On my morning stroll through the campground, I heard quite a rumble and saw this thing motoring across the bay. I'm not sure you can tell what it is from the grainy bigfoot-esque photo, but it looked like a yacht -sounded like it was powered by something very healthy, and was kind of a gunmetal look.
I was trying to convince myself I had just seen one of these,
but it was probably just a gray fishing boat.
Back at the site, we decided to regroup and figure out a plan to visit Grand Island, which we can see from the back of our campsite. While Kimberly looked into the details, I headed out to get in a bike ride at the nearby Valley Spur singletrack trail. I had read reviews that it is fast & flowy, and I'm trying not to break myself or my bike before we get to Copper Harbor.
The trails were well marked, and the 12ish miles went by very quickly. Lots of fun, flowy banked curves, jumps, manageable climbs and one downhill section that had me actually yelling because it was so much fun. Kudos to the Munising Bay Trail Network for building and maintaining such a cool trail.
Once I got back to the campground, we were just a bit too late to catch the noon ferry, so we headed up the road to check out the Bay Furnace ruins before the 1pm boat. This place is super cool, and seeing it in person helps to understand the scale and the engineering that went into building this amazing structure.
We also got a great view of Pictured Rocks from the beach at Bay Furnace campground. We toured the camping loop, and someday we will score a reservation of site 10. The view out the back is ridiculous, it is looking directly at the cliffs of Pictured Rocks.
We made it to the ferry dock with our bikes ready to roll for the 1pm boat. There were some hikers, some overnight backpackers, and just some general touristy sightseers waiting in line. Then...
Someone save that dog from these people. That is all.
Once across the water, we disembarked and things spiralled hilariously into a comedy of errors. I'll leave out the details to protect the affected parties, but there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth during the next 2 hours.
Just after this photo was taken at Duck Lake, we decided to complete a short loop back to the ferry, cut our losses and head back for some ice cream. Then we made a left turn and started climbing. Forever. Below is a picture of Grand Island. It is our belief that the road we took led directly to this point of the island.
In case you are skeptical, here is the elevation plot from our ride.
As you can imagine, for those who were already having miserable experience, this took things to a new level. Once we scaled Everest, the roads smoothed out and we began to believe we would leave the island alive.
And yes, this is Kimberly riding my bike. She was so fed up with hers that we switched, and I was then described in glowing terms as looking like a hippo, a rhino, or a bear riding a kids bike.
After snagging some delicious ice cream at the Frozen Flamingo in Munising, we decided that we got the worst day of the vacation out of the way early, and that tonight we would resort to comfort food and relax at the campsite. This involved ordering pizza and picking up beers at the local brewery. I am a sucker for a good Belgian beer, so when I discovered this place had one, I was in.
As the events of the day moved from traumatic to laughable, Jordan and I became pretty slaphappy by the fire. We thought we would finally make our own influencer-worthy glamour shots along the beach to document our trip properly.
As the sunset faded and the fire started glowing, our neighbor 2 sites over started blaring Gordon Lightfoot and I about burst into tears. It was a great reminder of catching the right moment and enjoying the experience.
Oh, I almost forgot the part where our backup plan to take the Pictured Rocks cruise also blew up, quite literally, in our face. Before ice cream we went straight to the ticketing office, watched the couple in front of us purchase tickets for tomorrow's cruise, then when we went to buy tickets, we were told "The last ones are being purchased online right now, sorry all of tomorrow's boats are full."
Sooo... our backup backup plan is to do a portion of the Chapel Loop hike and hopefully catch some good views before we head up to Copper Harbor. Tomorrow is a new day...
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