Day Seven
The sun was rising as I left the hotel, so I took a few pictures of the sunrise over Lake Huron. It was a foggy morning, and it still was when I reached Brimley Beach. There is not much to say, but it was my first glimpse of Lake Superior. The next stop was the Point Iroquois Lighthouse, which was closed. I walked down a boardwalk to the beach. There was a fellow there connecting rocks, but I didn’t talk to him.
When I arrived at the Whitefish Point Lighthouse, the internet was down, so they couldn’t process credit cards for tickets, so I passed on visiting the museum. I just walked around the grounds, but I did get a picture of the Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial.
Sunrise St. Ignace, MI
I skipped the Crisp Point Lighthouse because my car couldn’t handle the access road and drove to Tahquamenon Falls State Park. The falls were impressive, not Niagara Falls but nice. I walked the trails for both the lower and upper falls. All told, I hiked for about an hour and a half.
My next stop was to be Twelvemile Beach Campground at Grand Marais, MI, but when I turned onto the dirt access road, the GPS showed it was fifty miles long. There was no way I was going to drive a hundred miles on a dirt road, so I passed again. I went to the Seney National Wildlife Refuge. The Marsh View Road is a seven-mile-long one-way dirt road. It wasn’t too rough. I assumed that it was the slow season for wildlife because I only saw three swans, a blue heron, a squirrel, and a crow.
Seney National Wildlife Refuge
Brimley Beach
9/16/2025
St. Ignace, MI to Marquette, MI
303 Miles
I finally reached the Falling Rock Café and Bookstore in Munising, MI. I ordered a single espresso and asked the young man at the counter to pour it into a cup I had bought in Cortona, Italy. He thought it was the coolest thing. I noticed he had an accent, so I asked, “If I guess wrong where you are from, will you get mad at me?” He responded, “No,” and I guessed he was Lebanese. He said he was Macedonian. We had a long conversation about Macedonians, Albanians, Serbs, Turks, and Greeks. A who-hates-who discussion. The pour was decent, and I was a little tired, so I ordered a second one. When I was done, I asked him to rinse the cup for me. He admired it so much I gave it to him. He was an exchange student named David; I call him David of Macedonia, descended from Alexander the Great.
I swam in Lake Superior (if you can call it swimming if it is in three feet of water) at Sand Point Beach on the Pictured Rock Lakeshore. I wanted to see Pictured Rock but I wasn’t willing to take a cruise. I searched the internet and discovered that it can be seen from Miner’s Castle. The first place I stopped was a three-mile hike away from Miner’s Castle. I was speaking with two women, one of whom had been there before and said there was a parking lot right near it. I then drove to Miner’s Beach, and they arrived right behind me. There was a map there that said Miner’s Castle was a half-mile hike. I was moving fast on the trail and left them far behind me. Whatever trail I took, it was over a mile, not a half mile, but I finally got to where I wanted to go. The Pictured Rock is so far away I could barely make out the colors. I returned to Miner’s Beach parking lot without seeing the two women. I had assumed they had given up and turned back. I hoped that they weren’t lost out in the woods somewhere.
David of Macedonia
Lake Superior
Miner’s Castle
Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum
Tahquamenon Falls State Park
I made a quick stop at Alger County Veterans Memorial and then drove about eighty miles per hour to get to Marquette. I went straight to Lagniappe for crawdads over pasta and vegetables. I could eat half of the huge portion I was served, but I did make sure I finished all the crawdads. I ordered the beignets and ate one, and they boxed the other two. It was a good thing the Ramada Inn didn’t serve breakfast so I could eat the beignets for breakfast the next day.