Thursday, August 24, 2017

Aug 24 – To The Porkies (Porcupine Mountains)

Today we moved a bit west and south to explore the Porcupine Mountain region of the UP. Most of the area is covered by the massive Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

Since the weather today was excellent and the forecast for the weekend was lousy we didn’t want to waste the entire day travelling or sitting in a campground. Our campground is near the southwest corner of the park. There were some things I wanted to see on a clear day at the northeast corner. It was only a little bit out of the way to stop there.


There is an escarpment in this area right next to Lake Superior. Just on the other side of the escarpment is a very pretty lake far down in a valley. You can drive right up to the Lake of the Clouds overlook.

I just took a photosphere from the main lookout.

And this picture of people who don’t realize what fences are for and can’t read signs saying dangerous cliffs. She was out there jumping for the picture.

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There was a boardwalk down to another viewpoint for a more end on view of the lake and the cliff we were just standing on.

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The picture everyone takes.

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The photosphere from here.

There was an info board, back at the main viewpoint, saying that you could see the ski jump at Copper Mountain resort, over 20 miles away.

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It is not actually for ski jumping but is the only site for ski flying in North America. I had never heard of it before. It seems that the ramps are steeper than for ski jumping and the main purpose seems to be how fast and far you can go.

There is a trail that runs along the escarpment that we thought we would go a short out and back on. Once we started however, it seems to all be in the forest with not many views. I looked at the map and the marked viewpoints were very far apart. We didn’t go far.

We also tried to do a short trail to a gorge but couldn’t find it. The markings on the map didn’t match the signs we saw on the road. If the weather holds out long enough that we can come back here we will have to get some clarification at the visitors center.

We moved on.

We are now parked at a city campground beside a small lake in Wakefield, Michigan.

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Once we were all level and hooked up I realized that if I had parked only a few feet farther forward we could have used the rooftop satellite dish but it was less work to use the tripod one that to move the RV.

A nice view out the front window.

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The lakeside sites don’t have any sewer hookups. I wanted to take some non abbreviated showers so we took a full hookup site. The WIFI here also seems to be very good (so far).

The online reviews had commented at how unlevel the sites are. They were right.

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They have an unusual pricing scheme. The price is $30 a night or $130 a week. So if you stay more than 4 nights it is better to pay the weekly price and just not use it. We are staying for 5 nights so we paid the week price. In most places the weekly price is the price for 6 nights (one night free).

It’s starting to feel like autumn. The nights are getting cold. Here, tonight the low is supposed to be 6C. We might have to leave the heater on.

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