Day 5 of my cold. Cough. Cough.

Back to my diary and the trip. We learned on this trip, as we drove west from Ottawa to Sudbury that, at least in Ontario, the cities were terrific, but the rural areas looked pretty dull. It took a long time to get to Sudbury, a city of about 175,000 located several miles on top of Lake Huron. It wasn’t really a destination of the trip, but was en route between Ottawa and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We spent the night in Sudbury, had a nice dinner, but didn’t do it justice. Sudbury started as a nickel and copper mining center, but is now more diverse, the home to Laurentian University and, surprisingly, is about 1/3 French speaking. What we did do is go see the Big Nickel, the world’s largest coin, 40 feet high, on the campus of the regional science museum.

We the drove to American customs at Sault Ste. Marie, which we assumed would be a piece of cake. No, siree.

The border agent asked for our passports. Inside my passport was a small receipt from a recent trip to Israel, all in Hebrew. It didn’t have to be there, but it was, and he asked about it. I told him what it was and he asked why we had been in Israel. I thought nothing of the question, didn’t think he needed our itinerary, so told him simply “a vacation”.

He obviously didn’t like my answer. He sneered at me and said, “A vacation? That is a pretty odd place to go for a vacation, don’t you think?”  He then said ” Wait here!”

We waited. He took the passport into the customs building, and came out some time later, snarling, “You can go”, as if it must have just been our lucky day. Very weird.

We explored the locks at Sault Ste. Marie, which were worth exploring and drove through the forested Upper Peninsula until we got to the spot where we could take the ferry to Mackinac Island, which we did, and where we stayed a few nights.

If you haven’t been to Mackinac, it is well worth it. A prosperous tourist spot, very historic, and no cars on the island at all. We stayed at a very nice hotel, the Iroquois (today 4.8 on Yelp), visited the famous hotel, the Grand (now only 4.5), bicycled around the island and so forth. Here is the Iroquois:

We took the ferry back to the UP to get our car, and turned east a few miles to go to the important and world renowned town of Hessel, Michigan., where we bought t-shirts, and sweat shirts, and a painting, and all sorts of swag and, more importantly, attended the annual Hessel wooden boat show, which I found ultra-fascinating.

We visited the town book store with a great name, The Village Idiom, run by two retired school teachers, and no longer there.

By the way, after we got back on the road heading west across the Upper Peninsula, we came across another great name – UPChuck’s.

Yes, 20 years later, UPChuck’s is still there. It’s website says ” Don’t just read about us…..”.

In fact, we just drove on by. Not taking a chance. (There was some time ago a restsurant outside of St. Louis called Wild’s House of Poison. I don’t think many people at there, either. It quickly closed)

We stopped in Escanaba, an old lake port at the top of Lake Michigan, where iron used to be shipped south for smelting. Quiet now. And very pleasant.

We decided to stop and look at Marquette, the largest Upper Peninsula city, and home to Northern Michigan University. What an attractive place it is. Hills and water, and all set up for a long winter with book stores, craft stores and more.

But it was just a lunch stop for us. We needed to get into and across the top of Wisconsin and then to Duluth MN.

This old road trip is perfect material for me while I battle my cold. Hope it is okay for you. More tomorrow.

And by the way, none of these pictures are mine.