Tuesday June 18, Day 57 (cont'd)
John has decided to keep his shorts handy, just in case the weather improves today. It is 63 degrees out, but the wind is cold.
I saw a T-shirt in a store in Mackinac showing the other part of Michigan. I don't know if I flunked geography or what, but there is more to Michigan than the "Mitten". There is a whole Upper Peninsula. It is called the Upper Peninsula, the U.P., or Upper Michigan. Some refer to it as "above the bridge." Or "Up North." And if you are of Finnish extraction, you call it Der Yuppers.
OK, you have to be from there to exaggerate quite like this.!
We are following a truck carrying pontoon boats, which seem to be really popular in the protected areas of the inland lakes.
Besides roses, my favorite flower is the lilac. I am amazed that it is the middle of June and I am still seeing them. Although as a kid in the state of Washington, June is when they bloomed too. Here they seem to be growing wild along the road.
This was a picture I had to go back and get. Lilacs blooming beside a beautiful stream. And the aroma was fantastic, coming off a gentle breeze.
The area we are traveling on this map is from St. Ignace on the right, down to Manistique, then up to Munising and across to Marquette. This is all between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.
John kept talking about being up here at some time. He remembered flying into a town and driving to a factory, but he couldn't remember where. Well, once again, we turned a corner and there it was! Neenah Paper, owned by Kimberly Clark. He had come here because someone at KC said they had the capacity to coat paper. It turned out not to be the case. KC has since spun off Neenah Paper, including this plant, and it is now called just Neenah Paper.
They relied heavily on the lumber being harvested in this area. They opened in 1903 and have 250 workers, down from 400 at one time. They use soft wood to make specialty paper. In the past these have included the brown patch on the back of Levi jeans, the little label on Chiquita bananas, the labels on Elmers Glue bottles, the base paper for sandpaper, and heat transfer for T-shirts.
The upper Peninsula is about 30% of the land mass of Michigan, but it has only about 3% of the population. Most are Finnish, Swedish, Cornish, and Italian. They came here to work in the mines. This area has the only counties in the US where there is a plurality of residents with Finnish ancestry.
We decided to camp on a bay right by Munising called Bay Furnace. We actually got the best sight in the whole campground with a beautiful view of the water. These islands off the coast protect the bay and provide a safe haven for boats. They belong to Ojibwe Indians. One of them, Grand Island is 13,000 acres. It once had a fur trading post.
The view from the back of our camper.
Close by is the area for which the campground is named, the Iron Ore Furnace. It has recently been partially restored.
They have really done a nice job of telling you how the furnace works. I just wish they would have told us a little about how the mining was done. I can't imagine being near this kind of heat for long periods of time. That's why they ask the Scandanavians to do it! :)
Here's an explanation for the term "pig iron." Who knew?
The workmanship on the furnace is quite beautiful.
The early Indians who were in this area were fisherman and spoke the Algonquian languages. Their first encounters with Europeans were the French around 1620. Missions and fur trading were the reason. Although this area was ceded to the Americans after the French and Indian War, the Indians sided with the French. The French cultivated alliances with the Indians, whereas the British treated the tribes as conquered people.
Nobody wanted this area, really. Kind of like Alaska. When the iron ore was discovered, however, then everybody was kicking themselves. The area produced more mineral wealth than the California Gold Rush. At one point it was the leading US producer of copper. It was also the leading producer of iron ore for a time.
Michigan became a territory in 1805. It was only the lower Peninsula and the eastern portion of the upper peninsula. Then the territory was expanded to include all of the Upper Peninsula, all of Wisconsin and part of Minnesota. When the issue of statehood came up, Michigan wanted an area along the bottom called the Toledo strip, which would have given them great access to an area along Lake Erie at Toledo. Finally, being in dire financial straits, Michigan agreed to take the whole upper Peninsula, and Ohio got the Toledo strip.
There is an underwater preserve, the Alger, which has 13 major ship wrecks visible in a 113 square mile area. The water is so cold they are very well preserved, and sight seeing boats will take you out.
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