – Raising Voices, Mining History
Yoopera! – Raising Voices, Mining HistoryRaising Voices, Mining History
Go back into Rockland, turn right, and go past the Irish Hollow cemetery down 45 and in a couple of miles you will swoop down a hill, cross the Ontonagon River, and then back up again. This is the Military Hill, named such as you are on the road built in the Civil War era by the US Army Corps of Engineers between Green Bay, WI and Fort Wilkins in Copper Harbor.
Continue on and use a map or GPS to go to Bond Falls and Agate Falls. Lovely and cool and lots of mist and very short walks around.
There are a couple of places to eat in Bruce’s Crossing if you are hungry by now, I’ve never been to them. The one we used to go to burned down twice and they didn’t rebuild again.
Copper Country–Houghton and Keweenaw Counties
My mom’s family first settled over here and went to Ontonagon in 1948. We usually spend a good chunk of a day west of Houghton and then a whole day or more to Copper Harbor and back (Keweenaw County). Both have good views and history, but are very different from each other, considering the proximity.
Get onto Greenland Road 38 and head east. You will pass Calumet Road, my family farm of 160 acres of trees is 1.5 miles north of you on that. Farther along you will go through a large clearing holding a cattle farm. This is the clearing you maybe saw from the Victoria north overlook. As you pass the Mass City junction, the salvaged timber that my family’s old farm house was built with came from a Civil War coach stop inn that was on this stretch. It is long gone, it rotted away. My grandfather built the current house by hand from a sketch he had made on a brown grocery sack. They first got indoor plumbing in 1968.
Continue on 38 to 26 to go to Houghton. 38 takes the turn south, you stay on the straightaway and it automatically turns into 26. Pause here for a minute if you are interested in a high pressure spring 1/8 of a mile south of that turn. Turn right onto 38 and look for the dirt road to your east (left). It is now a snowmobile trail, but it used to be the Lake Mine spur of the RR tracks and the spring was the water stop for the train. Go in 100 feet and the concrete footer for the tower is still there. The water is cold and safe and it gushes, please make sure to put the hose back in the pipe so it doesn’t flood the area. Then go back to the intersection and head east.
Option 1: West Houghton County
If you go west of Houghton on Canal Road, you may have some detours from the flooding two years ago. Your aim is to get to the Covered Road and drive down it. You will need to turn left to go “inland” from the canal and there are signs. This is the bed of the original Copper Range Co train tracks that my grandmother rode daily to get into Painesdale to go to high school. The train made them pay for the rides, can you believe it? The trees are *right* on the edge of the road and meet overhead and make a true Tunnel of Trees. You are now in Stanton Township/Atlantic Mine, the most heavily Finnish descendant population in the US (47%).
Turn west (left) when you get to a paved road again and go a mile or so the the Redridge Dam. Pull over in the parking area and walk the trails back into the trees. The front dam is of steel and the railroad trestle used to cross the top. It was opened to drain years ago and you will see a little ways behind it the original dam hand built by the Finns 150 years ago out of log cribs filled with chunks of Jacobsville sandstone. This is loads of fun to crawl around on and Michigan Tech students often go swimming here. Buildings all over the midwest are constructed of that red locally quarried sandstone. It went out of style when the White City of marble and limestone was built for the Chicago Exposition.
Keep going west and you will see Beacon Hill (my great grandparent’s cabin still stands there), home of a big continuous community garage sale. Turn into the town and bear to the right for a few hundred feet, you can’t miss it. It is in the garage of the B&B and there is a gift shop inside the building. My family’s falling down original house is the farthest west in town (3 blocks) and is about to be eaten up by the woods and the expanded house of that jerk of a squatter Ketturi. The road between BH and Freda used to run straight west from the old house, but I heard some it has fallen into the lake, even if you could get through the brush on foot now. Imagine large swathes of the UP as clear cut mud and hay fields, including here, because that is what a lot of it looked like 100 years ago.
Keep on past BH to Freda and you will look over the stamp mill ruins and the smokestack. Copper Range used to crush all of the rock here to extract the copper. It is possible to climb down the cliff trails to the water, but I never have. Freda used to be home to the most popular park in Copper Country, folks would come in droves on Sundays, 1905-1917.
Copper Range Freda Park
Copper Range Freda ParkColor and B/W images of the Copper Country
If you are returning to Houghton, take the paved roads east the whole way back and you will pass the Liminga cemetery. That is where I almost bought the 15 graves and my mom and her extended maternal family are buried there. Finish with dinner at the Ambassador, the quesadilla pizza is delicious. There are bunches of good places to eat in Houghton.
If you are returning to Ontonagon, take the gravel Beacon Hill/Toivola Road almost across from the BH entrance and wind through the woods. As you wander through the woods, you will pass 2-3 road signs for Loukinen Corners or Loukinen Farm Road, those are all my mom’s paternal cousins. When you get to the paved Misery Bay Road, turn right and you will end up on Agate Beach park and maybe you will find some agates and you can watch a great sunset. When you are ready to head back to Ont or Houghton, take the paved road all of the way back out to 26. My mom’s paternal family is buried in the Toivola (literally the Land of Hope) cemetery you will pass.
Option 2: North of Houghton to Keweenaw County
You will see lots of great scenery and dramatic rocky shoreline. GET AN EARLY START, you have a full day ahead of you if you make it a day trip. Overnight is more fun. This is the more typical tourist route and may be quite busy. While it is possible to go up one side of the peninsula and down the other, I prefer the northern Lake Superior route both ways as then you can do Brockway Mountain. The southern protected Keweenaw Bay road is also beautiful, but in a much gentler way.
IMPORTANT: Make reservations at Harbor Haus restaurant for supper if at all possible and plan your day around that. A highlight is servers in dirndls dancing to greet the return of the Isle Royale Ranger as it docks and the food is fabulous. Gas up in Houghton or Hancock as the prices in Copper Harbor for fuel may be the highest you’ve ever seen in in the US.
If possible, stay at Keweenaw Mountain Lodge overnight. This was a CCC project in the 1930s and after they had cut down trees to make the building, they had a denuded mountain side. So they made it a steep 9 hole golf course. Breakfasts in the Lodge are very good. It was a county owned property all of these years, it was sold to a private owner a year ago. Wear bug spray if you go golfing.
Harbor Haus Restaurant – Copper Harbor, Michigan
Harbor Haus Restaurant – Copper Harbor, MichiganWithout a doubt, the most frequently asked question in the restaurant is ”Can we have a table with a view?” Fo…
https://keweenawmountainlodge.com/
Before you go up the peninsula on Hwy 26, stop at the Quincy Mine State park (the tram car ride down the hillside is a blast) in Hancock. This could take a couple of hours, but well worth it.
Home | Quincy Mine
Home | Quincy Mine
Next stop is the Italian Hall Disaster memorial in Calumet. The mine bosses had someone yell Fire in a room crowded with the children of striking miners on Christmas Eve, 1913. 73 people were crushed to death, mostly children.
Italian Hall disaster
Italian Hall disasterThe Italian Hall Disaster (sometimes referred to as the 1913 Massacre) was a tragedy that occurred on December 2…
George Gipp (“Win just one for the Gipper,” from Knute Rockne), a marvelous all-around athlete who died at age 25 from strept throat, was from Laurium, Calumet’s twin town.
Most of the shoreline is quite rocky from here on up, the Calumet Waterworks beach is a nice spot. Douglas Houghton Falls are impressive.
Douglass Houghton Falls on Hammell Creek | Waterfalls of the Keweenaw
Douglass Houghton Falls on Hammell Creek | Waterfalls of the KeweenawOnce a popular destination, Douglass Houghton Falls is one of the tallest waterfalls of the Keweenaw and is now …
Take 41 north and then over to 26 and through Eagle River. There is a waterfall right in town that you cross on a bridge. Up the road is the Jampot, what was once a tiny shop for a couple of monks and now a popular spot to get goodies and a beautiful and surprising view of the modern constructed Eastern Orthodox monastery. On to Eagle Harbor and beyond.
Keep going and you may see a sign for the northernmost point in Michigan on the side of the road. Right before 26 cuts inland, you will see a little pull out. If there are waves, go down to see the spouts of water from the Devil’s Washtub. If it is calm, all you see is some water sloshing a bit down in a hole. There will probably be other cars there.
Devils Washtub
Devils Washtub★★★★★ · Landmark · M-26
Go into Copper Harbor and to the marina right away (it is immediately on your left) and buy tix to the lighthouse tour/boat ride so you will know when that is. Maybe they sell ahead online? The lighthouse is identical in floor plan to the Ontonagon one, but you get a nice short boat ride to get to this one as there is no road to it. Then you can shop or as you face the marina, walk to your left and take the trail to Hunter’s Point. A nice walk, flat and short and very picturesque–don’t make the mistake we did and go out at dusk with no flashlight! We will never forget stumbling back over tree roots in the dark, singing the whole way.
There is a trail down from the Lodge into town, but I haven’t walked it. There are bears around here.
Depending on when your lighthouse tickets are, go to Fort Wilkins–an American fort from 1844 that is a living history park. It was to try and maintain order during the copper boom and this is the terminus of the Military Road that ran through Rockland. I have been here on July 4 and I was the only warm person in 50 degrees and rain. Bring your swimsuit, umbrella, and mittens in the car everywhere. This can take a couple of hours, depending on your interest level.
Fort Wilkins Historic State Park
Fort Wilkins Historic State ParkBuilt in 1844, Fort Wilkins was intended to keep law and order during the Copper Rush.
After Fort Wilkins, drive out a little farther and take a gander at the Keweenaw rocket range marker. It is possible to get to the very tip beyond here by boat, foot, or maybe an ORV, but I don’t personally know anyone who has done it.
Keweenaw Rocket Range
Keweenaw Rocket RangeOne of the other well-known sites was Wallops Island, Virginia. The collected data was later to be compared to …
As you exit town on your way back down the peninsula, take a hard immediate LEFT (and turn around if you miss it) and go up the hill to the top of Brockway Mountain Drive. The barricades around the summit used to be unconnected sections of wall and I would run on top of them and leap from section to section the whole way. The gift shop is cute and there once was a radio station up here. You may see some big gated driveways on the way up and that is money from Chicago (or maybe WI) and I find them quite disconcerting. Go down the road at the opposite side of the mountian when you are done and it will dump you out almost to Eagle Harbor.
Brockway Mountain Drive
Brockway Mountain DriveLocated in Copper Harbor.
And now you can head whichever direction you wish. We tend to do a whole week in Ont with one mid-week night away in Copper Harbor, have a wonderful trip!