Day #7 - Friday, September 25th, 2009

The early morning weather was a bit dull, but once we were on the road the whole day became as before, bright sunshine & breezy - lovely! After the exertions of yesterday we all slept like logs and woke somewhat later than usual, but were still on the road before 10:00AM.

This was a 2-purpose day, one being the "tourists and their money are soon parted" aspect, and the other seeing the rest of the upper Keweenaw. We cruised up to Calumet, parked and checked a few shops. Zoe having expressed her displeasure at being left we then took her and strolled around a couple of blocks, but found nothing to beat the original row of shops. However, since John hadn't realized that a parking meter 10 feet behind the van applied to him we returned to a ticket, and had to put a whopping $3 into the envelope & then into the fine box, conveniently located on the 2-headed meter post! We each in turn revisited the Copper World shop & each came out with more stuff and less cash.

We then cruised on up to Copper Harbor on US 41, most of which we had bypassed yesterday and the last 20 miles of which were truly lovely, fully justifying the "scenic" designation on the map. First we toured all of C.H. by van (about 10 minutes of driving!) then we parked & started cruising the shops, a long foot slog minded least of all by Zoe. Naturally we did our buying in almost the last store we visited, although among the "tourist tacky" we saw some truly lovely, if horrendously pricey, arty stuff. We made our way back to the van & John went to the nearby restaurant and ordered 2 "pastie lunches", but had to settle for the bigger dinner size since we were a bit late. We took them down to the waterfront & sat in a mini-park to eat them, watching the undersized motor boat chug along taking tourists to the lighthouse.

After 24 hours of contemplation Marissa decided to buy her own pair of moccasins on sale, and after that we started back along the lovely part of US41. We found the turning to the "other side" of the peninsula, cruised on down, turned along the road to Bete Grise Bay, found the public beach and stopped. "Surf's up" once again found Zoe having a ball. Once exhaustion started setting in (for the humans, anyway) we re-embarked and began our long cruise down the other coast, some of which was lovely and all of which we had almost exclusively to ourselves.

Naturally we stopped to photograph the "Gay Bar" (the only hostelry in the village of Gay) before carrying on to Lake Linden (town of). John's original plan had been a substantial side trip down to a beach for more Zoe romping, but in view of the time & Zoe's apparent state of exhaustion we wisely elected to forego that, and just cruised on around Highway 26 back to Hancock and across the bridge to Houghton & our hotel.

Following a little tidying & reorganization John made the trip to Wal-Mart (every bit of a 3-wood shot away from the hotel) for some ice for the cooler & two dinner salads for the evening. We have now hit the high spots on the left, the right, and the middle of the upper Keweenaw, all in lovely weather & are feeling quite satisfied.

We covered a few more miles than yesterday, 128, & now stand at a total of 1306.5.

Less pictures than usual today, but Marissa's blog is here.