Yoopers for a day

Found ourselves another Harley Davidson museum to visit. 

The General Lee keeps popping up
in our travels - this time being
chased by Sheriff Rosco P Coltrane

This one is called Doc’s and is west of Green Bay in Wisconsin.  Not only is it a museum, it is a

Yep, boys sure love
their Harleys

retail shop, gift shop, zoo, antiques store, pirate ship, saloon and bar and, really, just an all round great place to visit.  Plus you get a free ice cream.  Doc built a 10-seater Harley known as the Timeline Motorcycle.  It features all the air-cooled Big-Twin motors from 1909 to present.  Looks pretty impressive. 

Who would've thought - a zoo
at a Harley Davidson shop

We could’ve gone for a ride on it if one of us had ordered the 24½” long, 7 lb burger and eaten it in less than one hour.  Yeah! …. Nah.

 

 

 

Look hard and you'll see a couple of pirates at the helm



Doc's 10-seater Timeline Motorcycle and yep, it runs

Thought it was time we left Wisconsin so made our way north to Michigan.  First stop was Iron Mountain where we visited the bat cave.  Wishful thinking – it was just a colony of bats that now live in an old mine shaft. 

Blooming bats wouldn't hold still for photos

Every night around dusk they leave the shaft en masse for feeding.  We were hoping to see an explosion of bats from the shaft but got to see a mere trickle of a couple of hundred before being beaten back to the pick up by those darned mosquitoes.  They just love the Mills sisters.

Had lunch on the shore of Lake Superior before visiting a sculpture park east of Marquette, called Lakenenland.  Some interesting works here and, like some of the other parks we’ve visited, not without controversy.  Local Planning & Zoning officials are definitely not welcome here.   Luckily for us, Joe Public is more than welcome.  Spent a good hour wandering around. 

Some political sculptures ...

 

... many fun sculptures - Wally & Jean weighing each other up

... and a bunch of just plain interesting ones.  Sue finds a seat in the forest.

The boat you pull along yourself
across the spring

Next we headed to Manistique and Indian Lake.  There’s a huge fresh water spring on the lake that you can cross via a boat that you propel yourself.  The clarity

The water is bubbling up through
the sand.  Mmm, trout.

of the water is amazing and you wouldn’t believe the size of the trout that were in there.  Always the way when you don’t have a line with you.  Settled for purchasing some smoked trout and salmon a bit further up the road.  So today we lunched on the shore of Lake Michigan.  Not much of the salmon left.

Lots of steps to the top - rewarded
with a great view

Got a bit of exercise in on the climb up to Castle Rock.  Not too onerous but enough to get a bit of a glow on by the time we reached the top.  Great views of Lake Huron and Mackinac Island.  Left the Upper Peninsula by way of the Mackinac Bridge.  A need for the bridge was established as early as the 1880’s but it wasn’t until the 1950’s that it was built.  One of the longest suspension bridges in the world at the time, it’s 5 miles across the Straits of Mackinac.

Mackinac Bridge, connecting the Upper & Lower Peninsulas of Michigan

Headed west to Cross Village where we stopped at Legs Inn. 

Legs Inn - named for the upturned
stove legs on the roof - that's
those white things sticking up

We had decided on coffee or beer, whichever came first.  No prizes for guessing which one that was.  The Inn is quite unique in that it has a whole lot of upturned stove legs on the roof (hence the name).  Don’t ask why, google it and let me know.



Interesting front door of the Inn



Hmm, does Sue let them in?

From Cross Village we took the very scenic Tunnel of Trees road down to Harbor Springs.  Only 20 miles but very narrow and very windy.  Probably not the best road to take an RV on but we got to the end unscathed a mere 40 minutes later.  I think a few of the vehicles travelling towards us may have needed a change of underwear after coming round a corner to be faced with the monstrosity that was us.  I swear I could hear them thinking “who would take one of those on this road?”  Just some mad kiwis.

Check out the width of this road that we took the RV on - it's not one way either

We followed Lake Michigan south from the Sleeping Bear Dunes to just before the state line.  Had a glorious day to visit the dunes.  We hit it at the right time too.  When we came down off the dunes at lunch time the sand was getting very hot on our bare feet.

Everyone still smiling - but this was only the first dune

Spent the night in the small town of Zeeland.  Quite an appropriate place to stop for the night don’t you think.

Anyone figured out what a yooper is?  Think Upper Peninsular – U.P.