A Day Trip to Marquette

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One day trip we wanted to make was up to Marquette Michigan. We had heard from our winery host of several things to check out, plus the visitor guides made it sound like an interesting place. I naively thought Marquette University would be there, but that would have been too easy. Northern Michigan University is located in town.

Marquette is just over an hours drive to the northwest along the shores of Lake Superior. We had picked a day that was not going to be as hot and humid as recently, so we brought along the mountain bikes in case some trail called to us. As is turned out, we found too many other things to see and do.

Our first stop was to a little place just to the east of town called Lakenenland. I'm not sure of the exact history of the place, but some local artist has a big parcel of land and has been creating unique pieces of art and placing them around the property. For the last 10+ years, he has the place open to the public to come and be amused, amazed or perplexed - and sometimes all three at the same time.

There is a dirt roadway that winds thru the property taking you by all the metal sculptures he has on display. Hard to say how many he has but it must be approaching 100. There is also a massive pole building made of huge timbers and boulders where you can sit and enjoy a picnic lunch you bring. Apparently they have a stage where you can come and play your instrument of choice with other musicians on Sundays.

We opted to just walk the paths since we wanted to check things out more closely. Other than the guy is some sort of metal worker and must have some broad source of oddball metal parts, his creations did not follow any particular style or theme. Not sure if there was one particular work that I would say was my favorite, so here are some of the ones we liked.

Rebar Gator

13 Piece Band

Chris Looking Out Window

Hmmm!?!

Chuck and Snoopy in Bi-Plane

Flowers in Bloom

Owl After Rabbit

Funky Cyclist

Chris Plays the Slots

Fun Fact About Bowling Balls

Semper Fi

Mermaids

Two Man Saw Competition

Dare Devil

After having lunch at Lakenenland, we headed to the north side of Marquette to Presque Isle Park. This is a wonderful park that juts out into Lake Superior. It's a popular destination so after we found a parking spot, we opted to just walk the full perimeter of the park - maybe 2 to 3 miles doing 15 geocaches along the way.
At the very north end of the park is a little harbor created by a rock outcropping. There were dozens of people here jumping off the rocks into the water below. And since we had just done what's called and Earthcache there, we know the drop is 20 feet or so.

One guy had brought his 12 year old son and two friends. They were trying to get the dad to jump. They would keep jumping over, swim around a bit then scale the rock wall to repeat. The father removed his shirt and looked like he was about to jump several times. By then, many of the other visitors had gotten into the action by cheering him on and encouraging him to jump. In the end, his brain won out and he opted to skip the jump. As we wandered around the park, we stumbled onto a concert of sorts with loads of people, even a big tour bus. Turns out there was a Shriner's convention in Marquette and this was the spot of one of their outings.

Some Jumpers, Some Spectators

Rugged Coast

Calmer Side

Next was a drive to Sugarloaf Mountain. It was one of the spots we may have otherwise missed had it not been for the recommendation at the winery. We arrived to a nearly full parking area and started up the trail. Only 100 feet in, you're greeted with a fork and a sign "Difficult Trail" to the left, "Easy Trail" to the right. I suppose it's all relative, but difficult wasn't really too bad and calling it a mountain might have been pushing it.

That said, the view from up top was spectacular. There were 15 to 20 people up there, but the top has multiple viewing platforms so it didn't seem crowded. The geocache up there was well hidden underneath one of the platforms, so it took a bit of waiting for just the right opportunity to crawl underneath to retrieve it.

Panorama from Sugarloaf

Windswept Trees

Peaceful Beach

We we getting hungry so we decided to head to the downtown area and see if we could find some good grub. A couple blocks of streets were blocked off for some big event. After parking and walking thru it, we discovered another big Shriner's party. Lots of guys with silly hats and shirts with emblems showing where they were from. Many had driven quite far to come to it.

We ended up finding a nice pizza joint with some of the best pizza we can remember. Fortunately we were in one of the side rooms because just as we were finishing up, from the main room came the music of what sounded like a full marching band! Apparently a Shriner Drum corps from Minnesota was waiting for a table and decided to play a few songs. Given how loud it was at our table, I can only imagine how loud it was for the patrons near the entrance. These guys need to learn there are more volume levels than 0 and 11. But I suspect that the five songs they played managed to get somebody to leave, opening up a table for them!

After dinner we walked through town and down to a marina to enjoy the beautiful evening.

Beautiful City Hall Building

Old Clock Tower

Marina