I mentioned that we were going to camp for a week in Grand Marais, Michigan, up on the U.P. on Lake Superior. And I've got some pictures up online now, if you've never been in the neighborhood and want to check it out. Without getting into a travelogue, I'll just say that we were treated to a week straight of sunny 78-degree days, and averaged 10 hours of sleep per 55-degree night. We managed quite nicely the complete withdrawal from cell phones and the Internet, and outside of two day-long side trips, we stuck around town (pop.350), cooked over an open fire, and did little other than read and walk the beach.
We didn't encounter any of the black bear or wolves that inhabit the thick pine and birch forests we were visiting, and the only porcupines we saw were of the roadkill variety. Driving through some of the small Upper Peninsula towns, it seemed it could just as easily have been 1954 as a half-century later. The disconnect about this area is that it is so strikingly beautiful, and yet so desolate and underutilized as a resource, at least by human beings. Cindy and I talked about how the isolation is part of what makes this place we love seem like it's "ours", because it so manifestly "belongs" to no one else.
Posted by dan at August 10, 2004 10:44 PM