If you listen to Greg Browns live album, the live one, he talks about the UP, and he says
"It's like Alaska or something"
before he starts singing the song "the Laughing River". Well as I wrote in an earlier post I went to Wisconsin for Christmas and New Years and we drove up North to Northern Wisconsin and the Western UP of Michigan. The drive further up North from Northern Wisconsin was pretty sketchy, and we drove into a snowstorm. Everyone in Northern Wisconsin and other midwestern states were in emergency mode, because of the weather forecast of -35 to -45...Well coming from Alaska those temperatures aren't really biting on us, right now today it's -33F here in Fairbanks. I do understand that people that aren't prepared for these cold temperatures will run into problems and that it is dangerous and that is why everyone was in emergency mode. So clarifying that part, we on the other hand were pretty calm :) Maybe a little too calm, halfway up north on our adventure to lake Superior we were like:
Hm, maybe we should have brought a shovel, just in case, yeah, maybe we should have brought sleeping bags....
And all of these things that we ALWAYS do in Alaska were completely forgotten about when we started our drive. Nothing happened, but it just shows how you get as a person when you are taken out of your regular zone and into a new world.
The drive was really slow due to the snowstorm, and everyone we saw, that saw us looked at us as if we were crazy driving up north. We were like, huh, maybe they know something we don't know..In Wisconsin they always have all these signs at road intersections and such, with names of all people living down that specific road, or companies etc in that direction. Pretty cool actual and it makes it feel like such a friendly community. And I love the thick forest. AND we finally arrived, at the end of the world as I called it.
We experienced the so called "lake-effect snow" on the road driving along lake Superior. The lake produces evaporation that, when it blows in over land, turns into snow (in cold temperatures of course..) and we also saw a lot of drifting snow blowing in on the road that was just right by the lake. We were wondering how you as a person manage to have a house right by lake Superior and not totally go crazy with all shoveling you presumably would have to do...
The drive back down was filled with snow again of course. And I took some pictures of some pretty buildings along the way.
As we crossed the state border to Wisconsin again, the sun came out and all of the sudden we had clear skies and sun. It must be so beautiful to drive through this part during the fall. This thick forest would surely make some great light shows.
Northern Michigan and Wisconsin was pretty entertaining with snow-machine trails all over the place. The big tourism highlights in Wisconsin, as we understood, is snowmobiling and ice fishing in the wintertime and fishing in the summer time. Not as much hiking or snowshoe hiking, or at least we didn't see any signs of that. We came back to the cabin right on time for the sunset, and making a few snow-angels! just Wonderful.
