Devils Lake, North Dakota

As we go further west we see the landscape flattening out.

Here we are, in North Dakota.

Devils Lake was facinating.  It has no natural outlet so as water elevates, it gets bigger and covering more land.  In 1940 it was a series of small lakes about 2 feet deep, by 1993 it was about 23 ft. deep and rather than small lakes, it became one big lake with a surface area of 44,230 acres.  By April 2010, Devils Lake covered about 177,100 acres, or 208 sq. miles.  During that period the volume of water grew by more than 6 times.  You see in this picture, the dead trees in fairly deep water along the road.

They have had to elevate their roads and levies.  It's really strange to see these series of roads in the middle of the lake.

We camped at the Spirit Lake Casino for the next 2 nights.

Yeah, I'm catching up!!!!

Itaska State Park, Minnesota

While driving along Route 2 (still) we needed a place to stop since the dogs needed a pit stop.  We spotted this fish, huge, its a restaurant called The Big Fish.

To get a better perspective of just how big it was, that's Don (my social butterfly) talking to the man who was painting the restaurant.

We finally got to Itaska State Park, where the head waters to the Mississippi River are.  You should enlarge this picture, really interesting.  They had a model of the land around the entire length of the river showing all the rivers that feed it along the way.  After inquiring, we found out that it takes about 90 days for the water leaving this spot to get to the Gulf Coast.

This is the monument marking the beginning of the Mississippi River.

And Here it is flowing out of Lake Itaska.  The front part is the river.

Here's Joyce and I crossing the Mississippi River by foot.

Duluth, Minnesota

This is Engine 225 of the Duluth Missabe & Iron Range Railroad.  It is HUGE, 16 feet tall and 127 ft. 8 in. long.  It holds 25 gallons of water and 26 tons of coal.  Between 1941 and 1961 is ran 694,360 miles and hawled 44 million tons of iron ore.

Here are 2 more pictures.

Along with Don looking over the caboose

We took a road winding up a mountain and stopped for this view of Lake Superior and the mouth of the St.Louis River.  This was the 4th of the 5 Great Lakes we saw.  Lake Superior has more cubit feet of water than all the other 4 combined. 

Here's a train, from the height we were from, it almost looked like a toy train.

The view was amazine.

Especially through the binoculars.

A Day in Winconsin

When driving down Route 2 on the Michigan Upper Peninsula, you cross over to Winconsin for 10 miles than back into Michigan for another 110 miles til you get back into Winconsin.  I mentioned that there were alot of Indian reservations in the northern part of the states, that started in New York.  There are also alot of things named with a French name, I know we've been not that far from the Canadian border, but I didn't realize the French went this far west.

I found an interesting glass studio in the Winconsin travel book.  The directions took us way in the country, on a dirt road.  We were afraid it might be somewhere where we would have to unhook our car to be able to turn around,  Luckily, the road went back to the highway.  Here is some of the glass we saw, absolutely beautiful.  The husband blows glass, the wife does stained glass and the daughter does glass jewelry.  I purchased a pendant.

This is another example.

They have been continuously building a house since the 70's  A very unique house and studio.

This is one of the windows the wife made, they are all over the store.

Further down the road was a wood carving studio, the kind they do with a chain saw.  Take a look at this bear.

This is another carving.  Similar to what we saw in Beloxi, Mississippi last winter.

There was also a potery studio but we didn't dare go down that road, its a little more difficult when you're driving a 40 foot motorhome towing a car, so we called it a day and stayed at another casino.

We left Cheboygan, Michigan and crossed the Macknicaw Bridge into the Upper Peninsula, very long bridge, look at a map.

Then we were on the Lake Michigan shore, our third Great Lake.

 

We traveled route 2 and there are alot of Indian reservations along route 2.  They all seem to have a casino on their reservations, most of which have a campground.  We stayed at this one in Harris, Michigan.

In Iron Mountain, Michigan is the Cornish Pump & Mining Museum.

This pump was huge, it was used to pump the water out of mines.  They needed a pump of this magnitude because of the depth of the mine and the volume of water they needed to pump out.

The museum also had alot of mining artifacts, the guys especially liked it.

Mackinac Island

Mackinac Island is a small island just to the right of the bridge crossing to the Upper Peninsula. 
There are several ferry companies that bring people accross, this is the one we went on.

This is a view of the Mackinac Bridge crossing from Michigan to the Upper Peninsula.

Some of the ferry lines used these jet propulsion boats.

We saw MANY red hat ladies there that day, must have had a special.

There are no motorised vehicles allowed on the island except for lawn mowers on your property, golf carts on the golf courses, fire trucks & ambulances, and of course snow mobiles in the winter.   Everybody gets to where they want by bicycle or horse & buggy.  See the street lined with bicycles.

This was a delivery person, he had a large horse drawn wagon and 2 little trailers attached.  I understand UPS has an office there and uses horses too.

There are several touring companies too, this one was a taxi.  I especially liked the color of the horses.

This is one of the fire carts they used to use.

The first leg of the tour was in a 2 horse buggy holding 20 people.  The second was in one of these buggies holding 35 people and drawn by 3 larger draft horses.

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I just loved the look and grace of these horses as they worked.  They all looked very well taken care of.  When I questioned our drivers, they said they work only 4 hours per day from May to October then they go to an area on the Upper Peninsula where they can go inside or outside, where ever they want and they don't work.  The first half of the 45 minute trip was mostly up hill.  The driver would stop often to let them rest.  They also had a spray bottle and sprayed them periodically.  They were also given water at least 3 times during the entire trip, maybe 4.

We stopped here where we could go on an overlook.  This is a natural rock formation.

I loved looking down on this victorian looking house

You have to enlarge this one.  This is the transportation for people comming off the ferry and staying at the Grande Hotel at the tope of the hill.  The driver is decked out with a top hat and black vest and the horsed have fringe over their backs and head dresses.

Mackinac City, Michigan

Pronounced Mackinaw.  We stayed in Cheboygan, Michigan and did daily excursions from there.
As we made the turn to get to the campground, we saw this sign at an auto body shop.

We found "Woodland Creek Furniture and Gallery", what an awesome place.  Everything was very rustic, You can't see all of it because of a table in front of it, but if you enlarge this picture by clicking on it, you'll see this clock.  It's a huge piece of wood, looks like the natural curves of the tree.  They had many items all very unique.  This particular one was selling for $4,995.00.

They also had stuffed toys of local wild animals, like a skunk, racoon, they were the cutest things.

We then visited the "Mackinaw" Coast Guard ice breaker, also knows as the "mighty mac".

She breaks up ice on the great lakes.

This is the bridge going to the Upper Peninsula...that part of Michigan that's not attached to Michigan.