Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park in Michigan

August 15-17, 2010

We entered the park at the western end at the Presque Isle River area and hiked around the waterfalls and rapids for a couple hours.  Simply fabulous.  There are three waterfalls, none terribly high, but just gorgeous.  The water is tinged with brown from tannin, so the water flies over the rocks caramel-colored.  There is a suspension bridge to an almost island near the mouth into Lake Superior.  There were a zillion or so steps, but it was worth the ups and downs.  Along the island the channel narrows, and the rapids swirl so fast that potholes have formed in the sides of the rock where the eddying water and debris cut round holes in the rock.  So cool.

We camped two nights in Union Bay campground on the eastern edge of the park.  Nice campground right on the red rocky shore.  The Porkies were set aside as a park to preserve the last big tract—35.000 acres—of virgin hardwood and hemlock forest in the Midwest.  Lake of the Clouds is lovely as reputed.  We wanted to hike more, but the trails—90 miles of them—tend to be rough with rocks and roots, something very difficult for Don.  So we did a number of shorter hikes including the Summit Peak with lots of stairs.  We also hiked into the Union Mine site, the Nonesuch Mine site, and the Overlooked Falls.  Don did amazingly well with the trails, rough as they are.  He used his support blind cane to double as a hiking stick which helped a lot.  This is a wonderfully relaxing place—so old with the remnants of the copper mining history, old growth forest, and Lake Superior relentlessly beating the red rock layers.

We did have one exciting moment.  On the Union mine trail, the path was getting rougher, so Don took advantage of a bench and told me to just go on without him.  A few hundred feet further I loudly read an interpretive sign to him and then continued on.  I hadn’t gone more than 25 or 30 feet when I heard a tremendous groan and crash.  A huge dead birch tree landed in front of the sign I had just left.  I would have been killed a minute earlier.  A near-death experience does make a person thank God and the guardian angels.