Hanging with the Yoopers

View of the Menominee River from our dock.

Who are the Yoopers, you might ask? According to the guidebooks, that’s how the folks who live in Michigan’s Upper Penninsula refer to themselves (it’s the “U. P.”). When we decided to start our retirement travels with the Great American Road Trip (GART), we wanted to be sure we went to lots of places (1) we had never been, (2) didn’t know anything about, and (3) were different from our pre-retirement vacations. Well, we had heard from a few people that Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (again, UP) was very pretty and a bit off the beaten path. They were right! Turns out, I had no idea where the UP was - I thought it was the upper part of the “mitten” (see below). Well, apparently, there’s a whole lot more to Michigan just north of the mitten and surrounded by Great Lakes. LA people 🙄.

Just driving across the UP to get to where we were staying near Iron Moutain was amazing. These photos are from a random rest area where we stopped just because I needed to, well, you know.

Our timing for visiting the area was great - we got to watch the leaves change colors from mid-September to mid-October (see the end of this blog post for the foliage color change photos), the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is a MUST see national park (see photo gallery here), and the rivers were beautiful too. Our Airbnb could not have been nicer - we were right on the Menominee River, with a screened-in porch for early morning coffee and a private dock!

More on the local beauty:

Marquette is one of the biggest cities in the UP, it was only fine. But I did like this lighthouse.

I enjoyed putting my feet in Lake Superior for the first time. Too cold for swimming!

The wildlife was not scared of us at all. Random trail.

Another lighthouse - this time in Escanaba, on the Little Bay De Noc (which is connected to Lake MI)

More from the Escanaba area - very pretty.

Still the Little Bay De Noc behind me.

Hiking along a different part of the Menominee River - we loved these views of the river.

Cap’n Craig

The weather was great (especially for late September this close to Canada), and we had our own dock, so we rented a pontoon boat for a couple of days. It was really cool to see everything from the river. And, check out Cap’n Craig…

Picking the pontoon boat up from a nearby lake.

Me kicking back and enjoying the view.

Some of the cool places on the river.

Cool bridge over the river.

View of our place from the river.

Securing the boat for the evening. Hope it’s still there in the morning.

Bonus - More Mushrooms!

Found in and around the UP. Some of these were really cool - what the heck is that black one at the end?!?!?

Last, a handful of cautions, just in case you decided to immediately plan a trip:

• A month was way too long to stay - I think we would have enjoyed it more if we only spent a week-ish.

• If you are a food snob, the only place you should go in the UP is Munising. We had crazy good food and coffee on an overnight trip there (to see the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore).

• DO NOT believe any hype about a wine region there - there were exactly two wineries in the Escanaba area. I was a tad disappointed after the marketing we saw. All I’m saying is, they shouldn’t over hype something if it’s not really there.

• We stayed just outside of Iron Mountain, which was a nice town, but again, probably better for a shorter stay. Highly recommend our Airbnb - let me know if you want the link!

Here’s the gallery of comparison shots of the trees from the top of the steps to our dock (Sept 13-Oct 5) - yes, I did not do a good job of trying to have comparable lighting: