UP III

Had us a fine short trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan over Memorial Day weekend--driving, walking and looking around, and some sleeping on the hard ground, but it was worth it. The theme: It’s Interesting When People Die.

Not really. Our travels don’t have themes. Some people visit ballparks or go birding or concentrate on the literary sights of Saskatoon or some such, but not us, unless a destination counts as a theme. Still, as we were leaving the Peshtigo Fire Museum yesterday, the ghouling aspects of this trip did occur to me. The museum remembers the thousands people who died in a massive firestorm that ate Peshtigo in 1871; and one of our main stops the day before had been at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. Part of the south shore of Lake Superior is called the Shipwreck Coast for good reasons, and the museum is about floundering, peril and death in the waters nearby.

Not only that, but as far as deer are concerned, I-43 between Milwaukee and Green Bay is Death’s Corridor. Driving up on Saturday we must have seen a half-dozen freshly dead deer just on our side of the road.

But no dwelling on death, since we had a lively time. Our course was fairly straightforward, on interstates from metro Chicago past Milwaukee to the town of Green Bay, then on smaller roads along the shores of the bay called Green Bay, a large lobe of Lake Michigan. At Hiawatha National Forest, smack in the middle of the UP, we camped at a spot I know called Pete’s Lake, just off National Forest 13, one of my favorite roads.

Besides the fire and shipwreck museums, we managed to catch a glimpse of a submarine in Manitowoc, Wis., take a considerably longer look at Tahquamenon Falls, visit a couple of beaches – one entirely of rock – see the remarkable ghost town of Fayette, Mich., eat some whitefish (as you should near Lake Superior), drive miles and miles through a near-tunnel of greenleafy trees without seeing another car, hear the roar of an enormous thunderstorm one night and see many stars the next, feel the heat of the Sun and the cold wind off Lake Superior at the same time, and fight mosquitoes without taking quarter.