The Best Vacation Day

Tuesday, August 14

We woke up late and decided to cook inside the camper.  We made Swedish pancakes with raspberries and whipped cream for breakfast.  YUM!

Exhausted from two previous days of biking, we decided to explore by car.  First stop:  Manganese Falls, just south of Copper Harbor on Manganese Road.  This is basically just a deep gorge with a trickle of water.  The falls aren’t much, so I wouldn’t go out of my way to see them.  But they are on the way to Estevant Pines and just a few steps from the road, so it’s worth a stop.

Estivant Pines is an old growth white pine forest, just a few more miles south of Copper Harbor. Activists saved these giant trees from logging in the 1970’s and the Michigan Nature Association has been buying more of the surrounding land ever since.  They now own over 500 acres, providing a huge bumper zone of protection around these old trees.

This was my favorite place in Copper Harbor.  Estivant Pines is a deeply spiritual place: calm, peaceful, ancient.  Some of these giant trees are over 500 years old.  There are two hiking loops, and each is approximately a mile long.  We took the Cathedral Trail.  The hike was steep and very rugged at times.  There were trees down from recent storms, and we had to climb through and around difficult patches.

Next stop: lunch at the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge.  The food here was fine, but service is at a snail’s pace.  There apparently was only one waitress working, and she seemed to be new.  She was friendly and apologetic, but it took more than an hour to complete our simple salad and sandwich meals.

The lodge itself, on the other hand, is worth a visit just for the history and atmosphere.  It reminds me of the family camp in Dirty Dancing.  It was built as one of the depression era public works projects, and it doesn’t seem to have changed much at all.  The main lodge sits adjacent to the golf course and there are smaller cabins spread out around the property.  There is an old tennis court, but, from my short exploration, there doesn’t appear to be much else, other than a trailhead for the mountain bike trails.

Looking for more waterfalls, we went searching for Haven Falls.  We missed the turn to the falls on our first try, so we wound up out at Bete Grise Beach, probably the best beach in the Keweenaw, if you are looking for sand, and on this warm Tuesday in mid-August, we were surprised to find it nearly deserted.

We headed back toward the picture postcard village of Lac La Belle and had a lovely time drinking coffee on the deck of the Bear Belly Bar & Grill.  Because of the name and its attachment to a gas station and convenience store, I assumed this place was going to be  fairly rough, but I was getting desperate for coffee.  I was surprised to find a thriving, friendly cafe atmosphere with a deck overlooking the Lac La Belle Harbor.  They don’t use plastic straws in this place, due to the hazards to the environment, so they offer stainless steel straws for $1 each.  I was impressed and bought one for me and each of the kids.  The waitresses can’t serve customers on the deck because they allow smoking in that area, but no one was smoking at the time, so we chose to bring our huge cups of coffee outside.

After refueling with coffee, we easily found Haven Falls, just across the lake from Bear Belly’s. Haven Falls is in a roadside park and is a pretty, though small, waterfall that easily accessible for viewing.

I had to get as close as possible to it by climbing and wading.  So refreshing.

Next, we took Lac La Belle Road all the way to the small town of Gay.  This took us along the eastern coast of the Keweenaw, through the Bete Gris Nature Preserve.  I can’t believe no one ever told me about this drive!  The highway is right next to the lake for much of the way, and there are small turn-ins and parks for stopping.

We stopped at Pt. Isabelle, which had a few picnic tables.  Pt. Isabelle features rock shelves jutting into the lake.  While we were there, small waves were barely lapping over these shelves, making it ideal for ankle-deep wading.

Heading south, we soon came to the spot where the Tobacco River drains into Lake Superior– another hidden gem!  There is a small park where the river empties out, and the shore here is a mixture of black sand and fairly large rocks.

Looking toward the bridge we had just crossed, we could see that the river had small waterfalls upstream, so we went exploring.

We had to be careful as we moved along the narrow wall underneath the bridge, but once we got past that, navigation got easier because the river is shallow in many places, so we could wade quite a bit.

Upstream, we found more small waterfalls and what appeared to be an abandoned cabin, right at the water’s edge.

The water also got treacherous in some places!

Next it was on to Gay.  Right on the edge of town is the site of the old Stamp Mill, an eerie place definitely worth a few minutes of time.

After Gay, we headed northwest toward Eagle River, a tiny place that hosts beautiful buildings, an incredible wooden bridge, and the best deck on Lake Superior’s American shoreline (I can’t speak for the Canadian shoreline because I’ve never been there).

 

We took the long way back: through Eagle Harbor and around the end of the peninsula to Copper Harbor.  We met incredible views at every turn.

Then it was back to the campground for dinner over the fire: pasties, potatoes, and coleslaw.

And the perfect end to our day, one more Copper Harbor sunset..