Earlier this month DH and I went on a road trip through Michigan and north Wisconsin, in a trip that involved a surprising number of boats. We started out by taking the car ferry (the SS Badger) from Wisconsin to Michigan, which was a fun trip! It takes about 4 hours to cross Lake Michigan, and the ferry people try to make it a good time. There are cafes, a bingo room and a gift shop on board, though of course you can just lounge and look out at the water and scenery.

Then we drove up the west coast of Michigan, stopping for some delicious cherry pie and to do a little rockhounding on the beach for Petosky stones. We did find a few petosky stones, though that is not what’s in the picture. I just thought that grouping looked interesting 🙂

Then we crossed the massive and kind of scary bridge to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and spent a few days in Sault St. Marie. The big attractions there for us were the museum ship Valley Camp and a boat tour of the Soo locks between Lake Superior and Lake Huron.

The stove in lifeboat above is from the Edmund Fitzgerald, which we learned a lot about on this trip. One fun but probably pretty nerdy thing we did while driving around and in our hotels at night was to listen to the audio book version of Gales of November, a great book about the Edmund Fitzgerald and a lot of related info. It was neat because we were seeing locations and items that we were hearing about in the book, so it made the whole thing more interesting.

Then we drove about halfway across the UP to Marquette, stopping at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, which was more interesting than it probably sounds. There we learned more about – you guessed it, the Edmund Fitzgerald – and the many, many other shipwrecks that have happened on the Great Lakes. And also did a little more rockhounding on the beach.

Other than my yarn shop stop, we mostly just relaxed in Marquette, but did take yet another boat ride to see the Painted Rocks national lakeshore, which was really beautiful!

After that we drove home, with a stop in Rhinelander, home of the Hodag! The hodag is a famous cryptid, which was famously made up by what my Dad would have described as a local wit. We stopped by the famous hodag statue and shopped in the gift shop, which is pretty much what there is to do with that. And then home!