caracolina

We had breakfast in Hurley, which is adjacent to Ironwood but lies in Wisconsin. Hurley is home to a number of bars, mostly situated on one long street. We avoided the pub serving breakfast (although in retrospect that would have probably been an interesting experience) and instead ate at the Bonshell Cafe,in the company of a bunch of hunters. One of which decided to “fight fire with fire” and started the day with a Bud, while a few others opted for pie a la mode. Although we clearly stood out because of our lack of camo attire everyone was very friendly.

After breakfast we picked up two lattes at the Hurley Coffee Company and started our drive, stopping briefly in Ironwood to check out Hiawatha, the world’s tallest fiberglass Indian, before running into another Indian-themed sculpture named Nee-Gaw-Nee-Gaw-Bow (one of Peter “Wolf” Toth’s Whispering Giants) in Wakefield. We talked to a lady in the local tourist info shop and decided, based on her recommendations, even though we weren’t really hungry yet, to try the local specialty called “pasty”. It is basically a large hot pocket style pie filled with potatoes and (usually) meat. Wakefield’s Randall Bakery and Coffee Shop sadly only had the beefy variety readily available so I had a sticky bun and only tried a smidgeon off John’s pasty which was quite good.  I like the principle of pasty and can imagine making them veg with a variety of ingredients and spices. Randall’s actually makes vegetarian pasties but they are only available frozen.

After our snack we continued on north to several spectacular waterfalls along the Presque Isle River and the Porcupine Mountains State Park, home of Lake of the Clouds. The lake overview exposed us to some rather cold gusts of wind so strong it was hard to stand up straight, but the beautiful view of the lake and surrounding forests in a wide range of fall colors was worth it. All along the day had been cloudy and rainy, so our rain jackets came in handy. At the State Park visitor center we realized we had lost an hour – without fanfare we had entered the Eastern Time Zone. Sadly that meant we were running out of daylight (not that there was an abundance of that anyway with the heavy clouds) and had to get moving.

We arrived in Copper Harbor at the northern tip of the Keewenaw peninsula in the dark and found us a nice motel room before heading out for dinner. At some time during our meal at the Mariner North restaurant the power went out in the entire town, but no matter, the kitchen was using gas stoves, so we were even able to have dessert, apple dumpling a la mode, in candle light. The power was still out when we retired to our room – good thing our GPS has an alarm clock!