Started out on M28 from Ipsheming, MI (just love spelling that name) as a continuation of our previous days travels along MI 28 from Sault Ste Marie. You really can't see much along the road as it is a two-lane road between heavily forested land. If it wasn't for those darn trees, we could probably get a good view. Oh well, occasionally, we got a view of a lake through the trees. As we drove through the area, we passed by many houses located out in the boondocks. As Peter and I would say when we were out in the backroads of California and Nevada, you want to knock on their door and say - what the heck do you do out here?
It was really strange but we travelled more than four hours from Sault Ste Marie (straight north of Chicago) in an westerly direction and we were still in the Eastern Time Zone. The boundary between East and Central takes a very crazy path through Michigan and Wisconsin. We didn't hit the Central time zone until about half way through the day!
As we traversed the Upper Peninsula, the time zone was not the only confusing thing. The bigger question is why the UP is part of Michigan at all. It really should be part of Wisconsin. Did a little reading and found that the UP going to Michigan was the result of a land battle between Ohio and Michigan. Seems like Michigan territory owned the peninsula where Toledo, OH is located. There was a long drawn-out battle (only in Congress, not with arms) about who should own what. The end result was that Toledo peninsula went to Ohio and Michigan got the UP. Michigan was upset about what it thought was a useless piece of land not connected to them; however, when copper and iron were discovered, they were somewhat mollified. As a point of interest, it wasn't until 1957 when the Mackinac Bridge was built that the lower part of MI was connected to the UP. OK, enough history for the day.
We crossed through Bessemer, home of the Powderhorn Ski Area - billed as the Ski Capital of the Midwest (how much competition do you think they have for skiing areas). As we drove into Ironwood on the MI/WI border, we looked for (and found) a huge statue of Hiawatha in a local park.
To get an idea of the size, that's me standing at his foot! Maybe we should get him together with the statue of Paul Bunyan in Bemidji.
An interesting side note was our trip to the Wisconsin welcome center. They had a great exhibit on the iron mining industry in MI/WI. I thought that most of the iron mining was done in open pits, but it turns out that they also had deep shaft mines as well. At the welcome center, they had some of the bores which were taken out of the earth in order to sink the shafts. Down through solid granite!
We arrived in Duluth about mid-day (after the time change) and went through downtown, but decided that it was too big and too crowded for this trip, so we continued on US 2 toward Grand Rapids. On the way, we spotted a nine-hole golf course, so stopped to play. Fun way to break up the trip. Nice course (the Retreat Golf Course at Floodwood, MN). It had quite a bit of damage from a recent windstorm which they were in the process of cleaning up.
That brought us to Grand Rapids. The rapids are long gone, covered by water backed up by a dam on the Mississippi River. The Mississippi is about the size of the Truckee here. Supposedly, this is the start of the navigable headwaters of the Mississippi. Couldn't prove it by me.
Tomorrow we head into Fargo. We'll be staying with Melanie and Ken out on the farm which should be fun.
enjoy fargo and the family
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