• Wednesday-What'sUP August 4 - 04:28 pm

The U.P. itself is mostly rural communities and forest land, but if you really want to experience the wilderness when you're UP North, then a trip over to Isle Royale is in order. Kevin Henriksen makes his way over to the Island each year, enjoying the solitude and quiet, while camping, hiking and kayaking the waters of the Big Lake. He recently spent some time on the Windigo end of this 45 mile Island, experiencing the rocky shores and calling the many lean-to shelters home while there. If you're looking for someplace to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, then Isle Royale should be on your list of places to visit.

Beautiful pictures!

Very nice and peaceful!

Great pictures ~ and great way to spend a couple weeks when its not black fly season!

Super pics! Love 'em all. Kiitos!

Serene.

Superior pictures today!

I'd love to see the top (area) photo again in Autumn...the colors would be awesome! Thank you, Kevin Henriksen, for the views!

Just returned to Florida after spendng some time in the C/C. I'd like to comment on the illumination of the shaft house on Quincy. It was very impressive to see this beacon, a tribute to honor the men, both young and old who toiled, with,according to my Dad who was 16 when he went down into "Old Reliable" some being killed and many becoming ill later on. Theirs was not an easy life, but one that they were very proud of. I'm sure they would like to see it now..."lit up and Proud"

Beautiful photos! Just looking at these makes me heave a big sigh and relax. Thanks.

Hi
I heard a piece on NPR yesterday about how some campers want wireless computer connections while they are camping...which to me is NOT getting away from it all, at all. For many years we did not have a telephone at our vacation place; if you wanted to bother us, you had to drive the 8 miles from town & then go down a long 1 1/2 car wide dirt road.

BREAKING NEWS: The Portage Lake Lift Bridge is stuck in the upright position, not all the way, but up enough that the bridge is not useable at this time. A civil emergency has been issued, since there's no way for Houghton people to get to the Hospital on the Hancock side, should there be any emergencies.
The authorities do not know how long it will take to fix the bridge at this point.
I just got off the phone with Daryl Laitila who is the keeper of the Bridge Cam, which is also stuck, so not recording photos right now, but she's going to try to get a photo and post it here for us.
I'll try to keep you posted...if you're stuck on either side of the bridge, just try to find a good place to relax until it's fixed. :-)

You can kind of see that it is stuck a little too high to make the bridge usable from this webcam:
http://www.mtu.edu/webcams/

ETA Pick the Tech Fund Cam

We had lunch at the Ambassador and saw the bridge go up and stop on the way down then come the rest of the way down and traffic started up again. We came home from there and now see how close that we were to being trapped on the south side. Lucky us.

Here are the pictures I took a few minutes ago.





As you can see the south (Houghton) end of the bridge is higher than the north (Hancock) end.

They are rerouting traffic. Lots of people are jamming up the cell towers here so it is hard to get through on the cell phone. Don't worry, there is some kind of an emergency plan for these situations.

Daryl

The bridge is now open for traffic at 5:17 pm.
Daryl

Trivia question: How many times has this happened in the life of the present bridge?

It happened yesterday because of a bad electrical switch, so they said. The bridge was not messed up nearly as long as it was today. It looks like they have some major troubleshooting to do. Hello, civil engineers?

Better yet, is the Civil Emergency message system. I think if they listed the problem on the message some folks may have stayed out of their cars until it was lifted (which could have been a 2nd message, lifting the emergency). The message system may need some troubleshooting as well.

Close call, glad to see/hear things are all well again with the bridge.

Things are not well with the bridge. We had to dock the Ranger III on the west side of the bridge today and unload baggage and passengers at the city dock. They wouldn't try to open it again because of fear of it getting stuck again. One of these days there will be a major failure with the bridge and it will be stuck for days or weeks. A high bridge is the only answer which is what they should have built in the first place.

I think a trip to that cabin and a hike through Isle Royale would be the ultimate getaway. I can't think of anyplace I would rather go...sigh...someday. Thanks for the great pictures. They are going to be on my desktop for awhile so I can dream.