Pictured Rocks Driving and Hiking

Today we decided to drive through the parts of Painted Rocks National Lakeshore that you can access via road and to take some short hikes. Got a little later start that we planned as our neighbor came over to chat. They have a Newmar RV also, but a different model. He had all kind of questions then wanted his wife to come over and see the inside. They have been full timing for a year and plan to keep doing it for 4 years per her and 10 years per him.

Finally got on the road and stopped to have lunch. I wanted to try their version of the Pastie, what they call a Pasty. I have eaten them in London several times and got Bruce to try one when he had met me in London one year. All I can say is don’t ever try one here. I choked down a few mouthfuls and then quit. Bruce was braver and tried pouring some gravy on his to get it down but that did not help. We left there and went to a Hardee’s for lunch.

This is a beautiful area with some state forest land and more of the Hiawatha National Forest. If I was wanting to take a several day hiking trip and tent camp along the way, this would be an enjoyable spot to take the hike.

This side of Lake Superior is very impressive to view, it used to be home to the Ojibway people which were the inspiration for the famous poem that starts as follows.

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.

When I saw the name Gitche Gumee on something when we first got here it drove me crazy for a while trying to remember where I knew it from, eventually remembered the first few lines of the poem. I then looked it up online and discovered it was The Song of Hiawatha. Apparently Gitche Gumee is another name for Lake Superior.

There is actually a Glitch Gumee museum in one of the little towns we drove through while out riding around.

We drove from Munising, MI to Grand Marais, MI stoping along the way there and back to look at different sights. In Grand Marais we spent some time walking around on Agate Beach admiring the rocks. Normally I like to pick up seashells when we are on beaches but here it is all rocks. It would be very easy to overload the RV with beautiful rocks but I resisted, we took pictures instead and I picked up just a couple of small rocks.

Agate Beach

Rocks at Agate Beach

Rocks at Agate Beach

Rocks at Agate Beach

Rocks at Agate Beach

Rocks at Agate Beach

Rocks at Agate Beach

Rocks at Agate Beach

Along the way we stopped at the Log Slide Overlook, it was a bit of a disappointment. They used to log in this area and the log slide was how they got the logs down to the water. The problem is you can’t really get to a point where you can look over the slide without risking sliding down it. They have lots of warning signs about how much effort and time it takes to get back up if you go down. They really need to build a viewing platform. We did see a piece of logging equipment.

Log slide overlook

Log slide overlook

On the way back from Grand Marais we decided to take the hike to Au Sable Light Station. It says it is a 1.5 mile hike to the light station, they forgot to mention the other quarter mile to get to the trailhead. Of course you also have the hike back. Before we were even half way there, we had shed our jackets. It was a nice shady trail with most of it very close to water and there was a nice cool breeze blowing in from the water but the walking had warmed us up. The picture below shows the road to the light station that makes up this part of the trail. Most of the trail is just a trail through the woods, not wide open like this. This part is open because the rangers use it to drive a truck to the light station from one of the campgrounds. Once at the light station you can pick up back on the skinny trail. If you pick the trail up there you can walk back to the log slide overlook which is about two miles.

Trail to light station

I took a set of stairs down to the water at one point as the sign said you could see some shipwrecks on the beach and you could follow the beach the rest of the way to the light station. Bruce stayed up top waiting to see if we could even get to the beach since the surf was really rough and you could not see beach from the top of the stairs. I went to the bottom of the wood steps but drew the line at dropping off onto the rocks below, it would have been very difficult for me to step from the rocks back up on the steps as my legs are not that long. I looked both ways and there was no way we were going down on what little sand and rock there was available for walking. The waves were too high and rough to see anything in the water. We decided to stay up on the trail. Glad we did because the hike started to go up hill a little more and when you got to the light station you would have had a steep climb to get back up from the beach.

One of the views along the trail

Eventually made it to the lighthouse and spent some time touring around before heading back. We got back to the car much faster than getting to the light station as we did not make stops to look at sights.