Exploring the U.P. Straits Area, St. Ignace and North Lake MIchigan

It's nice that the Straits State Park campground is right at the edge of this sweet small town as we can bike everywhere. We took a day just to explore what St. Ignace has to offer. Just a few minutes away is the town waterfront that includes the Chief Wawatam Park, a marina and a boardwalk along Lake Huron. Plaques along our route told interesting stories of life before a bridge provided a route to cross the Straits. We found most interesting the story of the Steam Ship Chief Wawatam. 

 

Before the bridge, the Steam Ship Chief Wawatam served as a train car ferry, passenger ferry and icebreaker beginning service in 1911. Passenger service fell off after the Mackinac Bridge was completed in 1957, but the train icebreaking service continued until 1984. We found the train car ferry story most unusual and interesting. There's an intriguing YouTube video about it here with the train cars unloading around minute 19.  

After enjoying the park, we biked a short distance to the Museum of Ojibwa Culture. Many Ojibwa descendants live in the the area and work to keep their native culture alive. This interesting museum included outdoor exhibits and cultural demonstrations.

A couple of miles up the road we next visited Castle Rock, a geological limestone rock jutting up 185 feet. Once a valuable lookout for locals, it's now a bit of a cheesy tourist attraction that overlooks I75 almost directly underneath it. We paid the $1.00 each to climb the 150+ steps that look like they were built in the 1950's. Nice view and worth the $1.00 each.

The view of Castle Rock from the road.

View of Mackinac Island from the top with the interstate in the foreground.

Lots of steps again.

The next day was a scenic drive day along the north coast of Lake Michigan. The Mackinac Bridge makes the divide between Lake Michigan to the west and Lake Huron to the east. We stopped first for a 2.25 mile hike on the Gros Cap Trail in the Hiawatha National Forest. The ranger station was closed on Saturday with zero other cars in the parking lot. The trail was well kept but didn't seemed to be used much. Still, we enjoyed the walk and the history plaques. The area was farmed until the mid 20th century, and white cedars have grown up quickly on what was previously farmland. Many of the maples that were used for maple sugar still remain in some areas.

The forest quickly changes in some areas from hardwood to evergreens.

Nice overlook that includes U.S. Highway 2 that runs east-west along the southern peninsula.

Ferns almost as tall as me in the boggy areas.

We stopped at a couple of small parks overlooking the lake along the way.

And one park was directly on the beach allowing a walk in the sand. It's interesting that some shores have sand and dunes and others are only rocky.

We turned around at Naubinway, Michigan just past the northernmost point on Lake Michigan.

We saw several "pasties" shops in St. Ignace wondered what in the world that was. When I looked it up, I found they are sandwiches unique to the U.P. so we had asked the proprietor at Castle Rock what the best shop was. We stopped at the one she suggested on our way back to the campground, and she was absolutely correct.

First, make sure you pronounce then pass-tees, not pase-tees, like I did. The lady laughed and said those are what you buy at Victoria Secrets, but pasties are the traditional U.P. sandwich. The story is that the meat and potato mixture wrapped in a thick pastry made a good meal for the copper miners to take along for work.They could be warmed over a fire easily providing a full hot meal. The ones we had were absolutely delicious! Ed had a chicken pasty and said it tasted much like chicken pot pie. I had a veggie one, also very good. The closest thing I can compare it to is an empanada we had in Puerto Rico with very different insides and baked, not fried.

Ed delved deeper into the Michigander theme with a Vernor's pop.

We managed to stay up long enough to drive the three minutes to the park to watch the St. Ignace fireworks that are put on every Saturday night during the summer. It doesn't get dark enough right now until 10:00 p.m. so it was a late night but a gorgeous summer night perfect for a fireworks show to end the day.