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.
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!
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