Shipshewana & Kimpel

Well it is down to the last day of vacation. We spent the morning driving from Grand Rapids to Shipshewana, Indiana. We are on our way home. Bummer. It was goodbye Michigan today. We spent several hours looking at the shops in Shipshewana before meeting up with Troy's friend Nathan Kimpel. I really love that town. It is very Amish. Most of the stores are really run by non-amish and the stuff is from China but there are a couple of places that there is authentic stuff and it is worth the trip for that. I really did love the cloth and quilt stores. I got some nice stuff there. We picked up some other "much needed" souvenirs as well while we were there. I didn't take any cool pictures today. I just enjoyed myself and enjoyed the sights.
When we met up with Nathan, we went to the Auburn Cord Duesenburg Museum and NATMUS, which is an acronym for lots of different kinds of restored vehicles and some that haven't been restored yet. No really, National Automotive and Truck Museum - see the resemblance to what I just said. It was fun.
We finally got to our hotel around 9:00 pm and we will have to get up pretty early in the morning to get home at a reasonable hour tomorrow.  That will be the end of the vacation for us, a long drive from Auburn, Indiana to Silver Creek, GA. So, thanks to everyone that has followed along with us and I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog.

Goodbye U.P.

Today we crossed over the Mighty Mac for the last time on our trip, leaving the U.P. behind. It was very sad for us as we have had a lot of fun there. It was the slowest trip we took across the bridge. We crossed at about 15 mph today because it was so windy. It looked pretty much like these two pictures all day along our trip.

We drove most of the day today making our way to Grand Rapids. This was a big trip from Escanaba. This evening we met up with Troy's college room mate, Tony, for dinner. That was very nice. I had not met him before. Afterward we rode around some and bought some more Faygo, and for those of you that don't know, this is an important staple that we can only get in Michigan and our car is getting loaded up as we progress homeward. We are spending the night in Grand Rapids, which is not that exciting, and moving on to Indiana in the morning. That will be more exciting. There is the Auburn Cord Museum and Troy's friend Nathan to visit. Plus, I am hoping to snooker Troy in to going over to Shipshewana (Amish Territory) for a peek too!

THEMES & Things

There are themes to the things we do. As time passes on this trip, we progress through themes of things we are going to. For a bit there was shipwrecks, then it was forts, always there has been museums but lately it has been mines. Today, it was an iron mine and a museum. Today's museum was a really neat one. It was the IXL Museum Wisconsin Land and Lumber Company. It was about this fellow that invented a machine to automate the tongue and grove board for hardwood floors. The mine was very neat too. We were at a depth of awful deep in a very cool damp and sometimes slippery iron mine that was hosted by Big John himself. We rode a very narrow train through a very narrow tunnel and got off and walked some distance into a very large cave where the iron had been mined out. Now the creepy thing about this mine to me was when the guide described this one particular drill that was used for overhead drilling which was very deadly and men were on the wait list to use it for an extra 3 pennies per day. They were actually waiting in line to have rocks fall on their heads. We came into the city of ESCANABA today. If you will look through old posts you will find in one of my very first posts a reference to a movie, Escanaba in da Moonlight. It is not quite like that here, but close. Troy says that everything about coming to the UP is like going back to at least 1950 mostly earlier. I really do see the resemblance to an earlier time here. There are some very, shall we say, slow to accept progress types here.

Escanaba, MI

Found this cute water tower along the way!

At the lumber museum

Anyway, it is absolutely fascinating to take a tour of this part of the country that I have not ever seen before. Tomorrow we head down a road I have been on before in lower Michigan on the way to Grand Rapids, but it will be at a later time of year than my last visit and I am looking forward to seeing the change of season.

 We went to the greatest old mining community in Rockland, MI today. It is called Old Victoria. It was just a few old buildings but they were full of authentic items from the time of the people that actually lived there and the buildings were in amazing condition. We were given a personal tour and allowed to touch things. The tour guide was just amazing because you could really tell how she loved her work. Troy said it was only a shame that she was interested in the things that still stood and not interested in talking about what had gone by the way as well. There was a lot that could be said about the history of the community as a whole and what happened with the mine that was the purpose of the community's existence to begin with.

I got to visit another new state today. I visited the city of Land O' Lakes Wisconsin. It was ok but I wouldn't want to live there. At least I can mark that one off my list, eh?

Check out the neat church. It may not seem that unique but it is nearly identical to the one on our train layout at home and we found it in Rockland today when we were driving around looking for ideas for how our little town should look since we are patterning it after this area of the country.

TODAY WE WERE MINERS!

Me and Troy in our miner gear at the Delaware Mine in Delaware, MI. This was a very cool place. Now I mean this in a couple of ways. The mine shaft that we ventured into was only in the 40's and it was also only occupied by us at the time of our visit. We had arrived late in the day, we were in the middle of practically nowhere, and we were walking down into the ground too. Extremely cool and cold at the same time.

It was dark in the Delaware mine. They had left the place as is there from how the miners left it in the 1800's. It was only in use for 40 years and has been abandoned since. There is still some visible copper there in the walls of the mine.

This is the Quincy mine. We went down into this mine too. It was a much more populated tour. There was a train down to the shaft then a wagon that carried us through the mine. This one was pretty neat when we got into the mine because they turned out all the lights and you have never really known dark until you are in a mine with absolutely no light. 

We also visited some ghost towns in several places. This is just one of the very neat places we saw that was a surviving place from history. There were many of the homes, schools, or old businesses that have been either preserved or marked that we were able to see and even tell what they were. It was fascinating. Troy even got a couple of books about two of the towns that were bigger that we saw.

I know this has nothing to do with mines but I had to throw it in. This is the library in Houghton. I thought it was very nice that it had a view of sailboats docked behind it.

Day 10

A really great place to stay at Keewenaw Bay
Carla's Motel,
Baraga, MI

Imagine a vase with flowers.
Pictured Rocks,
Munising, MI

The smallest post office I have ever seen.
Deerton, MI

We are in the UP now, you betcha!

We are moving farther into the UP and the trip is going great. I don't need an interpreter yet but they sure do talk funny here.

Today we started off with a visit back to the Soo Locks for a while. Seeing the ships go through the locks is really great fun and better this morning than last night because there was so few people there this morning to block the view. It was pretty chilly though. I had to go across the street and buy a sweatshirt to stand the chill in the air. Yes, I know it is August, but it is different this far north.

This is a 1000 foot iron ore ship leaving the locks while another one waits its turn to go through just off in the distance.

Before leaving for our vacation, Troy had me watch the Chevy Chase movie "Vacation" where he and his family go to Wally World and find it closed for repairs. He holds them at gunpoint and makes them let his family ride the theme park rides after a horrible trip across the country to get there. This morning after leaving the locks at Sault Ste. Marie we drove to Whitefish Point to visit the lighthouse and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. When we arrived we found the parking lot packed with oodles of people milling around looking lost and not knowing what to do. We soon found that the entire place was closed. Even the restrooms were closed. So this was our only big glitch in our holiday road so far!

After that plan fell through we moved on to plan B. We looked for a route to the coast of Superior. Couldn't find that and went to plan C. Plan C was Oswald's Bear Ranch! Great! The bears were so well cared for. This place had huge fenced areas that the bears could roam in and never be seen if they didn't want to, but of course they were all front and center for the apples that the kids were feeding them.

This guy was my favorite. You could really tell he was the boss the way he interacted with the other bears.

After the bear ranch it was on to Munising. We decided that it was a good evening to take a boat tour in a glass bottom boat despite the high winds and cool weather. The weather was great but they had to 

cut the tour little short because they could not go out into the open water with high winds. We were able to see a really cool shipwreck and some very neat houses on Grand Isle. A house that was for sale there was over $200,000 and it had no electricity or running water. Talk about ruffing it. Not for me.

Last but not least, my favorite picture of the day!