Five Days Among the YooPers

So you've never heard of a yooper? Neither had we until we embarked upon our trip across Michigan's Upper Peninsula, taking us from Northern Wisconsin, along the shores of Lake Superior to Sault Ste. Marie, then South to St. Ignace. YooPers (U.P.ers) are the inhabitants of this part of Michigan. To give you a paraphrase of a U.P. "Creation" story I read - God created the U.P. (think Garden of Eden) and the YooPers. He also made trolls who lived in the land below the U.P. (all the rest of us). He then built a bridge to the U.P. so the trolls could visit Paradise. Finally, on the 7th day, God saw it was good and He went huntin'. Get the picture, eh?

Other things to know about the U.P.:

One day it's warm, the rest of the year it's cold.

If you fly a straight line from Sault Ste. Marie to Ironwood, you'll see a lot of trees. Dollar Bay in the U.P. was named after the annual salary in the area. The U.P. is the supplier of mosquitos to the free world. There are two seasons in the U.P. -- Swat and Shovel.

This is probably our last blog entry for a while since we are now back in PA to take care of some business before heading off again. We're not exactly sure just where that will be or when, but you can bet it will be somewhere interesting and soon. Thanx for joining us and stay tuned.

Photos from 5 Days in the U.P. (119 Photos) - Be sure to see captions, upper left of most photos.

Oh Beautiful

Really Close to Canada

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain...

In truth, we saw no amber grain since it is not quite the right time of the Summer in this part of the country, but in driving through North Dakota it was not hard to imagine how such words could have been inspired. For at least 90% of our drive across the state (on US 2 - off the beaten Interstate), we saw nothing but spacious skies with fields, mostly of grain and sugar beets, stretching from horizon to horizon, North to South and East to West. We decided that ND must supply a very hefty portion of wheat, rye, corn, etc. that goes into our country's (or other parts of the world I'm sure) food supply. In the town of Ray, while stopped in a parking lot by a baseball field to have lunch, we had a nice chat with a local couple who were in town for a big local event including a parade and other such things, but the main attraction of the day was to run a car that had been empied of oil until the engine blew. Of course there were bets being made on how long it would run.

Only a few photos attached to this part of our story - some of the things OTHER than crops we observed along the way.

North Dakota (24 Photos)

A Wonderful Surprise

Greetings from the Great Forks Campground, just a bit outside the city of Great Forks, ND. We've now been in ND for a couple days, but thanx to some (no, a lot) communications difficulties in the area, I've fallen behind (again) on keeping you posted on our latest adventures.

So...before we give you the ND report, here's something from Montana.

We may have mentioned this to some of you before, but one of the pleasures of traveling around the country is discovering things that were not part of the plan. As we were rolling down the highway toward our next planned stop in Glendive, MT, Deb happened upon a description of a State Park which she read to all of us. We decided to book two nights in the area in order to have a day available to devote to this site and we were all so very happy to have made that decision.

Makoshika State Park is known as the Badlands of Eastern Montana and is the largest of all the Montana State Parks. It is the site of many archeological finds and the rock formations (mostly the work of the Yellowstone River and its tributaries) are just breathtaking. We spent hours exploring several areas where it was possible to do so without getting into any extreme conditions (no more 3 mile hikes in the wind and cold for now than you). There are not a lot of captions attached to these photos and there are a number of shots that are different views or exposures of the same formations - just an attempt to give you a better sense of what we observed.

As always, we're happy to have you joining us and we hope you enjoy the photos.

Makoshika State Park (78 Photos)