Marquette to Munising - Waterfalls!

We drove down the Keweenaw Peninsula taking our time and admiring the Lake.  We stopped for a breakfast cookie at the Jampot outside of Eagle River.  This is such a delightful place and the baked goods are supremely yummy.

As we traveled across highway 41, I asked if we could stop to take pictures of Canyon Falls.  This waterfall is accessed at a roadside park and down a one mile trail.  It had been raining for some time, but the rain let up a bit so I was feeling confident that we could reach the falls and get a decent picture.  Silly me!  The trail was slippery rock and lots of mud and I was wearing sandals.  What was I thinking?  Dennis stopped at a bench and encouraged me to continue on the trail to get the picture I wanted.  

When I reached the end of the trail, I discovered that the best picture taking site was past the official trail and over a fence!  I got several interesting photos by climbing out onto some of the rocks at the edge of waterfall.  Then I walked back to Dennis and rode the rest of the way to Marquette with very muddy feet and sandals.  At the hotel that afternoon foot washing was the first task.

Canyon Falls

We drove out to Presque Isle Park to look at the rocky shores and the old and still-used ore loading docks.  Marquette is a lively and interesting town.  We found an interesting little restaurant, via recommendation, called the Steinhaus.  It held about 45 people and it was packed.  The food was German and the beer selection was diverse - very nice.

We headed for Munising Friday morning.  We wanted to take the Pictured Rocks Cruise and planned to purchase tickets for the 2:00 pm cruise and then take pictures of waterfalls before the cruise.  It was a beautiful sunny day (finally!) but cool on the water.  It was a great day for taking pictures.

We started with a visit to Miners Castle in the Pictured Rocks park.  We got lots of good images and some artistic ones, too, that we won't bore you with.  We then drove to the Miners Falls trail access.  Dennis opted to sit in the sun and chat with other folks because his knees were not up to the 1.2 mile trail with 77 steps down to the falls at the end.  The trail was beautiful and the falls stunning and I got in my cardio workout for that day in addition to 2.4 miles on the trail.

 Miners Castle - front

 Miners Castle - back

Miners Falls

Then, we drove to the Munising Falls access - a quarter mile paved trail that we could both handle.  Again we took pictures like crazy.  Dennis has a picture of this waterfall from the 1930's with his dad and his uncle standing on the ledge behind the waterfall.  The picture is black and white so I suggested that we tinker with one of our photos and put the two pictures together in a frame to show the difference over that time.  That's a task for when we get home.

Munising Falls

We went back to the boat dock and discovered that the 10:00 am cruise had been cancelled and the noon cruise only went out half way because the waves were so high.  We turned in our tickets for a refund.  In addition to being sad that I wasn't going to do the cruise, I felt like a wimp because I really did not want to risk seasickness.  Now, I will have to return to this beautiful area to take that cruise on a calm day.