Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

This is one of my favorite places on earth. I first came here for two summers as a young teen camper in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula: known to ‘flatlanders’ (one of the kinder monikers for lower peninsula denizens) as the UP, and to natives as ‘da UP’. The camp was on a small lake in the Hiawatha National Forest, between Manistique and Munising, about halfway between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. From this base, we traveled all over the UP, and I fell in love with its landscape, remote location, and 1950’s feel. During a visit last summer, it still seemed like a step back in time, although I saw small but disturbing signs that, 10 years into the new millennium, the 20th century is finally and fully arriving in the UP.

As a 13 and 14 year old, I canoed the chains of lakes in Sylvania Recreation Area on the Wisconsin Border, hiked the trails to Lake of the Clouds in Porcupine Mountains State Park on the western Superior Shore, viewed the second-largest waterfalls east of the Mississippi at Tahquamenon, and joined the decades-old cruises along the Pictured Rocks east of Munising.

These spectacular bluffs run for 15 miles along the coast, rising as high as 200 feet above Lake Superior, streaked with bright colors that come from the minerals washing out of the limestone. The Pictured Rocks were protected as the first inland coastline project under a Park Service initiative that had its roots in the Roosevelt administration. The objective was to preserve both shorelines and public access, allowing citizens to continue enjoying one of America’s richest and rapidly vanishing resources, which was in danger of becoming completely private.

In the end, this initiative produced precious few outcomes: four sites along the Great Lakes (out of 43 possible areas), and nine oceanfront areas. Three areas in northern Michigan were targeted: Pictured Rocks, the Huron Mountains (which remained in private hands), and Sleeping Bear Dunes on the northern Lake Michigan shore. (As a Michigander, I’m proud that those three were the only ones recommended by the study for fast-track National Park status.)

I’ve spent a lot of time in Michigan’s two Lakeshores, and will return to them again and again. I finally visited Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands last summer, and hope to complete the set next summer with a trip to the near-urban Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan’s southern shore. As a Midwesterner, I know how easy it would be to spend a lifetime exploring the Great Lakes; I’ll count it a small victory to have visited these four very different places.

The canonical Pictured Rocks experience is the boat cruise out of Munising, the small city of a few thousand on the Lakeshore’s western edge. These cruises began after World War II, and generations of Michiganders and others have taken these nearly three hour tours along the cliffs and back.

Most experiences of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore start and stop there. The bluffs are very difficult to reach by land, and hard to experience if you do, and so the lake provides the perfect way to appreciate their beauty. The lone access point is at Miners Castle, a Michigan landmark that looked uncannily like the rook on a chessboard. What erosion giveth, however, erosion eventually taketh away: the better part of the Castle fell into Lake Superior in April 2006.

The Pictured Rocks end 15 miles from Munising, but the Lakeshore extends for another 25. A large part of this is spectacular Twelvemile Beach, whose eastern run ends only when the shore wraps around to the southeast at Au Sable Point and its accompanying lighthouse. Access to the Point and the Beach are also limited: there’s one access point to the shore, and the great majority of Twelvemile Beach can only be reached from the lake, by hiking along the beach, or from the Lakeshore-North Country Trail that passes through the entire extent of Pictured Rocks.

The small town of Grand Marais marks the eastern edge of the Lakeshore. It’s a small fishing village that’s managed to survive, in part because it’s set on a beautiful harbor. It gets my vote for Michigan’s most remote city, as its 1,000 residents have quite a drive to reach the next locale of any size. Inside this end of the Lakeshore, the long stretch of Twelvemile Beach gives way to the Grand Sable Banks and Dunes, whose steep sides end at the edge of Lake Superior. You can hike, run, or tumble down to the water at the Log Slide, but remember: unless you’re continuing along the Lakeshore, you’ll have to come back up. As the sign says, it's a 500-foot trip down or up, and a 300-foot elevation gain on the way back.

Over a hundred waterfalls are scattered across the Upper Peninsula, and at least six lie within the Lakeshore, three at the end of short, easy trails. Munising Falls is actually in town, just a half-mile east of the cruise dock, a half-mile off the shoreline of Munising Bay. Chapel Falls requires the most effort of these three: it’s a 20-mile drive east of Munising, and a three or four mile roundtrip hike. You’ll pass the turnoff to Mosquito Falls on the way; it’s on the Mosquito River; I haven’t visited (yet) so I can’t tell you how apt the name is. Miners Falls is in between, just a short drive out of Munising, and lies at the end of a modest trail not far from Miners Castle. Three others are visible only from the boat or nearly so: Bridalveil and Spray Falls tumble into Superior over the Rocks, and are one of many highlights on the cruise.

Sable Falls is at the other end of the Lakeshore, just a mile inside the western boundary near the small town of Grand Marais. Sable and Munising Falls nearly define the extent of the Lakeshore, marking off a 40-mile run of Superior’s shoreline. At places, the public domain extends inward less than a mile; the mixed, forest-protecting public/private buffer zone boundary runs along a jagged line that varies in depth from two to four miles. Alger County Highway H-58 is the only road through the Lakeshore, and with the exception of spurs to Miners Castle and Miners Falls, Beaver Lake, and Chapel Falls, it’s the only road in the Lakeshore. It actually flirts with the park boundary for the first 25 miles, running right along the watershed boundary between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. H-58 veers north into the Lakeshore only after the pavement runs out five miles past the turnout to Little Beaver Lake and western access to Twelve Mile Beach.

‘Caution: This road is a primitive, rough road’ warns the park map. It’s actually speaking about a three-mile turnout to a lookout above Beaver Basin, but it’s not that bad a description for much of H-58. I finally made my first traverse of the Lakeshore last summer, and we found ourselves frequently reduced to 15 MPH or less on the wide but washboarded gravel roads. Oncoming traffic posed little or no danger: the eastern end of the Upper Peninsula is one of Michigan’s most remote areas, and a check of the state map will show you that it has far less paved highway per square mile than any other region in either peninsula.

Unfortunately, that’s soon to change. Alger County has decided to pave the entire extent of H-58 between Munising and Grand Marais, in order to increase the tourism that the Lakeshore promised but hasn’t quite materialized in its 40 years of existence. I’m sure I’m one of many disappointed by this decision: Michigan is filled with beautiful country, but what little of it approaches wilderness is here in the UP at the eastern and western ends. Paved access moves one remote, beautiful portion another step closer to the rest of civilization. With over a thousand miles of coastline, and over 10,000 inland lakes, you can hardly argue that the state’s residents are deprived without making this area easy to reach. Paving is schedule to finish in 2010, by which time I hope I’ve had a second shot at these roads in their present condition.

This trip is one of the UP’s highlights, a seemingly unchanging experience that combines a natural highlight and a long-time family tradition. The Pictured Rocks begin northeast of Munising, a small town that sits at the bottom of Lake Superior’s most southern reach, on a nearly rectangular bay that runs northeast for two miles. It was a major center for shipping the UP’s timber south over the remaining four great lakes, and after the trees were nearly 100% removed, has shipped sightseers north along the colored coast since a returning World War II vet began the trips in 1948.

The Pictured Rocks begin at the northeast edge of Munising Bay, and then slant to the northeast for 15 miles. Like any bluff formation, they're best appreciated from across the way, which means on the water. The country behind them is fairly rugged and nearly uncrossed by roadways anyways, so any attempt to climb on them or try to see them from on shore has a natural set of barriers.

There’s several outcroppings of sandstone along Superior’s coastline (including a similar, although less dramatically colored stretch in Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands National Lakeshore). What makes this location unique are the paintbrush-like colors applied up and down the 200-foot bluffs. Runoff from rainwater that moves down and out through cracks in the rocks carries with it a variety of minerals that have leeched out over time, which then stain the face of these cliffs.

In addition to the colors, erosion has shaped the cliffs into some intriguing and dramatic shapes. Those shapes are nearly constantly changing, and some of the formations have fallen into the lake over the years. In fact, the bluffs average about one large rockslide a year.

One thing I’ve learned about sandstone from the West: it’s best viewed in the transitional light of sunrise or sunset. The Pictured Rocks face northwest, so morning light is out. This viewing tip is hardly news, so the sunset and late afternoon cruises are very popular, and worth booking ahead. But a booking doesn’t guarantee you a place in line, and seats on the boat are first come, first served, so investing at least 30 to 60 minutes is worth it. Tickets are roughly $30 for adults and $10 for kids 6-12, which isn’t bad for a three-hour cruise.

We arrived in Munising and headed straight to the City Dock to get tickets. You can’t miss the spot as you drive along M-28, or Munising Avenue. There’s parking at the pier, and a few places nearby to grab a bite to eat while you’re waiting in line (we chose the Subway).

Prime spots are on the upper deck, where you have an unobstructed view in all directions. You’ll definitely want to look up, and you’ll want a seat at the edge of the boat, so again, arrive early. Summer evenings cool off fast when the Sun sets, so bring a jacket or sweatshirt for the ride back.

We boarded a 6pm sailing, and just reached the top of the boat before the prime seating filled up. After about 15 minutes we passed between the shore and the eastern edge of Grand Island, the large, 5-mile long body that almost completely blocks Munising Bay from the rest of Lake Superior (large enough to have a lake in the middle). It’s a National Recreation Area, and its eastern appendage is an excellent example of a tombolo, a sandspit that grew to connect what were previously two separate islands (it was the week of tombolo, a word I first encountered a few days before in the Apostle Islands).

After about a half-hour, Miners Castle comes into view. For the next 90 minutes, the boat sails directly along the Pictured Rocks, coming in close to see the surfaces first-hand, pulling into small bays and cavities, and giving you an experience that only sea-kayaking could top for intimacy. The large promontory of Indian Head is a highlight (it really does look like some one’s profile), and there’s a number of other features named for the resemblance to other things or people. At least two waterfalls tumble over the Rocks.

The majority of the time is spent on the way out, but the boat stays close to the Rocks on the return trip. The light on the Rocks is reason enough to pick the sunset cruise, but the actual sunset over the Lake is an added bonus. In August, the timing was just right to watch the Sun disappear behind Grand Island as we returned to City Dock.

I’ve taken this trip four times now, I think, and could do it a few times every summer. It’s one of my favorite things about Michigan, and I was glad to take my kids along for the ride this time. Except for ‘freezing’ on the way back, they were glad, too.

This is probably the most visited site in the National Lakeshore, and with good reason. It’s not far from Munising, and thus in the most easily accessed part of the Lakeshore. Plus, it’s the only site where you can reach the Pictured Rocks by car, and it’s the most famous formation on the bluffs.

I’ve seen postcards of Miners Castle from the 1940’s, done in that odd, iconic Currier-and-Ives-like engraving style. That predates the lakeshore by 30 years, when Miners Castle was contained in a small park, administered by Alger County as the state dithered about establishing its own park in the area. In that time, and until late in the 20th century, visitors could walk out on to the castle itself, looking up the coastline and down the shore. Those days are long gone, and probably rightly so, as the continued action of the lake and winter makes every feature of the Rocks a temporary one.

There’s a large parking lot here, the only place in the Lakeshore where you find an infrastructure intended to accommodate a healthy number of visitors. This was to be the first phase of a larger plan to develop the entire area in a similar fashion. Budget difficulties put that on hold, and then it turned out that lakeshore visitors preferred less infrastructure and unpaved roads.

So the entire Miners complex—Castle, Falls and Beach—remains the only interior pieces of the lakeshore with paved access. The road ends at Miners Castle, just over 10 miles from Munising. There’s a small information center here, restrooms, and a short trail out to the bluffs. The entire area is under trees, and is very pleasant. Two viewing areas give you a vista out at the Castle, one from direcly south of it (where in earlier times you would have headed to climb on the formation and itself), and one to the east, which gives the best view of the Castle and the neighboring bluffs.

Although half of the ‘ramparts’ fell into Lake Superior in 2006, it’s still a pretty place. If you head out here, consider stopping at Miners Falls, which is reached from a turnout about 2 miles south of the Castle parking lot. This is a popular hike, and the lot can hold only a few dozen cars. It’s a nice stroll through the forest straight east to the falls, which can be seen from a small viewing platform at the end. Coming mid-day means you’re more likely to see a lot of friends on the trail, including those who, despite the warnings, climb over the fencing and wander down along the base of the falls itself.

If you’d like your waterfalls with less company, head south back to Highway H-58 and continue east to the small town of Melstrand. If you wish, you can fortify yourself with snacks at the small general store, and then head in five miles to the trailhead to Chapel Falls. This is a nice 3-mile roundtrip hike, and won’t have nearly as many people. There’s a number of other trails in the area, and a couple ways to reach the shoreline with about 5 miles of hiking.

With the exception of Tahquamenon, nature rarely goes for the grand, Niagara-like gesture in the UP’s 300 waterfalls. 75-foot high Sable Falls are larger than most, and could be heard be softly heard through the quiet woods as I approached during the hike from the parking area. It was a late August afternoon, and I’d checked my family into the Arborgate Motel a mile away in Grand Marais, where the kids were watching satellite TV and my wife was ‘resting her eyes’.

No one wanted to join me for a little more exploring, but I was OK heading off either alone or with company. The parking lot held room for dozens of cars, but only three or four were there. I had this area completely to myself during the 45 minutes I was here. One family passed me returning from the shore, and I passed one group as I ascended back to the parking lot.
At the lot’s west end, the trail led to the top of the falls, and a wooden staircase that descended along Sable Creek’s west bank. This little waterway runs just over a mile from Grand Sable Lake, which collects behind the dunes of the same name. The river spills over sandstone cliffs, in a series of drops, paralleled by over 200 steps (I counted ‘em all) strewn over a series of descents interspersed with viewing platforms and walkways.

The main part of the falls is a staggered series of short falls, lit by mottled sunlight coming through the trees. The river isn’t too wide (perhaps 15 yards across), so the tree canopy covers nearly the entire waterway. Most of the climb down is to reach the initial platform for the main falls, but the wooden pathway continues on down along the river and its modest canyon.

I followed it for a while, but turned back before the river eventually spilled out into Superior. From the parking lot, another trail ran west on to the Great Sable Dunes, and I was anxious to climb over the dune’s back slopes for a vista out over Lake Superior, one with a wider view than what we’d had atop the Log Slide earlier that day, which sits in among the trees.

It was longer than I thought to the edge of the dunes. The first part of the trail crossed Sable Creek and continued through the forest surrounding Sable Falls, ending at a field covered with tall grasses and smaller trees. It was a beautiful afternoon, with bright, bright blue sky overhead, and pretty soon a bright edge of sand emerged to meet the lower edge of that sky.

The trail turned north and ran towards the lake, and I remembered how difficult it can be to hike in sand. I recognized the familiar feeling of making two steps forward to gain one step’s progress. After a few hundred double-counted steps, I could tell I was reaching the end of a modest climb, and the lake gradually separated from the horizon. A few more steps put me at the highest ground in the area (although I clumsily ran forward a few dozen more to see if the view improved significantly).

This was the part of Michigan I’d come to see. If, miraculously, you could toss out the Keweenaw Peninsula, that rocky fin jutting northeast into Superior, I was nearly at the northern edge of the US. Unexpectedly, it was covered in sand, an odd symmetry with the nation’s southernmost point reaches. On a bright summer day, with the deep blue of Superior stretching out in front of me, it brought back all the things I love about my home state and particularly its upper reaches. It was tempting to think about racing down the dune’s face to the Lake, but I knew that would add at least an hour to my expedition, and eventually leave my thighs burning from the difficult climb back to the top. I sat down in the sand for a few minutes, let the grains trickle between my toes and cover my sandals, and wondered why it had taken me three decades to return.

There are no better guides to the UP than Mary and Don Hunt. These lowlanders from Ann Arbor have spent a lifetime exploring Michigan’s northern reaches, and have shared their knowledge and their finds in a comprehensive book, a website, and a handy laminated map/guide of the UP. I discovered their book 10 years ago, just before heading off on a five-day trip across the UP with my wife, my first return to many of my favorite haunts since I was in high school. The Hunts have found every great diner, every gem of a motel, every historic site, and many hidden secrets and attractions that, without their help, you’d miss. Thanks to them, we found an installation celebrating one of many now-vanished CCC camps near Brevort, which let my wife reconnect with her grandfather’s experience and taught me more about one of my favorite parts of Roosevelt’s legacy. We found the factory ghost town of Alberta, Henry Ford’s attempt at a planned community, one last remnant of Ford’s vanished UP empire.

I can’t imagine traveling here without their help. You can see what I’m talking about at the Hunt’s website, which contains big fractions of their encyclopedic UP guide. There are histories of dozens and dozens of UP communities, which reinforce my sense that the UP is one of those American areas that saw less life and ‘civilization’ as the 20th century advanced. Logging, mining, and the possibility of farming initially attracted settlers and immigrants to the UP; foremost among those who stayed when the resources ran out are the Finns, who found it remarkably similar to their homeland. Which it is: I was stunned to discover how much Finland resembles the UP on a 1984 visit. If you had kidnapped me in 1974 and released me in the Finnish woods, I would have been looking for signs to US 2.

If you’re planning on visiting the UP, you’ll want to visit the Hunt's website. Heck, you might want to visit anyways, to see what a fabulous guide they’ve produced, highlighting scenic, historic, and cultural sites, plus recommendations for authentic lodging and restaurants. If you have any heart at all, you’ll want to order their 'Hunt’s Map Guide’ for $6.95, a 12"x38" laminated summary of all their work. It was the most compact and useful thing I’ve ever traveled with.

Eating options in Grand Marais seem even more constrained than lodging options. Of course, that’s to be expected in a town of 350. My favorite UP guides, the Hunts, recommended two places: the West Bay Diner and the Lake Superior Brewing Company.

We picked the latter for dinner, and weren’t disappointed. It’s a ramshackle building that stretches back off its original street entrance through two or more additions. In fact, it looks like two establishments from the outside, but it’s only one, and can only be entered from the front. The first room is full of original woodwork and an impressive bar. Equally impressive was the crowd gathered there: it was no wonder the streets were empty.

After a short wait, we followed our hostess to the very back room, where through a plate glass window we saw the tanks for the distinctly home-brew-like on-site brewing system. There wasn’t a lot of atmosphere in the small, functional room, but there was a big screen TV with my Detroit Tigers playing; chances to watch the Bengals are few and far between these days. (Unfortunately, they and perpetual pitching prospect Jeremy Bonderman got shellacked).

My kids went for home-brewed root beer; I insisted on an installment of Dad tax and agreed with them that it was darned good. My wife and I waited on a few mugs of the stronger stuff, and toasted our survival through the near out-of-gas-in-the-wilderness experience from the morning. I gladly raised a pale ale to our survival, gladly downed it, and gladly ordered another. I also sampled the made-on-site cream soda, which I can never pass up. All the beverages went well with the Pepperoni and Greek pizzas, which were terrific. We also had a whitefish basket (a mandatory UP order), and it was fresh, hot and came with outstanding fries.

At the next table over was another family with three kids, about five years younger than ours. We struck up a conversation with them, and compared notes on our UP vacations, which were proceeding in opposite directions. That was completely in keeping with the spirit of the place, which was full of pleasant, noisy conversation.

I love diners. Growing up in Michigan, they were part of an America I’d read about, but never got to experience. Eggs & hashbrowns, pie, a cheeseburger, and fries, meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy: I think they all taste better in a diner, preferably with a cup of joe or a vanilla coke. They were a staple in northeast Philly, and I ventured out from my Center City habits now and then during my time in grad school.

For a town of 350, Grand Marais has a surprising number of attractions. In addition to the natural setting and the National Lakeshore, there’s a maritime museum, the world’s only Pickle Barrel home (now a museum), a number of arts and crafts options (largely based around the latter), and the West Bay Diner, known surprisingly far and wide for big breakfasts, big cookies, and more.

Even more than the nearby Lake Superior Brewing Company, the West Bay is a rat’s nest of rooms. The front is an authentic 1949 Paramount Diner, which has gradually moved west and north from an earlier location in northeast Philadelphia to Grand Rapids, and then across the Mackinac Bridge to Grand Marais. Behind the dining car is an add-on room crammed full of tables, postcard racks, shelves of cooking supplies and souvenirs for sale, and books everywhere.

As a combination diner and bakery, it seemed a perfect place for breakfast. But after being seated, we waited and waited and waited for our order to be taken. And then waited and waited and waited for our food to arrive. Checking in with our server didn’t appear to make any difference. We felt the morning slipping away, our kids slipping into grumpiness, and Mom and Dad falling in right behind them. Our coffee cups had been refilled several times, so I was rapidly becoming overcaffeinated.

By the time the food arrived, it needed to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience to turn our mood around. It was good, but not that good. After another 15-minute wait for our check, we were in no mood to hang around.

I’m hoping our experience was unusual. This place has a lot of things going for it, and it can’t possibly stay open if it runs this way year-round.

One of the things that distinguishes the UP from nearly all other vacation areas is the virtually complete absence of national lodging chains. Unless you’re at St. Ignace, preparing to board a Mackinac Island ferry, in Marquette (whose sub-30,000 population makes it the UP’s largest ‘city’), Munising or a handful of other towns, you’re not likely to see the familiar branding of the nation’s top hoteliers. Better yet, you’ll have plentiful and better options no matter where you are.

The UP is home to a thriving, long-standing family-run hotel ‘industry’, and the ubiquitous pine paneling of these establishments shaped my earliest childhood memories of what it meant to be ‘up north’ and ‘on vacation’. Among my favorites is the Sunset Motel on Munising Bay, owned by Tony & Carmon Decet. They have a beautiful setting: the motel sits right on the eastern side of the bay, a large, nearly protected body of water that’s blocked from the rest of Superior by gigantic Grand Island. Their property extends right down to the water’s edge, and they’ve done a lot to make the grounds themselves even more pleasant: a well kept lawn, extensive and pretty flowerbeds, a playground and BBQ grills dot the lawn.

The rooms themselves are in a long, traditional building that must date from the 1950’s or earlier. Every room has an entry from the lakeside, and a small patio along the lengthy run of concrete. The rooms are fairly spacious, and come in a variety of sizes. We booked a two-bedroom unit, which had a nice living space and appliances. The rooms are done floor to ceiling in the knotty pine that’s standard across northern Michigan (at both UP and LP locations), and that makes me feel right at home. The rates were more than reasonable at under $90 a night.

As the name implies, it’s a fantastic place from which to watch the sunset, which had just finished as we returned from our late afternoon Pictured Rocks Cruise. It gave way to a full moon, and I spent 20 minutes catching reflections off the water

In addition to standard motel rooms, they’ve constructed a few vacation homes that sit behind the motel unit, only slightly off the lakeshore. You can’t see the water from these units, but a short walk brings you around the motel building to the bay.

I’ve stayed here a few times, and can’t remember if I’ve always had the same hosts. Regardless, I can’t say enough about these owners. They’re friendly, helpful, and gracious, and ready to share information about the area and the many surrounding sites. They keep a notebook full of brochures and maps, and I spent 10 minutes in conversation with Carmon as she showed me the right way to think about reaching locations deeper in the Lakeshore.

Bit it was right next door that I saw signs of the impending changes in the UP. I’ve never understood why this area remained relatively undeveloped in comparison with the lower peninsula, even after factoring in the extra distance. However, a sign on the adjacent lot announced the impending construction of a condo, the first I’ve ever seen in the UP. I tried to forget it as we drove into the interior of the Lakeshore, but its presence makes me anxious about what I’ll find on my next visit.

Chain motel options may be scarce across the UP, but they’re non-existent in Grand Marais. The half a dozen motels in this small town are all family-owned, and all apparently good places to stay. We picked what was then known as the Arborgate Motel, and took advantage of the low rates ($70 then, now apparently $65 a night) to book a separate kids room in this virtually-on-the-waterfront motel.

Grand Marais clusters around its marvelous harbor and beautiful sand beach. It’s the only natural shelter along a 75-mile stretch of Superior’s shoreline, and its Coast Guard station is the site of the last contact with the doomed Edmund Fitzgerald before the waves closed over it in 1975.

Evidently the hotel shut its doors not long after our stay in August 2007, and reopened as the ‘Beach Park Hotel’, run by the Bauknecht family (who also own the HillTop Cabins and Motel here in town). On the web, the place looks just as we found it, right across the street from Grand Marais’ beautiful public beach on the south side of the harbor.

The hotel has 14 rooms, and the two that we were given on the 2nd floor shared a gorgeous view of the harbor. They were large in size and quite bright, with hand-painted arbor-like decorations over the beds. They were different, but pleasant, as were the lightly fishing-themed mirrors. Like the town, the hotel was pretty quiet: we paid our tab to the owner through a sliding window more appropriate for a drive-in, and that was the end of our contact with staff or management.

But that was hardly a drawback. The location was great, the rate was fantastic, and it was perfectly located in town, and thus close to the eastern end of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. We’d explored the interior of the Lakeshore all afternoon and evening and continued the following morning. Our room had a queen bed and a sofa bed. Both rooms had air conditioning, which you normally wouldn’t need, but we caught the UP in a rare heat wave that week. Our rooms had microwaves, coffee makers, and dish TV. Although it was August, it seemed an appropriate setting for watching Ice Road Truckers. The bathroom had a nice, pie-pan sized showerhead, and nice thick towels for afterwards. There aren’t any in-room phones, but there is a courtesy phone at the office that guests may use for free for calls within the UP.

Nothing in Grand Marais is too far away, and we walked over to the Lake Superior Brewing Company for dinner that evening, and then to the West Bay Diner for a disappointing breakfast experience the next day.

There are other nice options in town, too, as well as places up on the ridge as you enter town. But I wouldn’t hesitate to stay here again, and I plan to come back.

After finally ending our experience at the West Bay Diner, we returned to the Grand Sable Visitor Center, which had closed early the day before. As we drove along, it quickly became apparent that another beautiful day was emerging, despite the early clouds and light mist that never quite turned into rain. Another Junior Ranger badge safely in hand, we drove to the edge of Grand Sable Lake, wandered down the boat ramp, and briefly splashed around in the dunes. Birch trees lined the approach to the lake, another ubiquitous northern Michigan resident.

We were headed to Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan’s first state park, and a waterfall exceeded only by Niagara in the eastern U.S. There’s no easy route from here to there, and we would eventually have to head south, east, and then back north to reach the falls. Instead of leaving the lakeshore initially, we decided to drive straight east along the county roads, which were marked as a mixture of paved and gravel. We reminded ourselves to get gas as we passed back through Grand Marais, which was the only settlement of any size (counting 350 as a town of size).

Alger County H58 curves along the bay’s southern shore, and then heads nearly straight east. The shoreline bumps north for a mile, leaving the road inland, but the beach eventually returns to within a quarter mile of the highway.

That’s using the word ‘highway’ loosely. We’d asked the ranger about the wisdom of driving east this way towards the hamlet of Deer Park, a place I’d looked at on maps for years but had never visited. She laughed a little, and said you could make it, but you couldn’t make it quickly. Two miles outside of town, we found out what she meant. The roadway instantly degenerated into a patchwork of asphalt patches, piled atop each other in years of careless attempts to replace the ravages of winter freezes. We suddenly realized we hadn’t gassed up in Grand Marais. Neither of us like backtracking, and a quick view of a sign announcing a general store 11 miles ahead contained the word ‘gas’, so we decided to forge onwards.

Thankfully, the county gave up any intention of paving the road after a few more miles, and it turned into a gravel and sand bed that was easier on everyone’s nerves. Before falling asleep, my daughters watched the onboard display steadily marching towards ‘0 miles to empty’. But the store was only 9 miles, and we easily had 20 more before the gas ran out. Plus, Deer Park was ahead, too.

We passed through forest, along small lakes, and veered around the edges of property. I thought of the exclusive Huron Mountain Club 100 miles to the east, and how they fought the placement of a state highway through their 10,000-acre tract. The logging companies owned all this land 100 years ago, and we were driving along one of their routes for bringing the pines from the eastern UP to the harbor at Grand Marais. Some maps, in fact, describe the route we were on as the ‘Grand Marais Truck Trail’.

When we reached the general store, it became apparent that the sign advertised LP Gas, not gasoline. That put a different spin on things. It was another eight miles to Deer Park, and traveling at 25 miles an hour wasn’t making the most of our remaining fuel. We were sneaking peeks of the shoreline here and there, and realizing that even this part of the coast was 100% owned. For a mile, a perfect white fence ran along the road’s northern edge, which looked as if it had been intended for New England and misplaced. It marked off a development, which was odd enough, and I learned later that area residents found the fence not just out of place, but offensive: UP sensibilities don’t include much room for those with a need to block off what they own. Gets in the way of snowmobiles, skis, and hunting, for starters.

We pulled into Deer Lake, which sits at the end of Muskallonge Lake. This is a big fishing spot, and like many just-barely-inland lakes in both peninsulas, must have been formed by dunes and sand that eventually closed in a small southern dent in the shoreline. (A similar fate would have overtaken Grand Marais’ harbor if not for the construction of barriers at the eastern edge of the sand spit.)

The Deer Park General Store sat just before the road abandoned the lake’s edge and turned due south. I gulped as I saw the complete absence of gas pumps, and the ‘6 miles to empty’ displayed on the console. There were a lot of people here—at least compared to where we’d been—but despite the campers in the state park, and those renting spots in the General Store’s RV complex, and those with cabins in the area, no one sold gas. They concentrated on much more important things, like bait.

I steeled myself to look like a fool, and walked into the store. A 20-year old woman was behind the counter, and I explained how we were nearly out of gas, and had been counting on filling up here in Deer Park. "No problem," she said. "There’s a station down in Pine Stump Junction, only eight miles away. They’re not open today, but they’ll be open Wednesday." I realized that she thought we were staying in the area. I figured they had to have some fuel of their own, and I swallowed hard and begged. I’ll have to ask the owner, she said, and she’d just left to take the dogs for a walk. But she’d be back soon: the oldest one was really arthritic and couldn’t get far.

I checked back in with my family, and waited around the store, feeling really foolish. On the walls were a collection of ads and flyers from the store’s history, including a few pictures from the 1940’s that showed gas pumps out front. Darn. Sixty years too late.

After 15 long minutes, the clerk heard the owner returning, and went out back to meet her. I could see her telling my story, and felt like a moronic lowlander. Driving back roads? Without gas? What kind of people did they raise on the other side of the bridge?

I retold my own tale to the woman in charge, and felt my face turning red. For good measure, I made sure to mention the three kids in the car. She let me wait a few seconds, and then told me to pull around to the back. From a rusty tank on a five foot frame, she gave us a couple unmetered gallons of fuel. My wife leaned out the window to say that we were up to 30 miles, enough to get us south to Newberry, the first place we were confident would hold gas stations that were open on Mondays. I started figuring out a way to pay for those precious gallons, but our benefactor waved me off. "Just do something nice for someone else," she said.

I thanked her profusely, and climbed into the car. We agreed that we could at least buy some things at the store, so I grabbed the girls and declared it open season on junk food. Fueled up in multiple ways, we left Superior for the last time and headed on to Tahquamenon.

My wife grew up spending summers on the Lake Michigan shore, a place I’ve come to treasure as much as she does. In those first years in the late 1960’s, her family and their neighbors would spend days pulling up the dune grass that seemed to mar their vision of long, white sand beaches. Besides, its edges were rough, and would cut your feet if you brushed across it at the right angle.

If they thought about it all, they might have assumed that this one small change would lead to no others. It was a small version of the hubris that human beings constantly exhibit when we encounter the natural world: the idea that we can sculpt our surroundings to emphasize only those narrow aspects our current aesthetics picks out as valuable (assuming, of course, that commercial interests have yielded the playing field to aesthetics). As lakeshore residents learned throughout those decades, without the grasses, there’s nothing to hold the dunes in place against the forces of wind and wave. And subtly and slowly, the dunes shift, covering life that they previously protected, exposing the things buried by the even slower actions that formed them.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore came into existence in 1972, after a relatively brief six-year birthing period following the legislation that authorized the property acquisition necessary for its creation. Compared with the more heated history of its Lower Peninsula sibling, Sleeping Bear Dunes NL, it won over local residents and commercial interests fairly easily. Timber and mining interests had run their course in the eastern UP, and the appeal of a new tourist-based economy was strong in the shrinking communities of Munising and Grand Marais.

From the start, however, it was handicapped by lack of funding. Although tourist revenues have no doubt failed to meet both the projections of park developers and the expectations of area residents, I’m comfortable with the remote wilderness feel that still characterizes Pictured Rocks. There’s a reasonable balance between the ability to see the Rocks themselves via the Munising-based cruises, and the nearby sites at Miners Rock, Munising Falls, and Miners Falls. Further east, the lack of a highway makes the park inaccessible to the faint of heart.

That’s a direct result of the long-running underfunding. The Park Services Mission 66 era planning that began the Lakeshore called for a cliff-side highway, running from Munising to Grand Marais. Nothing approaching that has ever materialized, and even the current plans to fully pave the county highway that traverses the park is a far cry from that idea.

The Lakeshore currently runs a $500,000 yearly deficit. I’ve never seen a park so clearly announce its fiscal limitations. Nonetheles, people are here: at the campsites, no matter how remote, it appeared to me. The work in the past has made this possible: the trails are well marked, the road signage is thorough, the interpretive trails are excellent. But if you want to see a skeletal park operation, come here. The Munising Falls Interpretive Center is open three days a week; trail brochures are missing or down to the last copy; campgrounds are staffed, if at all, by a volunteer. 2008 promised a $100,000 increase as part of the largest growth ever in NPS allocations. My guess is that this merely returns monies that were cut from even more skeletal (spectral?) budgets over the last eight years.

Is the park still functioning? Yes. Has the land been ‘preserved’? Yes; perhaps even more than its founders intended. But without the staff and funds to explain it, to continue to protect it, and to help lead us to appreciation it, who knows what the next generations' values will emphasize.

Two hundred years ago, towering white pines covered Michigan from shore to shore. Through 19th century lenses, they held only economic value until they were nearly gone. As 21st century Americans, what are we missing now? What will we neglect, without that effort to see a little deeper into the future than we naturally will?

The UP was always a bit of a trip back in time, a little too distant to allow residents from the midwest's large cities to reach it easily. Thus it never became the vacationland of thousands in the way the northern lower peninsula, Wisconsin and Minnesota did. Even now, that’s largely true, but signs of change are clearly there. I loved Munising from my first visit as a 13 year old, but condos are finally rising along its lovely bay, as well as in the smaller, more remote town of Grand Marais. Counting on these towns to preserve something of the past may be unfair, as they struggle to find a reliable economic base in the generations after the UP’s initial life as resource basin for the industrial age. Balancing these issues is a broader challenge for all of us: identifying the dune grass of our own era, as we try to keep seeing places as they were or might be. It won’t happen just by pining for an earlier era: after all, that era also saw petting zoos at Miners Falls and hot dog stands nearly atop Miners Castle. It will require the same foresight, intentionality and cultivation that set aside 400 places across our country for their natural beauty, historical import, and ecological significance. Maintaining that vision will prove even more difficult than starting it.