Item from the Past: UP II

September 6, 2000

We’ve just returned from the Upper Peninsula. On the whole it was a good trip, though it didn’t quite go the way we planned. Our original thinking was to spend the first night in a motel in Green Bay, and then two more nights at the Hiawatha National Forest, at a place called Pete’s Lake, in our little tent. That’s more or less what I did by myself over Labor Day weekend in 1989, though at that time I stayed in Marinette, Wis., overnight, which is a little further up the road. And I stayed at Pete’s Lake two nights, but not by plan. It was just the place I picked.

This time we went to a Microtel motel in Green Bay for the first night. Odd name, and a brand I’d never stayed at, but the description in the guidebook sounded good, and turned out to be accurate. The rooms are basic, the price not too bad, and the best part was the pool, which Lilly was very happy to use on Saturday morning. It had fountains, a whirlpool effect in one corner, a “volcano” that dribbled water, basketball nets and water slides that were too big for her. Mostly the other guest were people with small children, a fact confirmed at the pool that morning, which was chockablock with kids and their chunky, middle-aged parents. I fit right in.

On Saturday, we pressed on to the Nat’l Forest, picnicking along the way, setting up camp at little Pete’s Lake, eating noodles for dinner and bedding down fairly early, as we tend to do while camping. Sometime in the dark night, an enormous thunderstorm broke over the Upper Peninsula. Over our tent, in fact. No light except the lightning, intense rain and rolling thunder, and the whoosh of the wind through the endless rack of trees. It was like being inside the storm. Lilly slept through it. Yuriko and I didn’t.

It would have been quite a thrill, but for one thing. We discovered that night the value of a ground cover, which we did not have under our tent. We’re only camping dilettantes, and fortunate enough never to have been rained on in the half-dozen campouts we’ve done, so we didn’t have one, and we didn’t appreciate the creep of water through the ground and up into the tent and into our sleeping bags & pillows &c. We do now.

The next morning (Sunday) everything was wet enough, with no prospect of sun to dry it all out, for us to change our plans. We discussed spending the day in the UP and returning to Green Bay, but the travel spirit moved us and we decided to return home via lower Michigan. Then, after breaking camp, we drove up to Munising, Mich., and the Pictured Rocks Nat’l Lakeshore. Lake Superior was foggy, cold and grey, the austere patriarch of the Great Lakes. (“Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings/ In the rooms of her ice water mansions.”) I want to see more of it someday. Say, from the wilds of Isle Royale or Whitefish Point or from the Canadian side. There’s a place on the Canadian side called Thunder Bay. Is that not cool geo-nomenclature?

We crossed the Mackinac Bridge (third-longest suspension bridge in the USA, says my almanac) on Sunday afternoon and began looking for a place to stay. Unlike Pete’s Lake, which was less than half occupied, the accommodations were mostly full around the Straits of Mackinac, so we headed south and ended up at Gaylord, Mich., in a golf/snowmobile resort. The golf season is declining, and the snow season hasn’t started yet, so we got a good deal on a fine room and access to an excellent outdoor heated pool. Which of course Lilly liked best of all. While I was sitting around in that pool with Lilly, a clutch of other guests — two middle-aged couples — discussed in great detail all the places they’d played golf. It’s a subculture I’ll never understand.

Monday was a tough drive home. You’d think that rural Interstates in Michigan would be free of traffic jams, but no, not on Labor Day. We did stop briefly in Lansing, and saw the outside of Michigan state capitol. In a way, it was all a test to see how Lilly would take to a long car trip, and in that she did very well. That is, she didn’t complain too much, and often we were able to provide her with things to do. For as long as I can remember, I liked those long trips. Maybe that’s part of growing up in Texas. Or more likely, that’s just me.