The Blog Where Horror Dwells: Road Trip! Ishpeming or Bust! (Part 1)

And so it begins...

Although I had sworn off driving to Michigan after the trip from hell a year or so ago, for our upcoming sojourn — to include a few days in the Upper Peninsula — Brugger and I would be joined by regular traveling companions Terry & Beth. Therefore, we decided that, since could split up driving duties and the road construction that so complicated the last road trip would be mostly done, a road trip it would be. As with my first trip to Michigan back in 2014, prior to leaving, we ran the Jeff Daniels' brilliantly nutzo Escanaba in da Moonlight (2001), this time introducing Terry & Beth to the film. We figure it went over exceedingly well because Beth had to change her pants afterward.

Sunday, September 22, 2024: Aaaand...We're Off!
Ms. B. and I mounted up and left Martinsville bright and early (more like foggy and early), bound for Terry & Beth's place in Kernersville, a little over an hour away. Since they have a much larger automobile than either Ms. B. or I, they offered to provide the transportation. So, at 9:00 a.m. sharp, we set out for Dayton, Ohio — Beth's old stomping grounds — where we planned to spend the night in a bed & breakfast and have dinner with some of her relatives. It was a scorching hot day, but the roughly eight-hour trip, which included a handful of rest/geocaching stops and a fair lunch at a TGI Fridays somewhere near Charleston, West Virginia, was comfortable enough in our fully loaded chariot. We pulled into our lodgings, right across from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base/Museum, at 5:00 p.m.

Soon afterward, Beth's aunt and two of her cousins, whom she hadn't seen in a long while, came to visit, and we had a big honking pizza dinner from nearby Joe's Pizzeria. It was fairly late when the party broke up, but Kim and I decided to take a late-night walk down the road about a mile and pick up a geocache — which turned out to be good, scaly fun (see the photo).

Monday, September 23, 2024: Are We There Yet?

Front yard view from our B&B

At "This Is Not an Underground Entrance"

Terry and I rose early and went out to hunt a nearby geocache — called "This Is Not an Underground Entrance" (GC9J294) — hidden at the edge of Wright-Patterson Airbase. A very cool location it was: a metal stairway that led down to a heavy door set into a concrete column at the edge of the Mad River. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the damned cache, and there's every indication it's missing. Alas! Still, we enjoyed the hunt.

Again, we loaded up and hit the road. Somewhere in central Ohio, we found a Frisch's Big Boy restaurant for a late-morning breakfast. I've gotta tell you — I was damned hungry, and the scrambled eggs, bacon, & pancake combination struck me as the best cheap-ass breakfast I've had since our massively memorable IHOP outing in Seattle last year when we went to the Pacific Northwest prior to our Alaska Cruise. This one set me to hollering, I can tell you.

We drove for another while, and some of our party decided that a winery visit seemed in order. We discovered one not too far off the beaten track, which turned out to be a lovely little place, with great atmosphere and friendly service. For that reason, I'll not identify it because the wine was piss. I've only been to one winery whose product was that bad, and that was a few years ago in North Carolina. I'm not sure that little enterprise is even around anymore. Still, today, we did have an honest-to-Yog good time. I also found a cool cache in neat little town nearby, as well as a seminary building that so resembled Lychhurst Hospital in the upcoming anthology, Hospital of Haunts, which features my story, "Insensate," that I had to stop and take pictures.

We drove, cached, and made pit stops here and there for several more hours, and we arrived at Kim's parents' place in Midland around 8:00 p.m. After introducing them to Terry & Beth and socializing for a while, our foursome headed to Meijer (a sacred Midland tradition) to pick up foodz for dinner and provisions for our stay in the UP, set to begin early the next day.

Then...bedtime!

Ms. B. having a Moment With Monet

So, the wine wasn't good, but the time we had was.

Is it Lychhurst???

Tuesday, September 24, 2024: Clare, Kitch-iti-kipi, and Ishpeming
We wasted no time in Midland this morning and hit the road fairly early. Our first stop was Clare, the town where Brugger was born, about 30 miles west of Midland. Clare is the home of Cops & Donuts, which, to my mind, has the best donuts of any donut place I've ever been. We've visited Clare numerous times, and I've found most of the caches nearby, but I did manage to snag a few stages of a newish Adventure Lab Cache in the downtown area.

Beth wanted some food more substantial than donuts, so we ended up at the nearby Herrick House & Mulberry Cafe, a quaint little place with decent sandwiches. I destroyed a double-bacon BLT. Once done there, we set out on the road, only to detour to a little town called Harrison so Terry & Beth could check out a particular cannabis dispensary. Computer issues at the shop prolonged their checkout process for quite a long while, so we were much later than expected getting back on the road.

Herrick House & Mulberry Cafe in Clare

It was another day spent mostly in the car. Once across the Mackinac Bridge, our next destination was Kitch-iti-kipi, a picturesque spring a few hours west. Kimberly and I had visited there a couple of years ago, and I do love the location. We arrived fairly late in the day, and most of the crowd had vanished, so we were able to enjoy our raft ride out to the far end of the spring without any hustle and bustle. I'd found a physical cache there on our previous visit, and I was pleased to see that it was still in place. In addition to that, there is now an EarthCache at the location. There's no physical container to find at an EarthCache; one answers questions about the geology of a particular location to get credit for the cache.

We stopped for dinner at a pub in the little berg of Rapid River, where I polished off some walleye, and, afterward, I found a nearby cache. Then, once again, we were off, and around 8:00 p.m. — considerably later than we had originally anticipated — we arrived at our domicile for the next few days: a comfortable bed & breakfast in the town of Ishpeming, a few miles west of Marquette. There was nothing for it but to mellow out for the rest of the evening, so we mellowed.

Tomorrow is another day. Our target: the city of Marquette.

Old Rodan with the raft in the background at Kitch-iti-kipi

The view down from the raft, with happy fish circling the bubbling spring below

A view from the deck of the raft. Many ducks in evidence.

The Usual Suspects at the Rapid River Pub

I quite appreciate the decor at our VRBO.
This happy fellow lurks just outside the
bedroom door.

Wednesday, September 25, 2024: Into Marquette
Our lodgings in Ishpeming are stylish and comfortable. From the outside, we weren't expecting much — Ishpeming was once a mining town, and it looks like one — but inside the house, the decor is nautical but very modern. Our proprietor set up the kitchen so we are hardly lacking for anything, supply-wise. So we're giving top marks for this VRBO.

There's a greenway near here called the Iron Ore Heritage Trail, so I set out on it bright and early to hunt a couple of geocaches. One I found, one I did not, though not unexpectedly, as the previous hunter indicated in his log that he couldn't find it either. I didn't go all that far — just about a mile — because we're heading into Marquette this morning, and my time was a little limited. But if I have a chance, I'd like to venture farther, especially since there are several more caches within hiking distance.

Mid-morning, we hit the road, target Marquette. However, beforehand, Brugger and Beth wanted to visit a nearby rock shop, where — coincidentally — there is what's known as the "Yooper Tourist Trap," the site of a virtual geocache. So, while the rest of the party went rock hunting, I wandered among the myriad, mostly humorous displays of the Yooper Tourist Trap, gathering info for the virtual cache.

One of the big boulder formations (and Ground
Zero for a geocache) at Presque Isle Park

Done at last, we piled back into the vehicle and set out for Marquette, about thirty minutes down the road. Lunch was calling, so we went to Iron Bay Restaurant, which, on my first visit with Brugger to Marquette back in 2014, had been a different establishment called L'Attitude. It was good then, and maybe better now. I had some fantastic whitefish chowder and a hefty chopped salad, along with an excellent local IPA. We had a nice view of the bay and the iron ore dock located a very short distance from the restaurant. Once done with chow, our group split up; the ladies went shopping, Terry went in search of coffee, and I set out after a couple of caches. An officer of the law appeared to take some interest in my surreptitious activities, but he didn't bother to call on me, thus sparing me the chore of educating him on the joys of the cache. I finished up my deliciously clandestine endeavor and then met Terry at a nearby coffee shop. Eventually, the four of us reunited and trucked out to Presque Isle Park, an extensive natural area just north of town. Here, we went wandering (and one of us went caching) among the Black Rocks, a massive rock formation overlooking Lake Superior from the park. Brugger and I had done a some exploring and caching at Black Rocks on our first trip to Michigan in 2014, but this time, we had a bit more time and got to experience considerably more of the area. What a fantastic, scenic location it is. And, happily, my geocaching venture proved successful.

All this activity took up the better part of the afternoon, so, once done, we headed back into Marquette proper and visited a nice wine bar called Zephyr. A couple of bottles of wine, one Italian, one Spanish, forced us to drink them. We didn't mind obliging them. Then we hunted and killed dinner at the Portside Inn, which was somewhat less healthy than lunch (I had a very spicy, very large, Chicago-style Italian beef sandwich). Yummo.

By the end of dinner, we all felt fat, dumb, and happy, so we headed back to our lodgings in Ishpeming and mellowed until bedtime.

Mellow good.

Iron ore dock in Marquette

A view of Black Rocks at Presque Isle Park

Marquette Harbor Lighthouse

Thursday, September 26, 2024: Munising & Pictured Rocks
On our previous sojourns in the UP, Brugger and I have stayed in the little town of Munising, along the shores of Lake Superior. Of all the places we've visited in the UP, Munising seems unique, with a significant quirk factor that makes me think of Twin Peaks. Today, we set out for a day trip to Munising, our first objective being a boat tour of Pictured Rocks, a line of colorful sandstone cliffs that rise above the lake. Ms. B. and I have visited Pictured Rocks on foot — most notably Chapel Rock, which is one of the lake's most notable features (see "Midland and More in da Moonlight," October 5, 2014).

Once in Munising, we went straight to the dock, and it wasn't long before we had boarded the double-decker catamaran, called "Spray Falls." I might mention here that my Ameri-Scares novel, Michigan: The Dragon of Lake Superior (a signed copy of which now resides on the shelf at our Marquette bed & breakfast), opens with said dragon sinking a tour boat out of Munising. My friends got on the boat anyway. We were underway very shortly, and the boat proceeded northeastward at a fair clip, skirting the coastline, giving us excellent views of the cliffs, some of which rise 200-some feet above Superior's surface. The series of photos below can only hint at the cliffs' awesome size and multi-colored rock faces. The only incident to mar a perfect outing was Beth taking a spill on the gangway on her way off the boat. She doesn't appear to be seriously hurt, but she did take a bit of a battering.

Here's a little gallery of photographs from Pictured Rocks.

After the boat tour, we ventured over to the nearby town of Christmas, where we killed a late lunch at The Duck Pond, a nice UP pub where you can get fresh whitefish for dinner that was still swimming in the lake that morning. Mine was delicious. I had a couple of local brews to accompany, one of which was fabulous, the other not so much.

Since Beth wasn't feeling up to a more difficult trek, we drove back to Munising to visit Wagner Falls, which isn't as huge or as spectacular as many of the waterfalls in the area, but it's still very scenic, and there was a cache along the trail, which I snagged as we made our short hike.

Our last stop was Muldoon's Pasties & Gifts, on Highway 28 just at the western edge of town. Pasties, you must know, are the official food of the UP, at least in our book. (You should watch Jeff Daniels' quirky Escanaba in da Moonlight (2001) for a better understanding of this point.) We picked up a bunch to bring back to our VRBO for dinner. Mmm.

L) Ms. B. always did like men with a full head (and body) of hair; R:) Wagner Falls

Friday, September 26, 2024: Mackinac Island

For all her years living in Michigan, Ms. B. had never gone to Mackinac Island, in Lake Huron, a few miles east of the Mackinaw Bridge, which connects Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas. The island isn't very large, but it has a long, colorful history. To film buffs, it may be best known for having been the setting of the film, Somewhere in Time (1980), particularly the Grand Hotel, which dominates a fair portion of the island's southern bluffs. The sprawling Fort Mackinac, built by the British in the Revolutionary War, is another prominent, imposing feature on the island.

The island is also loaded with geocaches.

We left our Ishpeming lodgings much earlier than any of our somewhat travel-weary bodies felt was at all fair, but we figured we'd better if we hoped to spend much quality time on the island. It was a three-and-a-half-hour drive to Mackinac City, and a twenty-minute ferry ride to our destination, so by the time we set foot on the island, we were plenty ready to have lunch. Somewhat randomly, we chose a spot called The Pink Pony, where I killed another very fine whitefish sandwich (in the UP, whitefish is THE thing, don't you know). We decided to take a private carriage ride around the island at 3:30 p.m., so that gave us a couple of hours to split up and do our own things. Terry sought drink, Beth and Brugger sought shopping, and I sought caches. And what a goldmine. There were numerous Adventure Labs, traditional caches, and virtual caches, so I availed myself of any of these that I could find nearby. Most were nicely done, and several took me to some extra-lovely locations I might not have otherwise found, including the gazebo from Somewhere in Time. I've always been very fond of this film, and now Ms. B. and I are going to have to work it into our already crowded Halloween movie line-up. Not that it's really a Halloween film, but we'd like to see it again while our memories of Mackinac Island are still fresh.

At 3:30, we gathered near the Mackinac Island State Park Visitor Center to meet our carriage. Our driver was a loquacious character named Brett, and we enjoyed the hell out of his lively, humor-filled narration as he took us on a fairly extensive, hour-long tour of some the island's most historic sites. He even helped me figure out a stage to a nearby Adventure Lab cache. Along with my personal, private tour of the island while geocaching, I found the carriage ride among my favorite experiences on this trip thus far.

No carriage ride is complete without ice cream at the end, and there happened to be an ice cream shop nearby. So we had ice cream. Damned good ice cream. We did.

We opted to have final drinks at a tavern called the Gate House, near the Grand Hotel. The drinks were excellent, but ridiculously expensive. This we expected, given the location, but that does not mean we approved. We did not approve.

The final ferry back to the Mackinac City left at 7:30, so we made tracks to get back to the dock. Once back on the mainland, we found a nearby place called Nonna Lisa's Italian Ristorante, and since we had about hit the burger-sandwich-tavern-food wall, we decided to give it a try. The interior of the place looked more like a Yooper hunting lodge than an Italian restaurant, but it simply added character. Their wine selection was somewhat wanting, though, so most of us drank water for dinner. Both Kimberly and went with the traditional spaghetti with meatballs, which was decent, if not remarkable. Our server was excellent, I will say, so top marks for him.

Our accommodations for the night were in Cheboygan, a little town about twenty miles east of Mackinac City. We had chosen this location mainly for its attractive price, and it was, correspondingly, a bit cramped. However, we found it clean, generally comfortable, and well-appointed, so the place gets a solid thumbs-up from us.

Tomorrow... we return to Midland.