Munising Cruises (7/25/2015)

Today was a busy day.  At 9:00 I was washing up the breakfast dishes, and by 9:45 I was in line for a boat tour.  Mazie came over and said she would like to do the Glass Bottom Shipwreck Tour, so off we went.  There were 3 shipwrecks we stopped over, and it was amazing how much of the underwater ships we could see.  This water is so clear that the visibility even from the top of our boat was pretty good.  And from the viewing platform, Mazie kept worrying that the boat captain was going to hit the ship, it appears that close.

Our tour was good.  As we moved over the wreck, our guide explained what we were seeing.  They divided us into 2 groups, and there was enough room around the viewing glass for half of us to see it at a time, so our captain (female) drove back over it a second time for the second group. 

She swung in close to shore and let us take a picture of this restored lighthouse on Grand Island.  The shoreline here keeps getting less and less as the water level of the lake continues to rise from global warming.  One of the passengers on the boat said her parents had a cabin here when she was a kid, and there was a pretty good beach in front of the cabin then.  Now, the cabin is right at the shoreline.

The three boats we saw were the Bermuda, the Scow Schooner and the Herman H. Hettler.  The literature says there is up to fifty feet of visibility in this water, but all of these wrecks were in much shallower water now.  One had been moved, and one had been destroyed in place.  The other one, the Scow Schooner, was discovered accidentally and they don't know the name of it, or when it sank.

 We had to wait for a dive boat to move for the third wreck.  I'm sure Joe was wishing he was diving with them, even though the water temperature, near shore, is only about 70.

The third wreck actually got stuck on a reef in shallow water and stood upright for several years.  But it was determined to be a safety hazard, so they blew it up.  You could still see the anchor, and a bathtub and toilet seat.  The toilet seat even shows up in the picture.

When we got back to town, we had lunch then dropped Dave and Mazie off at the campground, then Joe and I chased down some waterfalls around town.  The first one is the Munising Falls.

Down the road a ways was a trail to Miners Castle, so we checked that out.

There was a very busy beach right below this.  These Michigan Yuppers (yuppers is the name for those from the Upper Peninsula) are tough!

We had to drive back into the edge of town to go to the second waterfall, so Joe stopped and got a soda.  When he came out to the car, he said they had some pretty good looking ice cream inside, so of course I had to go check that out.  Then we went looking for the second waterfall, Wagner Falls.

Today's Ice Cream Cone -- Yummy

Then we went to our third waterfall, Alger Falls, which was right beside the highway.  There are lots of other waterfalls in this area, but we stopped at three, all pretty short hikes.

We got back to camp and had about 30 minutes to rest before venturing out to our second cruise of the day, the Pictured Rock cruise.  This was pretty awesome.  Some of the rocks looked like an artist had just taken a paint brush to them.  On  the boat on the way to the Pictured Rocks, we passed Miners Castle that we had "hiked" to earlier.

And we passed several groups of kayakers near shore.

We took lots and lots of pictures of the Pictured Rocks, so I'll just post some of the best ones, hopefully I won't blow up my computer with all these.

 And interspersed with this beauty were rock formations, caves, holes, arches, etc.

 Most of the rock formations were named.  Here's a few I remember.

Indian Drum

Indian Head

Broken Vase

We had so many people for this 6:00 cruise that they sent out two boats.  Here's our sister boat coming out from a cave we got to go into, then back out of.
 

David opted out of this boat ride, but Mazie is here right along with us.

We could see this waterfall flowing right over the rocks.  I bet that water was C O L D!

Depending on the time you select, some of the cruises include a pass by Spray Falls, so of course we made sure that was included in our tour.  That adds about 10 minutes to the tour, and is the turning around point.

Spray Falls

 Joe took the pictures on the way out, but on the way back it seemed to me that just maybe some of the colors were more vivid, so I took a few more.

But Joe captured the sunset.  It was still quite daylight though, as you can tell from this picture of Mazie and me -- and it's about 9:00 then.

That was a nice boat ride and the rocks lived up to their name!

On to Munising, MI (7/24/2015)

This morning we left this pretty little town of Marquette and headed about 50 miles east to Munising.  Actually, we are camping (free) at a casino at Christmas, Michigan, about 3 miles west of Munising.  We were on the road by 9:00 but stopped for David to get propane, and we fueled.  We picked up Hwy 28 just east of town and drove this pretty lakeshore road for several miles.  Michigan takes advantage of the beautiful Great Lakes it has to offer with frequent pull-offs for viewing.  We got a phone call from the Ford dealer about 10:00, saying our Explorer was done, to the tune of $1541.  So after we got set up at the casino (just electric here), Joe and I took Dave's car and headed right back to Marquette.  But before we headed back, we called Eric at home and had him scan and email our receipt from Apache Junction Ford dealer where we replaced that wheel bearing in 2011, just in case they would honor a lifetime warranty (which they did not).  So we had a brief conversation with Eric, catching up on news from home, and then we hit the road.

 When we left Marquette this morning, my one regret was that we had not got to see a ship at the ore dock.  However, as we got near town, I could see a ship coming in, so after we dealt with the Ford dealer, we drove back down to the ore dock and watched them bring the ship in.  It was almost all the way in when we got there, but it was still moving slowly.  We watched for probably 45 minutes and saw some activity on top of the ship, but we did not see them unload or load anything.  But the ship was huge, as long as a football field, so it was cool to get to see that.  And the only pictures I took today were of this ship, which are on my phone because (can you believe) I forgot to take my camera with me when we left the casino campground.  This is as big as I can make this photo.


So we got back to camp mid-afternoon, and Mazie and I went over and checked out the casino.  They had a fish buffet tonight, so we finally went back and got the guys, then went in to dinner.  On the buffet they had:  walleye, fried cod, baked cod, coconut shrimp, scallops, crab cakes, clam strips, smelt, fried shrimp, and macaroni and cheese, in addition to a salad bar, for $13.95.  And clam chowder for the soup.

After dinner, Joe stayed and played the slots for a little while, but he left and I stayed.  No big wins, though.  He spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out what we are going to see in the next few days.  It's hard to make much progress, there are a lot of things to see along this Lake Superior coast.