As a side note, today marks our 1000th night staying in the RV. I only counted days that we were away from home and away from the cottage, otherwise it would be about 100 more.
As the weather forecast is lousy for the weekend we were going to try and get to two waterfall areas today but the Presque Isle River area was so pretty that we took our time and decided that that was enough.
The falls are near the mouth of the river as it enters Lake Superior. We drove about 1/2 half hour directly north from the campground to get to this area on the western edge of the state park.
The are three larger falls here and a lot of rapids. The river bed is all layered shale so there are small and large cracks and drop everywhere making for some beautiful multi part falls.
We did a loop trail down the west side and back up the east side for about 2.3 miles total.
The western side of the river is much more developed, with boardwalks from the top of the trail to just past Manido Falls. The problem was that the views form this side were not that great, especially if you stayed inside the fences of the official viewpoints. The views from the east side were much better but you had to work for them as the trail is much rougher and there were some rather precarious lookouts.
I am going to group the photos from each side of the river together, rather than going in time order.
Down we go the first of many stairs. Jennie said this one alone was 100 steps.
I did a photosphere to give you more of an idea.
As soon as you get down to the river there is a nice rapids that don’t count as one of the falls. I had to hop the fence (I know I am bad!) to get an unobstructed view.
The photosphere from here.
On the east side there was a wide terraced area. I never got a proper picture of the rocks but this photosphere does a good job.
The view up river from the east side You can just see Manabehzo Falls in the distance.
We had arrived at around 9:30 and pretty much had the place to ourselves. By the time we got back to this spot it was just after 1:00 and there were quite a few more people but it was never crowded by any means.
Jennie got a little grossed out here. Someone saw that a snake had caught a frog. It had the frog’s leg in its mouth and was trying to swallow the rest. The frog was desperately trying to get to the water while the snake kept pulling it back. I did take a picture but I think it may be a bit too graphic to post here.
Moving on.
We had to go up and down a lot on the boardwalk between the falls.
This is the best western view I could get of Manabehzo Falls.
There was another viewpoint on this side but it was just past the crest so it was even worse. The west side views were much better.
First from up high. You can see the western viewpoint. It was kind of useless.
And lower, a little farther downstream.
On to Manido Falls. Again hopping the fence. If I stayed inside the fence the only unobstructed view I could get was lying on the deck.
Lots of swirly rocks here.
And the eastern views. We climbed around a lot over here.
And on to Nawadaha Falls.
The view from the official lookout was good.
But if you climbed down I think the view was better.
The eastern view from above.
Moving on towards the bridge at the bottom of the loop, we popped out to the river whenever we could.
Time for a mushroom picture.
Made it.
The view from the bridge.
The path back started nice and easy.
But it had some tricky sections.
As we have already shown all the waterfall pictures from this side, I’ll just skip to the end.
The bridge at the downstream end was a nice suspension, that was a bit too wobbly for Jennie.
From here you could see the river mouth.
And the upstream view.
And then the long climb back to the parking lot.
This post took a lot of work. First we took a LOT of pictures and then with the bright sun and dark shadows each one took a fair bit of Photoshop work. In all it took a bit over 5 hours.
The weather forecast for the next few days is lousy so we may have some indoor ones.
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