Say yah to the U.P.!

After dedicating over a week of our lives to ride bicycles across Wyoming and South Dakota (each), it seemed miraculous that we were able to spend the next week crossing Minnesota and Wisconsin combined. Ben's uncle Dave set us up with a really fantastic route across northern Wisconsin that included about 50 miles on a rails-to-trails bike path called the Gandy Dancer. 

The bike path was phenomenal. Being an old railroad, it passed through the middle of several tiny towns the grade was never even remotely steep. It was incredibly relaxing to not have the anxiety of biking next to 60 mph traffic, it was in the shade, there was no wind....so basically it was a bicycle tourist's paradise. Biking through the small town of Frederick, Wisconsin, we noticed that the old railway depot was still standing, so we stopped to check it out. Apparently the Frederick Historical Society had just concluded their meeting at the old depot, so 3 or 4 interested looking people flocked around Ben and me, asking us all kinds of questions. We talked to them a little about the trail, at which point they gave us a very animated history of Frederick and the surrounding towns, insisted we take a tour of the depot (which they had converted to a pretty decent museum), and gave us a full detailed account of every town we would pass on our way from there out of Wisconsin. It became clear that they weren't going to stop talking any time soon, and we were quickly losing light, so we literally started biking away as they were still shouting after us about Danbury's casino/restaurant which really isn't as expensive as it looks and actually has reallygreatpancakes.....!

We spent one night in a city park in Siren, Wisconsin, another night in Hayward in a random field at a trailhead, then woke up on Ben's birthday and proceeded to bike 80 miles into the U.P. (Michigan's Upper Peninsula). We had a random connection in Ironwood, Michigan--Ben's cousin's friend's wife's parents happened to live there, and so generously agreed to host us. Pat and Chuck and their daughter Ellen took good care of us, fed us plenty of steak and beer and told us all about why they loved living there. According to Chuck, in the 1970s and 1980s there was a big movement towards combining northern Wisconsin and the U.P. to create the 51st state--the state of Superior.

The next morning, Chuck insisted that we not leave Ironwood without seeing a little of what made Ironwood so special. So he took us on a brief but informative tour, showing us the World's Largest Indian (a ginormous fiberglass statue of Hiawatha holding a 3 foot long peace pipe), as well as the Stormy Kromer manufacturing plant (an essential Michigan hat--woolen baseball cap with ear warmers). Ben bought a neon orange Stormy Kromer, claiming that it wasn't fair that hunter's had a monopoly on such an awesome color.

For the past couple of days we've been biking across the U.P. The colors are started to turn, which is a beautiful sight to behold in these mostly deciduous forests. It's significantly colder here than anywhere else we've been, and it's rained most days, making us a little wet and a little homesick. The towns we bike through are a trip. Most of the towns seem to have sprung up over one particular industry, such as mining (iron or copper mostly), timber, smelting, etc. For whatever reason many of these industries had their heyday and packed up and left, leaving behind towns with gaping holes in their economies. The towns are almost eerie...there's still plenty of houses standing, some of them look like they were really nice at one point, but are now slowly decaying. Most of the businesses, cafes, bars, grocery stores--are all for sale. It gives you the feeling of walking through someone's house who has left party decorations hanging for an awkwardly long time after the party's over--streamers and balloons still hanging around collecting dust, waiting for the next party so they can finally feel useful again. Most of the houses have signs in their yards that are wholeheartedly in support of mining, "STOP the whining, START the mining," etc...

We actually decided to take a small detour and check out White Pine, a town that Ben lived in from age 3 to 5 while his father worked in the copper mine up there. It was a pretty similar scene to the towns we had passed through already--wide, hopeful streets, neighborhoods set up like a model suburbia, several churches (one of which was playing creepy hymnal chime music), a sorry looking playground. There was a tiny fire station, but the fire truck had a for-sale sign on it. All the larger looking buildings were deserted. We thought we might buy groceries, but the grocery store had long since been abandoned, as had the laundromat that had taken its place. There were several people around, mowing their lawns and walking their dogs as if it wasn't bizarre that they were living in a ghost town. It's strange to think that Ben could have just as easily grown up there than in our little wet city way up in Alaska.

Last night we made it to Marquette, the cosmopolitan hub of the U.P., as well as the home to Northern Michigan University. A lovely lady named Jessie hosted us from Warm Showers. She made us a pork roast (delicious) and took us out for beers at her favorite neighborhood pub. She gave us a little bit of the environmentalists' perspective on the mining up here and told us about her reasons for loving the U.P. (naked Lake Superior midnights dips, traditional music festivals, brew pubs, a different sensibility....). 

For all it's worth, the U.P. appears to be somewhere people love, or hate, or love to not even think about, or think that anyone who lives up here must be insane. I'm not sure what camp I'm in yet. Thankfully we still have 2 or 3 more solid days of biking across this lush, colorful no-man's land to develop our own perspective. Until then...say yah to the U.P., eh!