Up early to catch the sunrise on the Lake.  Love it.  Had to make do with the little packaged coffee in the room.  You know those little tiny coffee makers that take only their little packets..Finished putting together the blog but couldn’t get wifi to kick in.  Just a great morning.

Took our time and on the road by ten.  Stopped for fuel in Paradise, then headed west to the Taquonemon Falls.  Always love stopping there.  State Park.  Two sets of falls, upper and lower.  We parked the bikes at the lower, walked down and took some pics.  Maybe 15 minutes. 

Back on the bikes and headed west.  Five miles later was the entrance for the upper falls.  We blew by that.   30 miles to Newberry.  Great ride.  Curves.  No commerce.  No houses.  Wetlands, lakes, rivers, creeks and trees.  Bear and moose country.  Looked for but did not see.   Took our time.  Averaged 45 or 50.  A couple of cars passed us, other than that no traffic.  Just plain pretty.  Nice breeze.  Cool temps.

Hit Newberry.   Newberry is a small town midway between Lake Superior and Michigan.  You have to go through it to get any where due to the lack of roads.  There are some forest service and logging roads, but no paved.  Great for the ORV crowd.  M28 took us about 30 miles west, then north on M77 to Grand Marais.  Probably saw 3 or 4 cars.  Same scenery.  Wind was beginning to pick up more.  Still sunny.  Still no moose or bear.

Grand Marais is one of my favorites.  Secluded.  Newberry is 30 miles south.  Munising is 50 miles west and really no way to go east.  300-400 year round population.  State harbor of refuge is there.  They have cell service.  The ratio of side by side ATVs to cars is pretty close of 1:1.  Quaint downtown.  General store / outfitter.  Big kayaking area.  Nice town beach. They even have a brewery.  Lake Superior Brewery.  So we went there.  A couple of beers.  Hooked up to their wifi, uploaded the blog and got back on the road

H58 is a recently paved trunk line / forest service road that follows the bluffs above Lake Superior from Grand Marais to Munising 50 miles west.  Just curves.  Left curves.  Right curves.  Its like that for 25-30 miles continuously.  Same as before, Lakes, rivers, streams, meadows, forest, views of Lake Superior.  No commerce.  No houses until you get closer to Munising. Excellent motorcycling

We stopped at one of the numerous turnouts to look at the remnants of a log slide.  Back in the day in the early 1800s, when they were logging the UP, they would haul the logs to the dunes edge and slide them down the 300-400 feet to the lake.  They would raft them to Grand Marias where ships would pick them up.  On one of the info placards it was noted on one day, 22 ships left the harbor loaded.  That is a lot of timber…

Munising is a great little city on Lake Superior.  Their attraction is the boat rides to view the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.   Massive bluffs of rocks blasted by thousands of years of Lake Superior’s storms.  In nice weather kayakers paddle out.  Neat formations.  Beautiful colors.  Glass bottom boat tours over the numerous ship wrecks.   You get the idea.  Anyway we fueled up and continued to head west to Au Train.  It was getting long in the day..

We passed through Christmas, MI.  A little town with businesses trying to make money off the name.  You can imagine.  It will not make the Michelin guide.  There is a tribal casino there.

Eventually found our cabin.  Right on the Au Train river.  Nice little place.  Small river that is big on trout fishing.  We unloaded.  Had a drink and cigar on the porch.  Went out for dinner.  Wagner’s.  A german restaurant down the road.  Not a lot of choices without driving too far.  It was good.  Picked up more supplies and headed back to the cabin.

Parked our chairs out on the river and talked and laughed until midnight.  We probably told the same stories as the night before but they sounded new.  Maturity took hold and we realized before we fell in the river, we should call it a night.

And the best part?  I kept the bike vertical all day. 🙂

Life is good.