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People we’ve met on our trip have said, “When your trip is over, it’s over,” meaning that once you’re done traveling, regardless of the distance left to cover, you forego all of the sights that could be seen and book it back home. In our case, we had two stops in mind before ending our tour of the US: Glacier NP and the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan. Our final destination being in northern Indiana, we knew the trip would take at least a week and that we’d be facing a series of the longest driving days since fleeing the heat of southern Utah for the rainy relief of Oregon in June.
As per our usual, nothing was booked in advance, which gave us the flexibility to get as far as we could on any given day. This rendered it impossible for us to visit Glacier: they now have an advance reservation system for even driving through the park and we didn’t have time to wait around for a permit. We were sorely disappointed, but it just gives us something to look forward to down the line. On our cousin-in-law’s advice, we opted for a route that took us to the Grand Coulee Dam in central Washington to see the “neat terrain feature” he had mentioned many times. We boondocked in Coulee City under a glorious full moon that first night and in the morning followed the scenic Route 155 along the picturesque canyon housing Banks Lake all the way to the dam—a massive concrete and steel contraption that provides electricity to 11 states as well as Canada.
Climbing out of the Coulee, the landscape shifted dramatically to give us a foretaste of the plains and wheat fields that awaited us on the great plains. I thought them charming at first, but the sight quickly became a tiresome one. That afternoon we stopped in Coeur d’Alene, ID for a swim in the lake and a quick stroll around town. A few years ago my mom accidentally made reservations at a hotel there (she thought she was booking a place in Québec, Canada!) which is how I heard about it. The main parking lot conveniently has extra long spots for campers and boat trailers which makes it easily accessible for people on the road. It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful setting. A lovely park follows the lake shore and many people were swimming or sunning along the shoreline. With the mountains in the distance and a couple of cute city blocks with shops, cafés and art galleries, it was a perfect stop to break up a long day of driving.
From there we hopped back on Route 2, which follows the course of the Kootenay River in Idaho and Montana before straightening out and carrying on entirely across the northern states to Michigan. We stopped for one night in every single one of those border states. In Idaho we slept on the banks of the Kootenay river in Bonner’s Ferry, a very cute town with a good farmer’s market, which we highly recommend visiting. Montana is so big that we had to spend two nights, the first in a city park in Eureka, and the second in a great little park in Zurich (population 65!). We spent our last night on the plains in a city park in Michigan, ND on the edges of their newish public golf course. Once we got to Minnesota we slowed down a bit, booking two nights in the Lake Bemidji State Park where we had our first real hot showers since leaving our French cousins’ place in Washington.
Covering 1,600 miles and three timezones in six days left us feeling a little wrecked and if I haven’t written an update before now, it’s entirely due to the numbness of spirit that encompassed me during those days. We passed through six major changes in ecosystems from the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula, through the dry forests of the Cascade Mountains, to the deserts and wheat fields of central and eastern Washington, respectively. These were followed by the stunning forests/lakes/rivers of the Rockies from Idaho to western Montana, after which we were once again immersed in the monotony of monocropped wheat fields on and on and on through the rest of Montana and all of North Dakota. It was a relief to finally land in Minnesota’s lush northern woods.
I am not utterly convinced that humans are meant to move through space at such speeds. Is it any wonder people are so hopelessly disconnected from the world around them? Or that the world can sometimes feel like such a wretched place? Even witnessing the insane scale of farms in the western states is a perfect example of that disconnection. Each farm is hundreds, sometimes thousands of acres—far too many for any one person to reasonably manage. Of course they hyper simplify to only grow one crop! You couldn’t handle multi-species plantings or rotational grazing on that scale without having lots of help. Not to mention the pressures that come from depending entirely on one crop. It’s enough to drive anyone mad with worry and despair. Also, the lack of trees, which I remember being a reason so many of the settlers on the prairies lost their minds (in addition to the extreme isolation). Naturally, we perked up when the landscape started to fill in again with trees and wildlife. The wheat fields are entirely devoid of life. No flora (besides wheat), no animals, no food. Not even any people. Just mile after endless mile of stripped or golden fields shining in the sun.
The forest and campground in Bemidji couldn’t have soothed us more. We hit the trails the morning after our arrival to inhale the good woodland air and work out the kinks from sitting in the car for so many days. Walking always activates our brains and we end up covering all kinds of subjects on our strolls. This particular morning we were paying a lot of attention to the vegetation around us, filled with trees and plants that we hadn’t seen yet on our travels. We startled a couple of women on bikes who thought we might be bears, and a few minutes later I commented to Honey that the air smelled like honey (ha ha). As we walked along a curve in the path, we heard a massive thrashing in the woods ahead of us and watched stunned as a mama black bear sent her cub scampering up a tree before placing herself between us and her young. Before she had a chance to turn to face us, Honey had a grip on my arm and was dragging me back behind the foliage until we were well out of sight. On high alert, we speed walked back the way we came, checking over our shoulders that mama wasn’t following, then we turned and ran.
When we reported our sighting to the rangers at the station, their response was, “Awesome!” Uh, WHAT?!?! I’m so glad our encounter with one of the biggest and most dangerous wild animals in the Upper Midwest met with such an enthusiastic response! Not. A farmer who hosted us a few days later told a story of a friend of his who was attacked by a black bear while he was fishing. The guy survived the attack, but these are not cute or friendly animals and I remain a little surprised at the ranger’s cavalier attitude (although I guess we survived unharmed, so what else was she to do?).
Since we weren’t in the area for long, we decided to explore further afield and drove to the headwaters of the Mississippi in Itasca State Park. Even though the headwaters aren’t very dramatic (lots of tourists also make it a crowded spot) there’s a fabulous permanent exhibit of the terrain and history of the area at the visitor’s center, which serves as a good consolation prize. Tired and a little disappointed, we turned back towards Bemidji to make our way back to our campsite, but as we passed through town, we noticed a crowd gathering in front of a stage on the banks of the lake. A quick search online told me the event was one in a series of free concerts held in the summer, so we summoned our second wind, grabbed our picnic blanket and joined in the festivities.
In the morning, we packed up and followed Route 2 through Duluth where we had some of the best pizza since Pizzeria Bocce in Cottonwood, AZ. Pizza Lucé is a Minnesota chain, and one of the very rare pizzerias that even has homemade GF pizza dough (made out of house by a local company). While we ate, we watched a seemingly endless stream of homeless people meander the streets of downtown Duluth. We’ve seen so much of this in all of the more progressive cities we’ve visited. Proposed solutions seem complex to implement and the challenges appear exponential. It’s been a heart-rending experience to see the staggering (and increasing) numbers of people in this situation. Is there any city that has successfully rehoused, re-employed, and detoxed a significant part of their homeless population? I would love to know of any real success stories any of you might know.
We spent our one night in Wisconsin wild camping at the Potato River Falls Campground—there are a couple of short trails down to the falls and the river which gave us the opportunity to stretch our legs—and the next day crossed into the long awaited Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Our hosts for two nights were a delightful couple from Minnesota who relocated to the UP in 2020, buying their dream farm on 120 acres near the Keweenaw Peninsula. There was a time when society valued the so-called Renaissance man, but our cultural obsession with separation and specialization has all but eliminated such men and women. This couple embody the rebirth of a multi-talented, versatile and diversified approach to living, implementing many different on- and off-farm ventures to ensure variety in their streams of income. This makes them more resilient if any one stream fails, and replaces the monotony of repeated tasks with creativity and variation.
Being recent transplants to the UP, our hosts have held onto their enthusiasm for the area (which is admittedly not hard to do) and gave us a good list of suggestions for exploring. We spent one afternoon driving along the Keweenaw Peninsula to Copper Harbor at the very tip and the next morning hiking in the Porcupine Mountain Wilderness amidst very heavy fog. The views on the Escarpment Trail when not foggy are supposed to be magnificent, but we were barely able to glimpse the lake in the valley below through the enveloping gray.
We also made it to the annual Calumet Pasty Fest and Honey tasted his first UP pasty. The GF ones ran out before we got there, so I didn’t get one, but our hosts told us about a place on our route the next day where we could order them for pickup. Honey’s assessment of the first one was that it was heavy and relatively bland, which is how I felt about mine the following day. Part of me was expecting something more akin to the West Indian patties which are filled with spices and flavors, but it makes sense that the traditional foods of this northern area would be a bit more meat-and-potatoes and less curry/coriander/cloves.
The farm only had two nights available on their schedule, so we spent our last two nights in the UP at the Bay Furnace campground in the Hiawatha National Forest. The campground is right on the banks of Lake Superior and we got lucky and snagged the very last FF spot when we rolled in. Honey immediately took a nap (the poor man has done practically all of the driving on our entire trip) and Goya and I hung out among the choke cherry trees, catching up on phone calls in the glorious sunshine.
The last big highlight of our trip, the last eye-popping surprise of natural wonder was Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Having been in many different forests and types of woodlands in the past six months, we’ve become a bit more discerning, and we’ve discovered which types of forests hold the most appeal for us. That said, there is something very special about the north woods of the upper Midwest. We felt it in Bemidji, and we’ve felt it on every hike we’ve taken in the UP. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what it is about these woods, but the innumerable variations of fungi alone speak to a profoundly healthy and vibrant ecosystem, not to mention all of the easily recognizable fruits and berries free for snacking at this time of year. It all makes for an instinctive, almost primal experience, recalling our historic evolution as a forest-dwelling species.
All along the trail, mushrooms of all shapes and sizes poked through the mosses and leaf litter. Much to my surprise, they thrive here in spite of the sandy soils. About four miles into our hike we arrived at the Mosquito Campground site which overlooks a wide sandstone shelf jutting out into Lake Superior. The water is crystalline at the edges, turning turquoise and then a deep vibrant blue at the drop off. Unable to resist, we took off our shoes and waded in. I thought Lake Superior was reputed to be very cold, but the water temperature was divine. In hindsight, we should have followed our instincts and swam in this spot, but we had another six miles to do and there was a beach a bit further on, so we thought we’d swim there. When we got to that beach, we both regretted that decision. A bunch of boats lined the shore and the water wasn’t nearly as nice. I still swam, but Honey felt uninspired after the unique beauty of the sandstone shelf.
What began for us as journey to find a place to live and discover a few of the incredible sights that combine to shape this vast country is now coming to an end. We have been on the road for six months, and have traveled nearly 18,000 miles. We’ve camped both in stunning and mundane locations and have been touched and humbled by the people we’ve met along the way. One of the biggest takeaways of this trip is how beautiful it is to have the things you believe about a place or a group of people dissolve entirely through personal experience. If we came out from behind our limiting beliefs more often, went to the places we disdain, talked to the people we fear or despise, we would learn how deeply our commonalities connect us.
To paraphrase a conversation we had recently with someone: if you have certain ideas about people or places, go there. See for yourself. Whatever you think is real and true, put it to the test. See if it holds up to your lived experience and if it doesn’t, let it go. I can’t tell you the number of times we have been either surprised or disappointed to find that whatever we thought was true was entirely unfounded. It has been a tremendous lesson in humility and of the importance of remaining curious above all else. Be brave enough to set aside your certainties and find the willingness to let yourself be changed.