U. P. Trip - Fall 2010 - Day #8

This lovely sunny day was a day of travels.  Now that we are in Houghton we have added some 600 miles to the odometer since leaving St. Ignace and are at 1825 trip miles so far.  We started slowly and did not make a hasty departure.  Our initial ambitions for the day were not too severe, and were expected to be somewhat boring, apart from enjoying all the delightful colors, although in places we could see a lot of leaves were already off the trees.

To break up the pretty but rather boring inland cross-country section of the drive we made a couple of side trips.  We turned off along the pretty lakefront/shoreline of Marquette & ran down to Presque Isle, but like last year we disappointed insofar as there was no ore freighter at the dock being loaded (although there was rail activity on top of the pier) plus the road around the park was closed & wouldn't open for some hours and this park does not allow pets to even be out of vehicles.  We let Portia skillfully guide us back to the highway completely avoiding the commercial section of Marquette and carried on.  Next we made a pit stop at one of the chain of aptly named "Da Yoopers Tourist Trap" which was interesting.  Marissa resisted temptation but John bought a bird feeder in the form of a lighthouse, a U.P. tee shirt and a Christmas doggie coat for Zoe.

John's misconception that Canyon Falls was in Baraga state park were happily resolved by Marissa's sharp eyes and with just enough time to slow & turn off into a major "Roadside Park" area.  We started down a trail that led after a 1/4 hour's walking, mostly beside a pretty stream (river?) with occasional little falls and/or rapids, but at the end were most impressed by the Canyon falls.  Like most flowing water up here the water is clear but stained brown by tannin from the peat covering much of the area.  The falls are impressive, but it was difficult to get a good angle for still photos, although a video clip was rather better.

We made our way back, tossing Zoe into a couple of feeder streams after she found a nasty muddy spot to slog through in order to wash her off a bit!  We picnicked and recast our plans since we didn't want to be in Houghton too early.  We elected to go to the Porcupine Mountains (or Porkies).  By the time we reached the Visitors Center & talked to staff there we decided an extra 50-some miles round trip to see more waterfalls was more travel than we wanted, so we made our second trip up to the Lake Of The Clouds, which was just as lovely as last year.  After enjoying the views and a bit of walking we then headed to Houghton which will be our base for three nights before we head further up to the cabin.

For a few the day's pictures please see the end of the set of pictures on Flickr, found by going here.