Munising

The main draw in this area is the Pictured Rocks. However, they can really only be seen from the water. Pictured Rocks Cruises provides several affordable options to view the cliffs. I started the morning with the Spray Falls cruise. This trip takes you past all of the rock formations to include a waterfall falling into Lake Superior. The cliffs face more or less North, so some faces are illuminated in the morning and others in the afternoon. And the colors reflect differently. After speaking with the ticketing agent, I decided to also take a cruise in the evening.

On the morning cruise I sat next to Brian and Rachel. They had just gotten married and were taking a “minimoon” as they were saving their longer honeymoon for some warm location in the winter. They were quite interested in the particulars of my trip and, as usual, we had a nice chat.

I headed back to my room to download and rest for a short time before heading out to see the view from Miner’s Castle Rock and the photograph Miner’s Falls. I thought I would have more time to catch another fall or two before my 6 PM evening cruise, but the 0.6 mile hike each way ate up a bit of time. You have to get in line an hour prior to get a prime seat. So I grabbed some locally caught whitefish and chips from a restaurant close to the docks and took it out to eat while I waited in line.

A few minutes later John showed up. We had an hour to kill, so had time to cover a wide variety of topics from travel to politics to personal stories. John and Sarah (who arrived after walking their dogs), currently from Los Alamos, are traveling in a camper van. They have also lived in CA, so we had fun comparing notes. We sat together on the cruise so had a little more time to chat while photographing the rocks. I was glad I took both cruises as it provided different light conditions on the various rock faces.

However, both trips, plus my afternoon activities meant I came away with over 1000 images to edit and process. And I returned to my room only at about 9 PM. So the blog will definitely not be published tonight.

I could easily spend a couple of weeks up here in the UP. There is so much to see and I feel like I barely scratched the surface. Of course I would love to come back in the Fall.

Additional images can be found in the Gallery .

 This is my last night in MI. Tomorrow I have a rather long drive back down through Michigan to Fort Wayne Indiana.