Munising, is the launching point for the Painted Rocks National Lakeshore. Painted Rocks are walls of towering sandstone along Lake Superior that in some places reach 200 feet straight up. They get there names from the colors that have been "painted" on them from the natural minerals in the ground water that leach out and drain to the lake. We took a boat tour out to see several of the neatest formations. It's a spectacular sight and was well worth the detour. Especially when he took the boat right into one of the natural caves.
Speaking of lake Superior, I don't think we mentioned that it is the largest lake by surface volume in the world. We learned today that it's the size of South Carolina and that it holds enough water to cover the entire Continental United States in 5 feet of water!
The waters of lake Superior are the cleanest of all the great lakes. Look how blue and teal the water was in this picture. You could easily see down into it clearly at least 15 to 20 feet.
Here we are inside one of the natural canyons on our boat tour! Sammi snapped this cool picture that almost looks like we are underwater.
This is one of the oldest remaining lighthouses on the lake, the east channel lighthouse. It sits on grand island and lit the safe passageway into Munising harbor.
After the boat ride in Munising, we stopped at a cute little ice cream parlor called the Frozen Flamingo. We did this for two reasons, it was right in front of a hotel with free Internet access, so we could post yesterdays blog, and they had my favorite ice-cream in the UP, the Yooper Mudslide! Missy is convinced, I'm going to go into withdrawals when I can't find it anymore. It's chocolate ice cream with chocolate chunks and chocolate sauce all mixed together. Yummy!
We've become some sort of pros this week seeking out cell and wifi locations so we can reconnect with the real world momentarily. We can now spy the cell towers miles ahead, pull out our devices and download data and send a few notes before the signal disappears. And we do it all without slowing down. There is a real art to it and both Sammi and Missy are getting good at it.
We made one detour on the way back to the falls campground, we went to visit the Oswald Bear Ranch. This is a sprawling multi acre bear compound run by the Oswald family. They take in injured and abandoned bear cubs and raise over 20 Black Bears. We got there, just as the owner was opening up the cages to feed the bears. Now let me be clear- in these pictures, there is no fence between Missy and the bears and she is less than 4 feet from 5 full grown black bears! The neat thing, he has them all trained to respond to commands in return for lollypops and Fruit Loops! We think they may all be diabetic when they grow up!
After seeing the full grown bears, we got to have our picture taken with a cub that was born in January. It was an interesting detour that could only be found in da UP!
Here we all are, as Sammi gets a bear kiss!
After dinner tonight, Missy, Windsor and I took one last stroll down to the Lower Falls, looking for a reported Bald Eagle. No eagle, but we did get to see another nice sunset over the Tahquamenon River.
We have really enjoyed our time in the Upper Peninsula and can honestly say, this is a great place to vacation. Michigan does a great job with their state parks. We will miss the fresh air and tranquility, if not the lack of cell phone coverage.
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Location:Painted Rocks National Lakeshore
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