Keweenaw 3rd Excursion

Sunday, June29

Sunday evening after I'd finished the last blog, Tic saw this beautiful thundercloud.

What a view from our backyard.

Then this guy and his dog appeared on the water.  We were not sure where he came from and he took off down river.  We never saw him again.

Monday, June 30

Today we decided to drive up the other side of the island towards Copper Harbor.  We took the road named Gay Lac La Belle.  Today Tic drove and I took pictures.  I did not do bad.

These flowers are along side the roads much like our Texas bluebonnets. We are not sure what these are, but they grow in both blue and pink.

Here is a closeup of the pink ones.

Now don't jump to conclusions.  The bar and the town are named after a prominent person of the time.

This is the Gay Bar.  Pink paint but very straight.

This tells about the town, how it got its name and how it grew and declined.

This was the town school.  It is being refurbished and is supposed to be open to the public on July 4 for the first time in many many years.

There was this pavilion that had at least 3 carvings on each of the posts.  I'm only going to put in some of them.

 

 

 

There was not any info about the artist that did the carvings.  Whoever it was has talent.

The smoke stack above is all that remains of the Mohawk Stamp Mill. 

As we went further down the road we came upon Tobacco River Park.

This is Tobacco River flowing under the bridge and on into Lake Superior.

Here is the river flowing into Lake Superior.  All the countryside up here on the upper peninsula of Michigan is just awesome.

I was hoping to show the varying colors of the water but it does not show all the colors so I will have to explain.  Close to the shore it was so shallow that the sand was churned up and it looked brown.  Then the water went from light blue to medium blue to dark blue.  Wish I could have gotten the colors to show.

Further down the road was another park we couldn't pass up.

This is the beach.  You can see how far out it stays shallow.

It was a pretty windy day.  You can see how big the waves were.  The varying shades of blue show a little better in this picture.

As we came into the town of Lac La Belle, we stopped at a pullout and then saw the waterfall below.

We are constantly amazed at the beauty we are surrounded by.

Copper mining was big from the mid 1850's to the early 1900's.  Tic was holding the sign because the wind was making it swing.

Here is more about the Central Mine.

This little house is now the visitors center; however, it was originally a miners home.

Across the street from the house above was the Central Memorial Garden.  

It was a pretty garden with a couple of benches around.  You cannot see any of the benches in this picture.

These pipes and concrete rocks were the hoist anchors for the Central Mine.

We drove on up this road thinking we might actually find the mine.  We gave up before we found it.


Then we came across Cliff Mineon Cliff Dr. 

We continued on Cliff Dr and only saw piles of rocks.  We presumed that was where the mine used to be per the above sign.  We took a different route home.  Many hills and trees. 

After dinner at home, we sat in our backyard.  This was the sunset about 10:15pm.  It stays light so late up here.