Hiking the Porkies

The Porcupine Mountains (known by the locals as the Porkies) has a lot of good hiking trails.  We drove all the way to the other end of the Porkies and began our first hike of the day in the Presque Isle area of the park.  We began by hiking the West River trail south along the Presque Isle River.

Along the West River trail, there are a lot of steps and boardwalks...

...that allow hikers and walkers (those without hiking poles) to more easily access the viewpoints of the various falls along the river.

So we climbed up some steps....

...and saw the Manabezho Falls.

And then we walked down a lot of steps...

and saw the Manido Falls.

Just east of the Manido Falls, there was a place where you could walk out to the middle of the river on top of all the layers upon layers of rock.

The river looks fairly peaceful upstream...

..but a little more "waterfally" downstream.  :)

The suds that would gather in the eddies or holes in the rock is not from pollution but from the chemicals in the trees.

We came to the end of the last of the boardwalks and then began a steep climb up a hillside of tree roots.

Along this trail and through much of the Porkies, we were walking through the largest remaining old-growth and hemlock forest in the Midwest.

The last set of waterfalls we came to on the West River Trail was the Nawadaha Falls.

Within a short distance we reached the South Boundary Road where we crossed the bridge...

...and began heading down the East River Trail on the other side of the river.

We had a better viewpoint on the East River Trail of some of the falls.

And we had more "root-steps" to climb down.

Before too long, we could see Lake Superior through the trees off in the distance.

The ground of the forest was filled with tree saplings, moss, plants and ferns.

We also saw these big green leafy plants with pods or flowers that looked like blueberries growing up on the stem from the base.

We crossed over some of those layered rocks...

...and could see where Presque Isle River was emptying into Lake Superior.

And then we crossed over a suspension bridge...

...where we could see the Presque Isle River directly below us.

We climbed another set of steps back up to the parking lot of the trailhead and had walked a little over 2 miles on the West and East River Trails.  We had our picnic lunch at the shelter at the trailhead.  As we began leaving in the car, there was a gentleman that asked if we could give him a ride back to the ranger's station where he and his family had left their car to hike along these trails. He said all of his kids were pretty tired and he didn't think they could hike much further.  So we took him to his car and headed on down the road.

I noticed on the map another set of waterfalls that appeared to be a very short distance to hike to.  We stopped at the parking lot for the Little Carp River Trail and after finding the trail, began walking to the Overlooked Falls.

As is typical, it was more than just a short distance but we did find a sign pointing the direction of the Overlooked Falls 300 feet to the right of the trail.  We walked 100 feet and there they were.

If we had not seen the sign, we would have overlooked them.  :)

When we walked back to the trail, we noticed some backpackers coming up behind us.  They asked us for directions to the road because they were heading back to the Summit Peak parking lot.  It was a dad, his son, and their friend and they had been backpacking for 5 days and decided to walk on out because they were running low on supplies.  We knew it was 5 or 6 miles back to Summit Peak.  Since that was where we were heading next, we gave the friend a lift back to their car at Summit Peak and then he was able to drive back and pick up the dad and son which kept them from having to walk all that distance on the road.

After parking at the trailhead to Summit Peak, we hiked up the trail to the highest point in the Porcupine Mountains.  The trails was fairly steep and then we began walking up a lot of steps.

There was a nice overlook where you could see the mountains and Lake Superior off in the distance.

At the top was a tall tower with even more steps...

...where you could see for miles and miles.

It was green and beautiful but very windy so we didn't stay up there too long.  I imagine it is even more spectacular in the fall when all the leaves change colors.

We hiked a total of about 4 miles today, climbed up and down about 1,000 steps, and helped 2 sets of hikers today.  That's a pretty good day in the Porkies!

We had big salads for dinner and I began making reservations for some of the places we will be visiting next in Michigan.  We went outside a little after 9 pm to watch the sunset.  It was 62 degrees and the wind was blowing about 12 mph.  Needless to say, I was a little cold.

We had another spectacular sunset...

...after another spectacular day.  Good night, Porkies!  :)

Exploring Ontonagon

We slept in a little later this morning.  As weird as it seems, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is in the Eastern Time Zone I'm guessing because the rest and most populated part of Michigan (the part that looks like a mitten) is in the Eastern Time Zone.  It's funny to think that we are probably about as far west as Memphis, Tennessee, but we are back in the Eastern Time Zone.  Weird!  The time change and all the driving yesterday called for a little extra rest this morning.  :)

After breakfast, we drove into town and to find a car wash before we did anything else.  It was filthy!  Chuck thinks it was the dirtiest it has ever been.  We found a "do-it-yourself" carwash and after $7.50 worth of quarters, Chuck had the car pretty clean.

Then we drove back in town to the visitor information center where we had a interesting little chat with a lady who has lived in Ontonagon all of her life.  She is a retired first grade school teacher and remembers when the kindergarten classes totaled over 100 kids.  This year the entire kindergarten enrollment is only 16 children.  Years ago, a paper and pulp factory and a mining company supplied most of the jobs to the people living here.  Now, both are closed down and Ontonagon is not much more than a summer tourist town.

We asked her how long the cold weather lasts in the winter and she says it starts getting cold around October and sometimes does not begin to warm up until April or May.  It is not uncommon for them to have 3 to 4 feet of "free fall" snow (not piled up from snow plows).  With that much snow, they have to remove the snow off the roofs to keep the roofs from weakening and caving in.  We asked her what temperatures she thought were cold and she said below zero!  We're ready to move to warmer temperatures when the temps get in the 30s!  Despite her cold weather conditioning, she said that she told her husband that she is tired of the cold weather and that this year they need to be some place much warmer in the winter!  But she said he likes the cold weather so I don't know if they will leave for the winters or not.

She was such a delightful lady and we enjoyed talking with her.  She also gave us a lot of brochures and ideas on things to see while we are here.

After we left the visitor center, we drove to Pat's IGA where we picked up a few groceries.  While we were there, I got a call from Bonnie and we talked further about plans for this fall which all of us are looking forward too.  We came back home, ate some lunch, and then headed for Porcupine Mountains State Park.  We decided to purchase a $31 non-resident Michigan recreational pass because all of the Michigan State Parks and recreation areas have a $10 day use fee.

After watching a 12 minute information film about the park, we drove to the Lake of the Clouds Scenic Area.  There was a short (but steep) 300' walk to the overlook where we were able to see Lake of the Clouds.

Lake of the Clouds was formerly called Carp Lake but not because the lake is filled with carp fish.  In fact, there are no carp in the lake.  The French name was Lac du Escarpe or Lake of the Escarpment because of the high, steep ridge (escarpment) that rises on the north side of the lake.

The Carp River enters the lake from the east side and exits out the west side.

Probably one of the most special things about the Porcupine Mountains are the thousands of acres of virgin timber -- forests that have never been cut -- a very unusual thing to find in the middle of an area that was once heavily logged.

We may come back here to do a little hiking but since it was so late in the day, we decided to head back to Ontonagon.  We did make one stop near Silver City at the Bonanza (or Greenwood) Falls which are located on the Iron River. We found the parking area one mile south on Hwy 64 and walked a short distance out to the falls.

I imagine that these waterfalls are especially beautiful in the spring when the winter snow is melting and flowing into the rivers.  Right now, the waterfalls are more like a cascade stair-stepping their way down from the left...

...to the right.

 

The rock looks like layered red sandstone and the water is very reddish looking as well.

There were several places I was able to easily walk out to in the middle of the dry part of the waterfalls.

It's amazing what little tidbits of beauty you can find out in the middle of nowhere.

After leaving Bonanza Falls, we headed back to the camper to sit out and enjoy our beautiful view of Lake Superior before dinner.

After dinner, Chuck worked on the electrical connection between the motorhome and the Honda that we use when we are towing.  We had noticed that the left turn signal was not working consistently and he found where there may have been a short in the line.  He stripped back the line, put on new connectors, and hopefully, we will be all ready to go with all the turn signals working on the car when we leave Ontonagon.

We went back outside a little after 9 pm to watch the sunset again tonight.

It was 70 degrees outside, well after 9 pm, and there were people swimming in Lake Superior!  Too cold for us!

The clouds in the horizon presented an interesting sunset.

Right on time, at 9:32 pm, the last glimmers of our bold, bright sun had disappeared below the horizon.

Another beautiful day!