Thursday, August 04, 2011

Manistique

Early this morning we continued west on Hwy 2 to Manistique. We needed to resupply with food before heading into the interior and north to Lake Superior. Manistique is the only town of any size around here.
We've been here before so headed to our "campground" for the night after we finished running our errands. There is a 1.83 mile paved path running along the lake so we were all able to enjoy a nice walk on a perfect day. The high today was about 80*. This morning we woke up to 58*.
During the heyday of the timber industry in the UP, there were four saw mills in this area. The practice was to dump the sawdust into the Manistique River or barge it to the lake and dump it there. It's estimated that over 5 million tons of sawdust was dumped over a period of about 25 years. The prevailing ideas were that the supply of trees was inexhaustible and that the sawdust, and other waste products, would just vanish in some magic way. They were wrong on both counts. In places, the lake bottom is still covered over a foot deep in hundred+ year old sawdust. It's a dark brown gooey mess and washes up onto the beaches near the river. The last sawmill in this area shut down in 1912.


100+ year old sawdust.



Tonights campground.


The harbor lighthouse

Earlier, I was trying to charge my cell phone from the outlet on the dash and noted that it wasn't charging. Investigation indicated I had let the headlights on when we parked earlier today. Called our road service company; Coachnet. About two hours later a guy showed up to jump start the LD. After we got started we took a ride to get the battery charged up. We remembered an ice cream store we saw earlier today, single scoops only, and discovered a bakery for the morning. :-) No sense wasting a nice ride.

2 comments:

Joe Ellis said...

Hey guys, So envious of your camp sites. We're stuck staying in those $30-$50 cgs because of all these big rigs we're traveling with.This is THE LAST time we'll caravan with a professional group. Just not our cup-a-tea any more. It is safer for us considering my lack of a sighted navigator, but from here on, I'll just have to tough it out. Maybe we can tag a long with you next summer??!!!???

Love,
Clara

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