Day Eight
I had planned on leaving the hotel at 6:30AM, but the coffee shop did not open until 7:00AM, so once again I got a late start. I arrived at F.J. McLain State Park an hour and a quarter behind schedule, so I cut my stay short in an attempt to catch up.
I never found Astor Shipwreck Park, but I did drive route M41 until it ended in a dirt road. I did, however, stop at Fort Wilkins State Park, which is a small fort circa 1850.
I proceeded to drive very fast on the two-lane roads of the Upper Peninsula. I was no problem because there is nothing there, no houses, no cops, and very few cars. There was a slight delay getting to the Ontonagon Lighthouse because the GPS directed me to the wrong side of a river to a mineral shop. I looked around the shop for a while, thinking I might buy a Lake Superior agate, but they are mostly brown and not that interesting. I drove to the other side of the river and ate my lunch in the lighthouse parking lot.
F.J. McLain State Park
Ontonagon Lighthouse
9/17/2025
Marquette, MI to Superior, WI
530 Miles
I stopped at the Washburn Lakefront Walking Trail and stretched my legs for about ten minutes. I had crossed into the central time zone, so I picked a desperately needed hour. From there I headed to Frog Bay Tribal National Park in the Red Cliff reservation. It was a 5-minute walk down to the beach that looks out on the Apostle Islands. I was expecting to see red sandstone cliffs; I guess they are somewhere else.
It was getting late, so I decided to go directly to the Hampton Inn in Superior, WI. I put the hotel’s address into the GPS, and it displayed it would be another ninety miles of travel, but the car only indicated it had sixty miles of gas left. I used the GPS to find a gas station along the route to the hotel, but they were all ninety miles away. I had to backtrack seven miles for gas, not too bad.
I checked into the hotel and headed straight to the The Streetcar in Carlton, MN. I had the walleye and wild rice burger. It was fantastic; it is too bad I might never get to eat one again.
Wisconsin Brownstone Ashland, WI
Walleye and Wild Rice Burger
