• Saturday-What'sUP July 17 - 06:47 pm

Last night Edie and I took a ride up to Copper Harbor on the newly resurfaced M-26 stretch from Phoenix to Copper Harbor, which just opened yesterday. Richard Barclay sent us some photos of the work this week. First the tar truck arrives at the scene, then applies the hot tar to the road surface. Next the chipper/spreader gets in position and begins spreading the chips for the process. Finally the surface is tamped down, and we have a much smoother ride on this scenic stretch of highway... Just in time for the 7th Annual Keweenaw Tour and Car Show this afternoon.

I drove M-26 5 years ago on the Lake Superior Circle Tour.

Thanks for the update Charlie. Fresh blacktop is a welcomed sight when riding the motorcycle, which I will be doing come Labor Day.

I think our 2011 vacation destination just may be the 8th Annual Keweenaw Tour and Car Show bringing our yellow 1977 Ford Pinto! (not all of the Ford Pinto's blew up, lol!) Sounds like fun times!

I talked to the man on the chip spreader and he said it is a fourwheel drive unit that attaches to the truck loaded with chips pulling it down the highway backwards and emptying it as it rolls along. That's the next load of chips backing down the road ahead of the tar truck in the top photo. It will drive around the tar truck and attach to the spreader when it empties the truck presently attached.

Glad that stretch will be open since we'll be there in 2 weeks. A trip to the Copper Country is not complete without a couple of trips to Copper Harbor along the Lakeshore. Just wish they'd cut down some of those trees that are getting way too big and blocking the beautiful view!

This really makes my day as I'll be driving that road this year. Copper Country is very smart
to make it nice for us tourists. And bringing a Pinto to a car show somehow is very intertaining to me. I did work in a Ford Dealership and recall well the Pinto problems. The solution was a piece of plastic fitted between the tank and the car body. It was a complete joke but that was the solution and the recall fix.

A caution for motorcyclist: The road could be greasy for a few days until the solvents evaporate. I found this out the hard way some years ago.

Steve...Thanks for the reminder. A few years back I lost it on fresh blacktop while driving a pickup truck and pulling a trailer, very scary.

My Dad had a Pinto back in the mid 70's, and one night when every car parked on the street was stolen no one bothered the Pinto. Not worth the effort to hotwire it.

I also remember family vacations in the 60s riding on US23 in the LP, going to visit Grandma and Grandpa in East Tawas, and the workers were asphalting the road. Now the smell of fresh asphalt gives me that little shiver of remembered excitement: We're going up North!

My uncle from Saginaw Township had a cottage on Pt. Lookout, and I recall 1 Summer in the mid 1960's when US-23 was being widened from Au Gres to Tawas City (and beyond), and the Sunday morning my uncle was driving us to church in Tawas City and parts of US-23 were completely torn up, but traffic still got through at 30 mph.

Gee, today's pictures bring to mind two memories:

1. The City of Detroit spraying used oil(!) on various unpaved streets each year, for dust control, in the late 1940s. No EPA then!

2. The City of Phoenix also used the infamous "chip seal" process, much like that shown in today's pictures, to resurface city streets after first stripping the existing asphalt surface. The only element missing was "tamping down" the surface, which was left to the automobile traffic! Omigosh the flying rock and broken windshields, in spite of the reduced speed limits! What utter insanity. In the last decade or so, both the city and the State of Arizona have switched to the use of rubberized asphalt, apparently incorporating rubber harvested from old discarded tires. And they no longer rely on the automobile traffic to finish the job. Hurray for that!

What an amazing road surface the rubberized asphalt makes, yielding a smooth and whisper quiet ride, at least in comparison to the old asphalt surface. An excellent use for old discarded tires as well!

Evidently the rubberized asphalt also does a better job of surviving the desert heat.

I wonder how such a surface would work in the UP winters?

Wes Scott..Pinto will be arriving the U.P. car show via car trailer.

i worked behind that spreader for a summer when I worked for Houghton County Road Commission.
Also had a chance to pitch gravel when they did crack repair and stuff. Loads of fun and nothing better than breathing all that hot tar fumes.

Everyone should have the chance at it. those guys deserve every penny they make and probably should be paid much higher :)

When I was a kid we used to follow those guys around and watch them do their miracles with the roads. It was realy cool. Can't remember the guy's name anymore, but the guy that used to spray the tar used to get it close to us or pretend to spray us with it, just for a bit of fun. He used to always have on a big rubber looking apron, covered in tar, and big rubber boots. Wore a railroad hat. The road crews were always messing with us kids, giving a rough time...all in jest. We loved the attention.

The only thing more fun was working on the rock crusher in Dodgeville. Pretty dangerous, but exciting :)

Charlie are you sure you don't mean:

"the surface is panked down?"

A new road surface is always so nice to drive on,
especially when it's been properly panked down.
(thank you, jbuck, for that very important
grammatical correction!) I do hope it's just been
resurfaced, and nobody had the bright idea of
"improving" the road by sraightening &/or flatteneng
it - horrors! And, shush Deb, we like those trees
just the way they are. ;P Time for a drive....

Ahhh....Labor Day....The Annual Agate Picking Marathon Session! Can't wait....