The year was 1870

7/11/2018

We took a drive WAY up north to the small town of Copper Harbor, the most northern town on the Keweenaw peninsula, and then points north.

Our first stop was Fort Wilkins established in 1844, I think. They have done a good job of rebuilding it and staffed it with volunteers dressed in period clothing. The catch is they talk in the time period of 1870. They attempt to draw you into conversations with them but you need to answer in terms of their time period. To find out the year I pretended to have had a bump on the head and had forgotten what year it was, the lady who answered my question strongly advised me to stay out of the sun and to see the fort doctor. They were constantly asking where you were from and mode of transportation ship, stagecoach, walk. Winter was snow shoe or dog-sled. If your into history it’s well worth the stop.

The points north were seasonal roads(?), much like being in the desert only with trees. The problem with that is you couldn’t see anything but trees. We took this one “track” that we thought would take us near the lake but it didn’t. We ended up bouncing around for a couple of hours with out ever seeing the lake. The plan was two fold, we hoped to see a bear and to find a spot, along the lake and eat lunch, lets just say neither one happened, we did see 1 deer.

We Bounced and twisted for a couple of hours on a narrow one lane path, climbed a stair striped wall that was about 10 ft tall, all the while hoping we didn’t meet anyone, while trying to find our way back to pavement.

Back on pavement we drove south along the western side of the lake stopping at a few pullouts and some water falls.

We spent much more time off-road than planned and on the way back then we encountered a few rain drops, rain was not predicted until closer to dark, a quick look at the radar showed showers at home, where we left the windows open, so we cut the drive back a little short, arriving home to fine things dry with no sign of passing rain.

As you my have heard several roads were washed out in this area back in May. Our drive north was to be up along the coast not on the trip south, but the southern part of the road we were going to take had been washed out and was closed, the few side roads we tried to take toward the coast were also closed, so we abandoned that idea

We did find this coming up for public auction. 177 acre resort built during the depression.

http://www.crossroadstoday.com/story/38421387/historic-keweenaw-mountain-lodge-golf-course-to-be-sold-at-auction