• Tuesday-What'sUP February 8 - 06:56 pm

When you hop in your car here UP North in the winter months, you have to remember that the roads are usually covered with snow and/or ice, so the way you drive has to change dramatically. These two photos from Steve Haagen and Maureen Habarth, respectively, show what happens if you don't alter your driving habits when the highways become slick and slippery. That's right, you may end up off the road in the ditch and at the mercy of your friends for help getting un-stuck. All part of the U.P. experience!!

Looks like part of the Wisconsin experience by the license plate.

Editor's note: It's actually a U.P. experience with Wisconsin plates. One photographer a Michigan Tech student and the other a frequent visitor to the area!

They seem to be taking it with a sense of humor. I do not smile when this happens to me. Nope...not at all.

LOL! We used to purposely drive into the snowbank to give the guys something to do. They'd race to pull us out, each trying to convince us that their truck is the best.
Drive carefully, but have fun. :)

It really doesn't matter where you are driving, common sense needs to prevail! We live in a county where the road commission does a great job most of the time. It is also a farming area with big open fields where the wind gets a big sweep and keeps the roads slippery and snow covered and causes drifts. Yesterday was such a day, 20/25 MPH winds and fast drifting, slippery roads. In a distance of two miles yesterday PM and evening, a Verizon telephone van went off the road and ended up on its' top and a car went off the road and demolished one of those telephone junction boxes where all the connections are. No one was badly injured, but both accidents were because of to much speed for the conditions!

Oh the front wheel drive and four wheel drive vehicles can slide around and go into the ditch too!

True JanieT, most people who own front wheel or especially four wheel drive vehicles seem to get the "invincibility" complex when driving in winter.

Down here in Houston we have a local "live" show everytime the roads get slick. It's called "Texans on Ice"!! though I'm still not sure whether it's a comedy or horror story ;-)

My hubby is a general manager for a good size auto collision center....he takes care of a lot of Jeep and SUV owners when they are more humble about their driving abilties! Even here in eastern Iowa this collision shop has a total of 45-55 cars worked on weekly.

When we were living in Trolland, out in the boonies about 3 miles from the nearest paved road, we had a great time watching people slide into the ditch at the Y-intersection near the house. We were at the joint of four townships, so the roads were continually being scraped off by one township or the other. Since they wouldn't run the blades low enough to mix gravel into the snow, the efforts to clear the snow made for glare-ice conditions more often than not. If you weren't expecting it, you'd approach that slightly downhill intersection at a pretty good clip, and likely either stuff it in the ditch, or in the snowbank on the other side. We watched about 10 vehicles fail to navigate the intersection in 2 hours one evening. Being sympathetic, we took turns grabbing the shovel off the front porch to go lend a hand.

No sense having a vehicle already there with the hazards on to warn the next people, and ruin our fun!

Just be glad that you have nice big snowbanks to drive into. Here in the Rocky Mountains, if you lose control, you're a goner over the edge of the mountain. Keep that in mind next time you hit the snowbank or ditch. Maybe it's not really so bad!

Yikes! Be careful out there! When I saw the first picture I immediately thought of winter road rally but I was wrong....Always thought that(winter rally) would be great fun (to watch of course..)!

OK now I just have to clear a couple of things up here ;) The person standing outside of the truck is Tricia Kirkish from State wide realty (a great person and company to work with and a advertiser on this site) We were driving down a logging 3 years ago in February to look at some acreage when we met a very large logging truck on his way out. The only way to let him by was to back up about a half mile to a spot big enough to pull off to the side, what you can not see in the picture is a large stack of logs just to the right of the truck. I know how expensive side mirrors can be so I moved a little to the left so I would not hit the mirror and slid right into a swampy area next to the road. If you look close you can see the open water just outside the driver side window, also if she did not hold on to the truck it would lean over to the left with a sick feeling of laying on it’s side. The driver of the logging truck went back to get the boss and they came up the road with a very large skid steer and plucked the truck out like a toy from a sand box. After I got out of the truck to thank them I almost ended up going head over heels, the road was glare ice from the heavy traffic packing the snow. Needless to say after meeting the very friendly people working back by the land and the great people from State Wide and the beautiful land that was waiting back there for us to see we purchased the property and have been up there every chance we get, I also purchased a larger truck to handle the 2 mile off road adventure to get back in there. I must say that buying land up in the Keweenaw has been one of the best decisions of our life, it is a beautiful area with some of the greatest people we have ever known. It also lead me to this site with the greatest people around, I guess getting stuck in the ditch was somebodies way of saying they wanted us to stick around.

Trigel, You are too funny, with your Yooper version of the dating game ;) Take vehicle...get it stuck in the snow...call good looking guy with pickup truck to pull you out. Now why didn't I think of that?

PaulWebbtroll, That stretch of road you're talking about, sounds like US 23, from Ann Arbor, all the way south, to the Ohio border. I had to drive that route when I attended Washtenaw Community College...and later when I attended Eastern. Definately experienced many a white knuckle drive, like the one you described.

Radsrh, Love the story about the pics and how your retreat in Keweenaw came to be. Neat ;)

I was a student at MTU from '84 through '89. For the first two years I lived in 201 West Wadsworth Hall, which is the room closest to US41 in the west wing of Wads, right above what was (and may still be) the medical center, facing east. In the fall when the first snows fell, there were LOTS of people not used to driving on ice that had some interesting driving experiences as they came through campus. Both years there were several vehicles that ended up on the lawn between the west and center wings of Wads. And invariably there would be 20 or more bored male students that would come boiling out of the dorm and literally lift the vehicle out of the snow and carry it back onto the road, getting the driver back on their way. The largest vehicle I saw this happen to was a station wagon that had to weigh at least 4000 pounds. I base this on the 1971 Chevy Impala two-door that was my first car. The inspection sticker on the door said it weighed 4004 pounds, and that station wagon had to have been heavier than that.

dale - i was in 201 wwh 1968-69, when that hiway was rerouted - the excavator started way earlier in the morning than i wanted to.

Oh, everyone is having all that "fun" and I'm stuck here in the desert. wheaeaeaeae

Hey Sur5ver! My Mom graduated from EMU and taught elementary school for 33 years. We have a grand daughter who also graduated from there and now is a second year music teacher down by Jackson! Pretty neat school we think.

See Whats' UP page!

Paulwebbtroll, Yep, I have heard that Eastern is one of the best teaching schools around. Go Eastern! I went there for my criminology/psychology degree and also for my corrections/sociology degree. An all around excellant college...the professors were so dedicated to their profession.
My daughter is working on her teaching degree, and how I wish we were still in Michigan, so she could attend EMU.

Nice story, Steve!

We made an offer on our property in the Keweenaw a few years ago after a mini-snow storm. It started to flurry at 7 PM the night before. By the next morning, we woke up to 24 inches of panky snow. Schools and businesses were closed the day of our house showing. We still went, feel in love with the home, and made an offer. To this day, we both love the winter season in the Keweenaw in our little home!

Ah - snow. How I miss my years living in the UP. Here along coastal North Carolina 1-2" will shut the entire area down and everyone, especially those with 4x4s who have never been on ice/snow will be in the ditch. That's when I get to pull out the old Jeep and have fun pulling out all these folks. I seem to remember getting pretty good at doing that while living in Houghton!