RiB-it....

From the Apostle Islands we continued hugging the shoreline of Superior into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in the home stretch to complete our mini-escapade along the lakes.

The upper peninsula is an interesting place to say the least. It is Michigan, but not. People speak like they are from Minnesota, thrown with a twang of Canadian and folks from Paul Bunyan to Ernest Hemingway seem to spring out of thin air stranger and more real than fiction. It is also a wild place full of huge tracts of forests and marshes, moose and wolves, miners and lumberjacks. It is the real land between the big lakes, bordered on both sides by Superior and Michigan.

Becca and I came to the Porkies today, just on edge of the Keewenaw Peninsula. The Porkies are short for the Porcupine Mountains, site of Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. To call them mountains is quite a stretch, but for this part of the country they are about as close as you can get. Big rocky hills and outcrops stagger up from the shoreline of Superior cradling lakes and forests of spruce, hemlock, paper birch, and ash. We camped in the backcountry about 4 miles in on the shores of Lake Superior. The late afternoon was absolutely gorgeous with bright sun and a soft breeze by the water. Big stones and small stones polished round and colored red and grey littered the shoreline like a zen rock garden. Looking out huge slabs of granite lay like beached ships sunk in the waves littered with driftwood and small hardy wildflowers here and there. Best of all the enormity of Lake Superior stretches out unbroken dappled golden on a perfect summer day. It was a very special place and I can think of no complaint save some ferocious swarms of mosquitos.

There is much wildlife in these low mountains and on the way in we saw another black bear crossing the road, deer, eagles, many song birds, and even these green frogs (Rana clamitans). I followed the sound of their chorus to a pond near our camp where the local males were groaning like mini sumo wrestlers puffed up on their respective piece of water real estate round the frog pond. It is a good thing I'm not 8 years old anymore, else I would have caught them all! Instead we eyed each other and had a mellow moment. It made for a great photograph...

....And I bet he was saying to his buddies, "You wouldn't believe how close it let me get to it."