Rio Travelers: THE UP (UPPER PENNINSULA) MICHIGAN

After visiting Mackinac Island we traversed the upper penninsula of Michigan from east to west. We saw some beautiful water falls and the Shipwreck museum at Whitefish Point on Lake Superior. Both of us were amazed to see a lake that was as big as an ocean and we were equally amazed at the number of ships that had been sunk on Lake Superior. One of the most recent was the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. Most of us remember that one because it was made "famous" by Gordon Lightfoot. They recovered the bell and it is housed at the museum along with artifacts from other wrecks from the past 300 years. The lighthouse is from the mid-1800's but is no longer a working aid to navigation.
Another interesting thing to note is that there are sand dunes on the lake shore. I always thought that sand dunes were an ocean thing.
In Munising, we took a cruise along the coast line of Lake Superior and saw some very interesting rock formations and colorings in the cliffs. It was called the cruise to the pictured rocks; the pictures and colors from the different mineral deposits in the lime and sand stone.
We also walked to some waterfalls in the Munising area. In all, it was a very pretty area but way too rural for this "city girl" and when they started talking about snowfall amounts of about 300+ inches/year Ken and I both took it off our list of places to revisit unless it was in July or August.