Porcupine Mountains

Trip legs (latest at top):

26 Aug 04 – Hiking J.W. Wells State Park, Michigan
Yesterday we arrived at J.W. Wells State Park on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, having driven most of the day through Wisconsin through periods of haze and drizzle. We ended up at a nice campsite right on the north shore of Lake Michigan. Our camping neighbors were Ken and Carol, who were celebrating their 499^th day of camping in their pop-up. Over the 12 years they’ve owned it, they seem to be getting their money’s worth.

Today’s hike starts at the park’s Cedar River Trail, with the stone hiking hut built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930’s. Someone has built a fire, which is welcome on this misty morning. We see various wildflowers hiking through the park, and encounter ferocious mosquito attacks in the deep woods where the lakeshore breezes don’t penetrate.

Lake Michigan Shore
From J.W. Wells State Park on the Upper Peninsula.
Ski Hut
Built by the CCC in the '30's.
Rough-stemmed Goldenrod
Dolls' Eyes
Also known as White Baneberry.
Blue Vervain
Orange Hawkweed
Purple Loosestrife
This was found on the shore of Lake Michigan at JW Wells State Park. It is in the Lake Michigan flood plain.

That evening park ranger Trevor stops by to chat with us about our plans to visit the Porcupine Mountains. Trevor spends almost an hour with us advising us on the “Porkies”, and we quiz him about his job as a park ranger and life in the Upper Peninsula.

Dawn: As we wander through the park at dusk, we see several groups of campers playing a game they call Snakes and Ladders. You toss two golf balls tied together with a string toward a goal of horizontal PVC pipes. One of the ladies asked us, “So, where are you from, then?” When we told her we were from Florida, she said, “Oh, I’ve been trying to get to Florida for years now. We got as far south as Sheboygan.”

27 Aug 04 – Traveling to the Porkies
Before we leave J.W. Wells State Park, we stop by for a second morning with the campground hosts Peggy and Carl. Most campgrounds with RV hookups will have volunteer hosts who help new campers, in return for free camping. However, Peggy and Carl have taken it to a new level. They expanded Saturday morning coffee to almost every day of the week, and, being local residents, started a sponsorship program with local businesses. They really put out quite a spread for the campers, all for free.

We see a nice example of American folk art in a mailbox made in the form of a tractor. We visit the US Forest Service District Office in Crystal River, where we confirm it is allowed to camp anywhere in the National Forest. Such camping is free, though you vehicle must be pulled off the road far enough to not impede traffic. Since we have a stove for cooking, we would not be worried about creating a fire circle in the midst of the forest, with the attendant risk of losing control of the fire. At this time we don’t have any plans to camp in a National Forest, but it’s always nice to know about the option. We also visit the USFS Visitor Center at Watersmeet. which has many terrific displays, and Dawn buys the wildflower identification guide in the Audubon series.

Tractor Mailbox
What a great example of American folk art. Found in Michigan's Upper Peninsula not far from J.W. Wells State Park.

We also stop at the Pasty Oven and sample the regional delicacy called a “pasty”, pronounced “pass-tee”. This is a meal brought from Great Britain by the Cornish miners who worked the copper mines in the Upper Peninsula. The wives would take leftovers of beef and potatoes and rutabagas and bake them in a pastry shell. The miners would take them down into the mines and heat them over a candle for lunch. They could hold the warmed pasty by the thick crust with their grimy fingers, and eat all of it but the crust, then discard the crust.

Pasties
Pronounced "PASS-tees", this dish dates back to the Cornish miners who first worked in the Upper Peninsula in the 1840's.

Around 4pm we reach the Presque Isle Campground in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. We pick a campsite where we can see Lake Superior. This is a rustic campground, so the sites have no electricity, and there are no flush toilets or showers. Vault toilets are nearby (automatic flushers :-) and water is available from hand pumps a couple minutes walk away. We initially plan to spend 3 nights here and 3 nights at the park’s modern campground, but we end up staying here 6 nights because of its quiet beauty.

29 Aug 04 – Hiking the Escarpment Trail
It was cold overnight, and by 10 am it is only 53 degrees. We realize we have to quit with just the fleece sleeping bags and move to the heavy artillery, the -20 degree Slumberjacks. Of course, they will need to be put together loosely so we don’t bake. I resolve to get a thermometer at some point.

A ranger came by in the morning to mark sites which had been reserved for the coming night. As I sit on the picnic table and wash dishes in cold water, I joke with him, “Don’t those people know it is too cold for camping?” He smiles and says, “It’s just getting nice.” It’s obvious we are not in south Florida anymore.

Our first full day at Porcupine Mountains Wilderness SP starts with a visit to the Visitors Center. Not all state parks have a visitor center, but Porcupine turns out to be the largest state park in Michigan, and they have a nice visitors center, with fancy slide show, terrain map, and stuffed wildlife. Make certain to check out the bookstore/gift shop if you visit here, because it’s a very nice selection of books on the history and natural history of the area. Anyone backpacking into the backcountry for an overnight stay must check in here, or do the self-registration possible at some of the trailheads.

We take the Escarpment Trail from the Government Peak trailhead. We are soon rewarded with a view of Lake of the Clouds, the centerpiece of the park. However, we are quite a bit east of it. We find a few blueberries, which are sparse and small due to the lateness of the season. We also find our first backcountry campsite, which has a fire ring and a bear pole. The bear pole is a 15-foot high thick metal pole with a hook on top, set into concrete, and an accompanying loose pole and hook. A hiker staying overnight hooks his or her backpack with all food on the loose pole, and raises the loose pool and pack up into the air and hooks it onto the pole set in concrete for the night. Then it is pretty much bear-proof. If the hiker hasn’t got any food smells by or in his tent, he should be unmolested by bears.

Later in the afternoon I interview an interesting gentleman named Gust, who is camping and traveling in a bright yellow motorcycle and sidecar. That interview will be published later when time permits.

Dawn Identifying Wildflowers
Hard at work, she already knows most of the plants we see in the woods.
Bearberry
Also known as Kinnickkinnick. We later have Ranger Bob tell us that this is not a favorite food for bears, because the berries are dry and woody. However, they are a reliable food source because they "bear" fruit in decent quantity year in and year out.
Dawn Picking Blueberries
There weren't many left this late in the season.
Wild Blueberries
Wild blueberries are smaller than the ones in the grocery store, and this is the end of this year's crop in the Upper Peninsula.
Harebell
Fairly rare, we find these on the Escarpment Trail in Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

29 Aug 04 – Hiking the Summit Peak Loop
The observation tower is pretty cool, but better is the viewing platform ¼ mile before, which has some permanent binoculars. From there you can see the Apostle Islands to the west, and we later find out there is a small angle where you can see all the way north across the lake to Minnesota.

We see a lot of mushrooms, and start becoming fascinated by the variety we are encountering. Even though we both could really care less about mushrooms and fungi, when you bump into a new variety every hour you can’t help being impressed. Later we find out that a wet late summer is ideal growing conditions for fungi, so we just kind of lucked out. I don’t know if we will ever identify all the kinds we took pictures of, so if someone wants to help identify them please let us know.

Indian Pipe
This is a plant that does not not have chlorophyll, but derives it's nutrition from rotting plant material. We found it only by rotting birch logs. It was relatively rare, and we are not sure if it is classified as a fungi.

We have lunch down by Mirror Lake, and I experiment with the camera timer to take a delayed photo of the both of us. I have avoided bringing even a small tripod, so getting a decent shot depends on a helpful nearby hunk of nature on which to rest the camera.

Lunch at Mirror Lake
Hey, I got the 10-second timer to work!

As we start back towards the trailhead on Beaver Creek Trail, a plank boardwalk takes us across a wet area. Suddenly, Dawn sees a snake disappear, then reappear. He poses nicely and waits for the two of us to swap positions on the 8-inch wide boardwalk. Eventually he slithers off as I start touching his tail to tell him we would like to pass.

Marsh
Nice little board path through a wetlands, close to the beginning of the Beaver Creek Trail.
Marsh Snake
Totally unafraid of humans. As yet unidentified.
Meadow Wildflowers
Goldenrod (yellow), Boneset (white), and Joe-Pye Weed (pink). I never would have figured late summer would have such a nice display of wildflowers.

That afternoon it has been three days since we showered, so we take a swim in Lake Superior. It was cold.

30 Aug 04 – Hiking the Little Carp Trail
The day starts at Overlooked Falls. Little Carl Trail was kind of muddy and not as well-maintained as others in the park. Kind of funny since the trail is part of the North Country Trail system, which will stretch from New York to North Dakota when completed. More cool fungi. The trail also crosses the Little Carp Stream using stepping stones. We have lunch at Lily Pond in a cool drizzle. More fungi on the way back, including something Dawn calls “Sedimentary Mushrooms,” so-named because the rings look like layers of sediment deposited to become a rock formation.

Overlooked Falls
Crossing Little Carp
This is the trail. Really.
Lily Pond
A nice, quiet spot for lunch on a cool, drizzly day.
Wildflower
As yet unidentified.

Making the fire that evening I find some beetles doing you-know-what, so of course I have to take a picture of it. All these pictures are copyrighted, so if you make a million dollars selling these for dorm room posters, remember where you got the originals.

Beetle Love
Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, let's do it, let's fall in love. (With apologies to Cole Porter.)

In the evening we watch the sun set over Lake Superior while chatting with another camping couple, Mike and Judy. They have been seeing each other for 8 years, and are engaged to be married next year. Of course, after regaling them with stories of being married for 18 or 20 years and then starting all over, maybe we gave them reason to wait even longer.

Sunset over Lake Superior
From the beach below Presque Isle Campground in Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

31 Aug 04 – Escarpment Trail from Lake of the Clouds
We do the tourist bit and actually drive to a scenic overlook. There, we did it.

Lake of the Clouds
Red Squirrel
Photogenic little rodents, aren't they?
Berries
As yet unidentified.

We finally meet Ranger Bob, the park naturalist. Ranger Trevor from J.W. Wells SP had mentioned him, and we are not beyond dropping names. Hey, we really don’t know anyone in the UP, so we are not doing all that badly. Ranger Bob lets Dawn hold his big piece of native copper, and there was much rejoicing. Turns out this is about the only part of the world you can mine copper in its native form as nuggets, asa opposed to how it is normally mined as an ore. The copper boom in the mid 1800’s wasted and created a number of fortunes, and Ranger Bob takes us and another family on a tour of the Nonesuch Copper Mine, which was sold to the park by the White Pine Mining Company. While Nonesuch hardly ever made money, geologist eventually drilled down far enough to figure out that about 2 miles east there was a LOT of copper. White Pine generated about 1/3 of the US copper supply as late as the 1970’s.

Ranger Bob
One of his props was a big chunk of native copper. Look how happy they both are! Copper is good.
Nonesuch Mine
Ruins of the power plant, with Ranger Bob showing off a handful of stamped copper.
Stamped Copper
To separate the native copper they would feed the nuggets and rock through a stamping mill. This would flatten the copper and crush the rock. Then the copper could be separated. However, there was not enough copper to make the mine profitable.

After the nature hike in the rain, Ranger Bob tells us his brother-in-law’s restaurant in White Pine is having “Home-Baked Pasty Night.” Dawn and I look at each other, and the lure of fresh pasties wins over cooking in the rain.

1 Sep 04 – Hiking the Falls
There are some fancy boardwalks leading to the falls on the Presque Isle River, but to get the shots we wanted we had to go off the main trail. Don’t try this at home, kids. We are trained professionals on a closed course.

Stephen at the Falls
More Falls
We have the names for these somewhere.

Here is some video taken while standing in the middle of the river at these falls: Presque Isle River in Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Michigan, 1 Sep 2004 (19 MB, 65 sec)

Presque Isle River
Just before it empties into Lake Superior.
Bunchberry

On our way to some more nature hikes, we stopped to take a picture of this memorial by the Nonesuch Mine trailhead. It speaks for itself, and we honestly don’t have any more information.

Hockey Stick Memorial
This guy was lucky to have friends like this.
Rattlesnake Plantain
Also called Rattlesnake Orchid. Ranger Bob said this was one of the three most common plants in the park, but we hardly saw any. Maybe because the flowering season runs May to September and we were at the northern edge of its range.

We also turned a corner on the South Boundary road and saw a wolf standing pretty much in the middle of the road. He was about the size of a Labrador retriever, and so was determined not to be a smaller coyote. He took off pretty quick, and we didn’t know at the time to stop and look for paw prints, which would have been positive identification. No, there’s no picture of the wolf, because they move a lot faster than mushrooms.

Ranger Bob took us on the Interpretive Trail starting at the Visitors Center, and Dawn had to go foraging for every darn berry he pointing out. This kind of freaked some of the other people on the nature hike. Turns out some people will not eat berries found in the wild, even if the ranger picks it and hands it to them. Let them see someone like Dawn identifying plants before the ranger, and eating every berry in sight, and they start thinking we are a little bit weird. Well, it was our 8^th day out, and maybe we were getting a little weird.

Oh wait, now I remember, we WERE getting weird. So we are at the start of the next hike an hour later, our last with Ranger Bob, and it’s a Bear Habitat hike. Well, I find Ranger Bob’s box of props (remember the chunk of copper the day before?) and there’s this big old bearskin. So I put it on and start cavorting around, and then throw it on Dawn for some pictures. I think she looks good in synthetic fabrics and bearskin.

Dawn in her "Bear Skin"
Text.
Bear Den
Actually, Ranger Bob made sure to explain this was a POSSIBLE den, as he had no direct evidence it had be used for denning. Yet.

2 Sep 04 – Leaving the Porcupines
Something had been burrowing around under our tent floor. As we pack up the tent, we find him. He doesn’t run very fast, and eventually he tires and let’s me get his picture.

Field Mouse
Slept under our tent for a fiew nights, making little scratching noises and moving the tent floor.

Then Dawn and I have a big fight and don’t talk on the 8-hour drive back to Chicago. To top it off, when the cell phone starts working again, we hear voicemail from our neighbors in South Florida. Frances, the category 4 hurricane is headed towards our house due tomorrow at lunchtime, and our property manager has not put up the storm shutters.

Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you.