Bay Furnace continued, July 12, 2023

After a leisurely breakfast, we cleaned up and headed toward Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. We had no idea what to expect but everything we read said this was a "must-see" in the UP (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan.

After some searching around, we figured out the National Lakeshore was about 50 miles long with various stops along the way. An awful lot of the road was NOT along the lakeshore. There is a 42-mile trail that one can hike that closely follows the shore, but we were not going to do that.

Our first stop, and probably the most popular, was Miners Castle. This was an impressive rock formation carved by the wind and waves of Lake Superior.

Miner's Castle - closeup

View from the cliff

Miners Castle from the overlook

We drove quite some distance to the next stop, which was Au Sable Point. Here we walked 1.7 miles each way to view the lighthouse. One of the things we wanted to see was a lighthouse and we were excited to take this walk along the coastline.

Swimming Beach

The rock you see is actually under the water 

Along the trail

As we began the hike, we saw a sign about biting stable flies.

Other than swatting them away from our faces, they didn't seem too bad. We did have on long pants as recommended. About 1/4 mile into the hike, Pam noted that Rob's shirt back was covered with flies, and he noticed the same thing about her.

At that point, we picked up the pace. They didn't bite through our clothes, but they would occasionally bite exposed arms and hands.

At one time, the lighthouse complex consisted of many buildings. Today, the lighthouse is still operational but is run on solar power rather than kerosene lamps like the original days. One of the buildings no longer in use held boilers which had been used to heat the buildings and to provide power for the revolving light as well as used to generate steam for the steam-powered whistles.

This coast has one of the most dangerous histories on Lake Superior and has been the site of many shipwrecks.

Encouraged by the flies, we made the 1.7 miles back to the car in record time, at least for old people.

By the parking lot, we noticed a paper birch "shell". The wood had rotted away, but the bark remained intact. This helps explain why birch bark was a great choice for canoe-making.

We missed lunch again but Pam staved off starvation and the "hangries" with trail mix and we decided to stop and eat on the way back to camp. Pam had researched local foods in each area of our trip and the UP is known for its pasties. Pronounced "past-y, not "paste-y".

A pasty is a small pie filled with meat and vegetables and served with gravy. This is not served in a pie tin like a pot pie but is flat on the bottom with a domed crust on top. Pam had a chicken pasty and Rob ate fish tacos.

Chicken  pasty

Along our drive today, we kept seeing skinny sticks, about five feet tall, stuck in the ground and standing along the sides of the road. They were irregularly spaced, some on straightaways, some on curves, sometimes 50 feet apart, sometimes 1/4 of a mile apart. Our first thought was they were to define where the road was when the snow was deep, but they seemed too fragile and not permanent enough for that. We asked our waitress and showed her the picture. She confirmed they were indeed used to guide people in the event of a blizzard.  We forgot to ask "Who the heck put them there?" "Who maintains this system?". Guess we will never know.

When we arrived back to camp, we decided to check out the historical site of Bay Furnace. You can read about it here.

It made Rob want to research how these furnaces worked. The plaques explained these arches were for air intake. Where did the fuel go in? Where did the molten iron come out?