Day 21: Thursday, July 1st
This first day of July broke clear with a cool 41 degrees. As I crawled out of the tent at 5:30 I was glad I had brought lots of fleece along. This morning I wanted to try to get some photos of the sunrise over the lake, which, by-the-way, is officially called the Dollarville Flooding. More on that later.
Click on the photos below for a larger image.
The dawn view from our campsite.
Just as I snapped this shot I once again heard the distant call of the Sandhill Cranes.
I grabbed my coffee and walked through the campground to the roadway and then to the boat launch. This is the western view from the launch area. It was very quiet and calm, but not for long.
Orientation.
Dollarville Dam is on the Tahquamenon River in Luce County, Michigan and is used for recreation purposes. Construction was completed in 1971. At normal levels it has a surface area of 90 acres. It is owned by Michigan DNR Fisheries.
Dollarville Dam is of earthen construction. Its height is 12 feet with a length of 2500 feet. Maximum discharge is 5275 cubic feet per second. Its capacity is 1100 acre feet. Normal storage is 650 acre feet. It drains an area of 168 square miles.
Source: FindLakes.com
Dollarville is an unincorporated community in McMillan Township, Luce County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is just west of the village of Newberry and north of the M-28/M-117 intersection.
The settlement developed around the mill and general store of the American Lumber Company in 1882. It was named for Robert Dollar, the general manager, and who later made a fortune in the shipping industry. Dollarville was a station on the Detroit, Mackinac and Marquette Railroad.
A post office opened August 17, 1883 and closed October 14, 1903. The office reopened from June 3, 1904 until April 30, 1919.
Source: WikiPedia
When I got back to our site Betsy had moved her chair into the adjacent site and was working on her journal. Our site was not yet getting any sun and it was still a bit chilly.
Unfortunately the quiet scene above was shattered when we heard that dreaded sound - a generator being fired up. Turns out the folk a few sites down in the conversion van had decided it did not matter if anyone else had to listen to their noise. Why can't these inconsiderate ass holes just stay home rather than bring their intrusive lifestyle to every place they go. ASSHOLES!
Over a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, Betsy and I planned out the day. Since we had not gotten a bum steer yet from Eric's excellent UP hiking guide we decided to try another "Hansen Hike". This one would be the Giant Pine Loop, a 4.1 mile hike which would take us to several great vistas of the Upper Falls of the Tahquamenon and through some nice woods with giant, virgin White Pine.
As we left the campground around 9:00 I snapped this shot. Note the add-on to the fee. We have seen camping fees as high as $25 on this trip.
We drove to Newberry and picked up SR 123 North. Some 30 miles later we entered the boundary area of Tahquamenon Falls State Park and arrived at the trailhead, Stables Picnic Area, around 10:00.
Below are some area maps for orientation.
UP of Michigan
Tahquamenon area - satellite view.
Tahquamenon area - terrain model.
Here, Betsy tries to reconcile the directions in Eric Hansen's book with the map. We finally figured it out.
We crossed the road and entered the woods and immediately starting seeing nice big trees like this Yellow Birch.
After about a mile of leisurely (and often soggy) hiking we reached the Tahquamenon River Upper Falls Parking area, crossed over to the Nature Trail and went down to the pathway along the river. We turned left and were soon descending this stairway to the river's edge.
Our first view of the Falls which was nearly obscured by the riverbank vegetation.
A closer look.
Along the river boardwalk we spotted this nice stand of Long Beech Fern (Phegoteris connectilis) and Horsetail (Equisetum).
Betsy gets ready to skinny-dip! (Just kiddin'...)
Yet another view. Note the observation platform on the right.
Here Betsy checks the guide for more info.
This falls is the second largest waterfall east of the Mississippi, with Niagara being the largest. Note Betsy - far right.
Set within a pristine wilderness, the Tahquamenon Falls is over 200' wide and 48' high. Over 50,000 gallons of water spill over this incredible falls per second! (Seasonal precipitation can increase or decrease this amount significantly.) A magnificent walking path will direct your way through the forest within the Tahquamenon Falls State Park.
The water is brown in color from the tannins leached from the cedar swamps which the river drains. Thus the local name of 'Root Beer Falls'.
In 1870, and for the next forty years, the Tahquamenon River was used to transport logs from the wilderness to the sawmills. During this era, Tahquamenon Country was stripped of more than ONE BILLION board feet of white and red pine. Each spring, as ice and snow melted lumbermen would break loose the great piles of logs they had carefully banked along the river through the winter, sending them into the icy currents.
A month would pass before the logs would be successfully herded to the mouth of the river. W.D. Flatt, a partner in the J&W Flatt Company that exported timber said after he accompanied a drive that the Tahquamenon is "probably the most difficult stream to drive in Northern Michigan...to me the whirlpool at Niagara seem tame compared with this.While watching our timber shoot through the Upper Falls, we would see timber two feet square broken like matches. I remember remarking to the men that we must be losing $2,500 a minute in broken timber at this spot."
Logs would often jam at the Upper Falls creating piles up to sixty feet high. Lumbermen, calling themselves "River Hogs" or "River Pigs" , would use simple hand tools called peeves and push poles to break up the great log jams, working from daylight to dusk for two dollars a day.
Source: State Park interpretive signs
After taking a food and people watching break on a bench near the steps to the Upper Falls, we continued on down the trail for the return leg of our 4 mile loop.
Here Betsy holds a nice sized frond of the Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris).
The ostrich fern was a spring vegetable for American Indians of eastern North America and became part of the regular diet of settlers to New Brunswick in the late 1700s. Until recently, it was consumed primarily in the Maritime Provinces of Canada and in the northeastern United States. The ferns are available commercially either canned or frozen, but since the early 1980s, farmers' markets and supermarket chains have sold fresh ferns in season.
Source: CDC
Imagine a seemingly unending forest of White Pine this size.
Should not this read "Prayer to the Woods"? Betsy really liked this, so I included it.
We saw many big Interrupted Ferns (Osmunda claytoniana).
Quite the robust specimen! (The fern that is...)
We got back to the car around 1:30. It was breezy, dry and in the mid 70's. Very pleasant.
We continued east to the small lakeshore town of Paradise. We stopped at a place which smoked fish and Betsy bought a couple of pieces to have with our Happy Hour when we got back. We then headed north on Whitefish Point Road. The 10 miles or so of roadway up to the Point is peppered with homes of all sizes and shapes. We saw many "For Sale" signs on both homes and lots.
The driftwood festooned beach at Whitefish Point. Too windy and cool for a dip.
In the distance you can see the Canadian highlands of southern Ontario. There were more people here at the Point than anywhere else we had been on this now 3 weeks of exploring the UP.
After a bit of eavesdropping and looking at the map I realized we were just a short drive from the Mackinac bridge and lots of folk were in the area for the day.
The parking area at the Lighthouse was full and busy.
First lit in 1849, the Whitefish Point Light shares honors with the lighthouse at Copper Harbor for being the first lights on Lake Superior. It stands guard over the entrance to Whitefish Bay, sometimes the only shelter to be found for a ship trying to escape the fury of the lake, and is the oldest active light on Lake Superior.
Whitefish Point is known as the Graveyard of Ships as more vessels have been lost here than in any other part of the lake. Hundreds of vessels, including the famed Edmund Fitzgerald, lie on the bottom of the bay and the approaches. The lighthouse marks the end of an 80 mile stretch of shoreline known as Lake Superior's Shipwreck Coast. This light has shined onto the big lake unfailingly for almost 150 years except for the night when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down.
At 4:30 pm on November 10, 1975, as the Edmund Fitzgerald struggled towards Whitefish Bay, forty-eight miles to the south, the light and the radio beacon at the remote navigational station at Whitefish Point suddenly clicked off. The Fitzgerald, already crippled by non-functioning storm damaged radar, was now without homing capability from the automated system at Whitefish. The Fitzgerald was left to fend for itself in unbelievable weather conditions.
Captain McSorley, a 44 year veteran of the sea, described it: "We are taking heavy seas over our decks; it's the worst sea I've ever been in". At approximately 7:15 P.M., November 10, 1975, the 729-foot ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald and her crew of 29 sailed into history.
Source: ©1997 by Vivian Wood, webmaster for Exploring the North
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On November 10, 1975, while traveling on Lake Superior during a gale, the Fitzgerald sank suddenly in Canadian waters approximately 17 miles (15 nmi; 27 km) from the entrance of Whitefish Bay at a depth of 530 feet (160 m). Although it had reported having some difficulties before the accident, the Fitzgerald sank without sending any distress signals. Its crew of 29 perished in the sinking with no bodies being recovered. When the wreck was found, it was discovered that the Fitzgerald had broken in two.
Source: WikiPedia
Whitefish Point has been called the graveyard of Lake Superior. Since navigation began on Lake Superior there has been approximately 550 wrecks. More vessels were lost in the Whitefish Point area than any other part of Lake Superior. There are three major reasons for the high loss of ships in the Whitefish Point area. First, the eastern end of the lake is very congested where the lake narrows down like a funnel and up and down bound ship traffic must pass. Poor visibility in this congested area from fog, forest fires, and snow has caused numerous collisions and groundlings. Finally, the nature of the largest lake itself, with the great expanse of over 200 miles of open water can build up terrific seas during a Superior "Northwestern" storm.
Collisions were more common in earlier times because there were more vessels. In the 1880's over 3100 commercial vessels were on the lakes compared to less than 200 today. Since the first known ship- wreck of a commercial vessel, The Invincible in November 1816 to the Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10 1975, approximately 320 lives have been lost in over 300 shipwrecks and accidents in the area known as the graveyard of the Great Lakes.
All the buildings are "spit-and-polish".
There is a boardwalk and observation deck behind Coast Guard Facility which gives a good overview of the area.
The habitat at the tip of Whitefish Point’s peninsula is mostly forested dune with Jack Pines. The dunes have undergone extensive restoration, thanks to the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory and Michigan DNR.
A nice view of the facilities and the Canadian highlands.
That is a tall light post!
We said good-bye to the Point and then headed back south to Paradise where we made a detour to the combination hardware store and post office to mail some post cards.
At that point we decided to go scouting for other State Forest campgrounds which might be suitable for us on future trips. So, armed with our DeLorme gazetteer and Betsy's written directions we headed out into the boondocks to try to locate them.
This drive out to nowhere on miles of sand roads took us into the Little Two Hearted River area not far from the south shore of Lake Superior.
We drove for miles through both dense woods and clear cuts as we navigated our way first to Reed & Green Bridge State Forest Campground, then High Bridge and Perch Lake campgrounds.
Both Reed and Green and High Bridge looked promising, but they were poorly treed and no privacy between sites. Also the river access was limited and not too great for swimming.
Perch Lake looked beautiful but had 30 sites. Probably too busy for us except in the off seasons.
By now out thoughts were turning to our sunny little campsite to the south as well as cold beers and local smoked fish. So, we headed back towards Newberry on a more direct route than we had taken to the Little Two Hearted River area and we were back in no time.
The remains of our smoked Whitefish and Lake Trout.
We had planned on this just being a snack but it was quite satisfying and we decided to call it dinner.
Post dinner relaxation. The swaying of the cattails was mesmerizing.
At about 7:30 Betsy decided she would go for a paddle on the lake.
Going...
...going...
...gone!
Another great day in the UP!