After crossing into the Upper Peninsula, we moseyed our way up the state as close as we could to Lake Michigan. Our plan was to get to Manistique and then head directly north until hitting Lake Superior. We stopped for the night in Manistique and found a lighthouse waiting for us down the street from our motel.
We had two strange experiences in Manistique. First, it was a ghost town when we were there. It was crazy. It was the middle of July on a weekend night and we could find only one place open to eat at, which was a little kind-of-hidden bar...and we saw almost no people anywhere. We were the only two people in the bar for most of our time there (besides the two bartenders, and one of them was doubling as the cook), and even then it was just one other guy who came in. The second strange experience was getting to this lighthouse.
Do you see that orange-y stuff in the photo above? Well, in the air above that entire section (and in the sand before this shot) was filled with flies. An enormous amount of flies. We were wearing jackets (have I mentioned that our entire time in the UP we had to wear jackets? in July?) and wound up covering our heads and sprinting down that concrete pier, because it felt like the flies were bombarding us. It was disorienting and freaky. Where were they coming from and why were they there? You are probably thinking that it was no big deal, it's just flies. Well. We had been out by the lighthouse for maybe 10 minutes when we saw another couple walking on the pier to get to the lighthouse. They were casually walking along the concrete, not sprinting and not acting like there were millions of flies attacking them. What? Within 10 minutes all the flies were gone? They also left the lighthouse before we did and again, no perceived struggle with flies. We cautiously walked back down the pier after that and ... no flies. It was all around a weird experience.
But the lighthouse was nice! We had a beautiful sunset.
And we took one of my favorite photos of all time:
Haha! :) Have you ever had weird ghost-towns-with-millions-of-flies experiences? I would be okay with not repeating that one.
Manistique, MI: Manistique Lighthouse
Reviewed by Maria
on
10:00:00 AM
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Reviewed by Maria
on
10:00:00 AM
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The Upper Peninsula in general is a giant ghost town, unless you're doing touristy things. Like when we went to Tahquamenon Falls it was probably the most people we saw the entire time we were there.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about the cold! When we were up in August, it was kind of refreshing to feel cold and drink hot cocoa on our deck after a week of extreme heat down in South Bend.
What a beautiful lighthouse, though! Definitely worth the flies.
A // Equal Parts of a Whole // equalpartsofawhole.blogspot.com
Haha we were just totally not expecting it! We did eventually find more people as we got up near Pictured Rocks and of course Marquette :) We totally should have had hot chocolate when we were there and pretend it was Christmas in July! (We did indeed stop in Christmas, MI...what a missed opportunity ha!)
DeletePS. I love what you're doing with the signature line!