Upper Peninsula Road Trip - June 2015

Summary

With our first full week of vacation after landing full time jobs, Mike and I decided to take a road trip through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We thought this would be a great way to see more of our state and gain a better appreciation for the nature in our backyard.

AllTrails - Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore AllTrails - Tehquamenon Falls

Where

Our trip consisted of stops in the following cities in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula:

Houghton, Copper Harbor, Marquette, Munising, Newberry

Logistics

Because this was a road trip, we spent a lot of time in the car. Thankfully there are few main roads in the UP and therefore it was pretty straightforward to get to each of our destinations. Because we were not doing any backpacking at this point, we didn’t have to plan too far in advance for what we would need on our hikes/adventures.

Hiking

We ended up doing two day hikes, one on the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Trail, and the other from the Northern to the Southern Tehquamenon Falls. In addition to these two day hikes, we tried out mountain biking in Copper Harbor. All in all, this was a great introduction to the Upper Peninsula, hiking, and nature.

In Munising, we hiked from Sand point Beach to Miner’s Castle along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore trail. This trail is a part of the North Country Trail and the lakeshore trail runs for 40 miles. We ended up only doing the first 5 miles or so, then turned around and hiked back. I still remember how cold Lake Superior was after completing this hike and rinsing off. One other memory from this trail was how different this trail felt from the rest of Michigan. We saw many waterfalls and had some decent elevation gain and loss compared to most other trails we had hiked before.

In Newberry, we hiked from the Upper to the Lower Tahquamenon Falls. This is a very popular trail with great views of the falls and is very wooded. We also stopped at the local brewery at our halfway point for dinner, before returning back to our camp via the out-and-back hike.

Photos

I’m not sure what phone I had at the time, and I had definitely not built any photography skills up to this point. I did use my dad’s DSLR (Nikon) for the boat tour of the Pictured Rocks