Days 9 - 11
From Munising to the Keeweenaw Peninsula

After the cruise in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore we headed west to Marquette to spend the night. The drive between Munising and Marquette is very pretty, with the road close to the shore and providing many views of the lakeshore.

A couple of lake freighters were scheduled to be loaded with taconite at Marquette, so we headed down to the ore loading dock to watch the process. Ore trains bring in the taconite and unload it into the bins below the track and behind the chutes. This was done prior to the arrival of the freighter.

When it is time to start the loading, three to five chutes are lowered and the taconite is loaded into the freighter. Only a few chutes are used at one time; the dock workers controlling the process work their way up and down the freighter, loading it gradually in order to maintain the proper weight distribution, both fore and aft and side to side.

The taconite pellets that are loaded on to the freighters. They are about 65% iron and are shipped to steel-making plants.

After we had been there about an hour, a dock worker came down to ask us to move behind the fence (we had taken advantage of an open gate in the fence to get a better look at the process). He was very nice about it and wound up answering a lot of questions. He referred to the freighter being loaded as a "4 hour load"; larger freighters might take up to eight hours to load.  He had just finished the night shift plus some overtime hours, so he was off duty and could spend some time with us.

A potluck dinner back at the campground in Marquette. An surprising variety of very good foods came out of those Roadtreks kitchens. Dick and Noel provided pasties (rhymes with "nasty"). Pasties are a UP specialty; they are pastry with a meat and potato filling traditionally eaten by miners. There can also be other fillings, such as rutabagas. They come originally from Cornwall. We found them to be very tasty.

The next day we headed further west to the Keeweenaw peninsula. This little waterfall was near to a roadside park. We are seeing more color in the trees as we head west and north.

Our next camp was at McClain State Park; it is on the Lake Superior shore just north of the canal that goes to Portage Lake at Houghton and Hancock. The weather has turned colder, as you might guess from the way people are bundled up.

We had a beautiful sunset that evening. Our itinerary for the next day was to head to the end of the Keeweenaw peninsula.