Sights to see in Michigan

The things I am putting here are small places that we visited; places that are not big enough to do a separate post. When we arrived in Gaylord, we stayed at one of the Outdoor Adventures Coast to Coast resorts -- Benjamin's Beaver. We happened to meet a fellow Tres Rios member there -- Dean and Tanya(?). He drives a flat bed truck that he puts his blue three-wheel motorcycle on. We sat and talked with them for about an hour one afternoon.

The things we saw while there was the Elk that the city has in a huge enclosure behind the Elk Lodge on E. Grandview called Gaylord's City Elk Park.

There was another place we went to visit called "Deadman's Hill Overlook" which can be found off of Hwy 131 in Elmira. If you decide to go, use your phone's GPS to take you there. As you pull into the area, you will see a parking area and a road heading out from there. Keep driving because you will come to a second parking lot, which is where the trail is to the outlook.

This is the story behind "Deadman's Hill" ~~

We also went to dinner at a popular restaurant called Big Buck Brewery. They brew their own spirits and beer right at the restaurant. The food was good, but Jim did not care for the shot of bourbon that he got. He even told the hostess about it so she could let the brewer know.

We arrived in St. Ignace, Michigan on Tuesday, July 11. The campground I found is pretty expensive at $60 per night. I wanted to stay in this area, and there are only two campgrounds in St. Ignace. But it's right on the bay with a nice wooded trail and Lucy and I can walk on the beach. The things I want to see in the area are Castle Rock; Father Marquette National Memorial; Wood Observation Tower; Bridge View Park, and St. Anthony's Rock. Later we will head to Saute Ste. Marie and Mackinac Island, which will be separate posts.

Wednesday I went by myself to see Castle Rock, as it was right on the other side of the interstate from our campground. In fact, I could see our campground from the top. Castle Rock is an ancient lookout of the Ojibways and often referred to as "Pontiac's Lookout." It rises from the surrounding lowlands like an ancient castle of the middle ages to a height of 195.8 feet above water level and 183 feet above road level at that point.  

Castle Rock

 

Soon after the arrival of the missionaries, voyageurs, and traders, came the lumbermen. With them came the legendary Paul Bunyan and his Babe, his great blue ox, who was bigger than all outdoors. Many tales were told around the campfires and logger's shacks -- 'tis said there was most nothin' that Paul couldn't do from harvesting the logs by the handful to scooping out the Great Lakes.

Above all, Paul Bunyan was the greatest lumberman. Seems when the mosquitos got pretty thick he would hit them on the head with his mighty sledgehammer, driving their beaks clean through the tree -- then he'd clinch the end over. Well, those rascals would fly away -- carrying the tree all the way to the sawmill.

'Twas back in '57 when the work was all done. Paul sat down to rest next to Castle Rock. Down came an arctic blast of air -- colder 'n' blazes -- froze Paul and Babe right on the spot. So cold in fact, they haven't thawed out yet! 

As I climbed up the stairs I passed by the Big Foot crossing. 

I counted the number of stairs coming back down and it totaled 167 steps. It's a good thing there is a bench at the half way point to stop and get a rest and catch your breath.

The next thing we did was go see the Curiosity Shop and the Tower. Google Maps calls it the Wood Observation Tower. I paid $1 and climbed up 100 steps to the top of the tower to see the sights.

From the Curiosity Shop, we drove to Bridge View Park, right at the base of the Mackinac Bridge.

The Straits of Mackinac

The Straits of Mackinac was the third boat that joined the fleet in 1928 and provided service across the Straits until the opening of the Mackinac Bridge on November 1, 1957. This boat was built for the Highway Department to carry approximately 35 vehicles. Within two years, the ferry was modified with an upper level loading area which increased the capacity to 90 cars and up to 400 passengers. For many years, "The Straits of Mackinac" was considered the flagship of the Michigan State Ferry fleet.

The Steamer The Straits of Mackinac was the way people and cars would get from the Lower Peninsula to the Upper Peninsula. Before the bridge ~~ A 5-mile trip across the Straits of Mackinac remains part of Michigan lore that ended with the Nov. 1, 1957, opening of the Mackinac Bridge. For the 34 years before that, the Michigan Department of Transportation was the first and only agency to own and operate a ferry system that in effect became a highway over water.

The Father Marquette National Memorial was right near the park, so we stopped in there to see who Father Marquette was. The Memorial is part of Michigan's Straits State Park and they wanted $11 for us to just drive in. Since it was on an "honor" system, I did not pay -- seriously, $11 just to go see a Memorial for 10 minutes? 

Father Marquette

Jacques Marquette was a French Jesuit missionary who lived among the Indians of the Great Lakes region from 1666-1675. Marquette mastered several Indian languages, crossed unchartered wilderness and established missions at Sault Ste. Marie, St. Ignace, and Kaskaskia (Illinois). In 1673, with a French-Canadian trader named Louis Jolliet, he explored and mapped the Mississippi River. Their expedition opened the heart of North America to the fur trade and French influence.

He was born in 1637 in Laon, France. His father was a lawyer and royal official, able to provide his children with the best education available. Marquette could have become a merchant, a lawyer, or an army officer. Instead, after receiving his bachelor's degree from the Jesuit University at Reims in 1654, he joined the Society of Jesus in hopes of becoming a missionary.

Marquette was 17 when he arrived in Nancy to become a Jesuit novice. His training followed the plan laid out in Ignatius Loyola's Ratio Studiorum. It included periods of teaching younger students.

"When I have finished my seventh year of teaching at the age of twenty-eight, I shall be facing a further course of studies. I approach his Paternity to ask that which I sought out nearly seven years ago . . . to set out for foreign nations, about which I have been thinking from my earliest years and the first light of reason . . . I am completely ready for absolutely any region." ~~Jacques Marquette to the Jesuit Superior General John Paul Olive, March 19, 1663

When Jacques Marquette arrived at Quebec on September 20, 1666, the Iroquois wars that had destroyed the Jesuits' Huron mission were coming to an end. He was the youngest of 33 Jesuits stationed in New France, and spent two years in Quebec and Three Rivers studying native languages and customs. In August 1668, he joined an Ottawa flotilla and headed west to begin the work he had dreamed of.  

One other thing that Michigan is famous for is the Petoskey stone. There is actually a city named Petoskey, but I have heard that you can find the stone on any shore. When we were at Turtle Lake Campground in Beulah, someone found one and gave it to Jim.

Michigan's State Stone since 1966

These stones are distinguishable based upon their unique exoskeleton structures. The actual stones are made up of tightly packed, six-sided corallites, which are the skeletons of the once-living coral polyps, Favosite. The center of each polyp was the mouth and contained tentacles that reached out for food. The hexagon shape of each cell and thin lines radiating out from the dark "eye" in the center are distinguishing features unique to this fossil. Keep an eye out for the rare "Pink Pets" Petoskey stone. The pink hue is a result of the iron that permeated the coral as it calcified. The stones can be found where the red stars are located, which is the upper part of the "mitt" of Michigan, from Traverse City on the west to just below Alpena on the east coast.