G.A.S.P.

(Great Adventures to Scenic Places)

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May 27, 1999

I crossed the Straits of Mackinac May 27 on the beautiful Mackinac Bridge. I wasn’t allowed to ride across (no one is) as the road is a narrow four lanes for five miles across the Straits. Instead, I rode in a pick-up truck belonging to the Bridge Authority, for the very reasonable sum of $2.00. After crossing, I hung around St. Ignace for awhile taking photos of the Bridge and of Mackinac Island. Then I headed north to Trout Lake for the night.
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The ride from Trout Lake to Munising was great, but made for a long day (88 miles; arrival about 8:30 pm). The road was mostly good with hardly any traffic on Rt. 123 and not too much on Rt. 28. A lot of the traffic that I did encounter on Rt. 28, however, was trucks. Someone told me that a lot of Canadian truck drivers use that route as a shortcut around Lake Superior. I saw a great number of Tiger Swallowtail butterflies today – just flitting about all along the road. At Seney, I had to decide if I was really going farther this day or not. The 25 miles of road from Seney to Shingleton are straight and flat, but include absolutely nothing except for one rest stop. I decided to press on. The rest stop came up within about 5 miles and boy is it nice. There was a crew laying sod when I arrived, but I didn’t think anything about that until later when someone told me that the "new" rest stop had just opened today. It is apparently only the second one in the UP that is enclosed with heat and indoor plumbing. (Have I mentioned that everyone in Michigan refers to the Upper Peninsula simply as the "UP"?) A few miles further down the road, I found a second, very limited service, rest stop.
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Just a few miles from Shingleton, I heard a train whistle behind me and stopped a couple of minutes to watch the train pass. I waited, but no train. I moved on, but another couple of miles down the road I could finally hear the train coming up behind me. I stopped, waited again, and finally saw a train emerge from behind the trees. (Photo 80) I loved it – one old diesel engine, three unloaded pulpwood cars, two loaded pulpwood cars and two boxcars. That’s it, the whole train. It kind of epitomized life in the UP – slow and simple. I started out again, and shortly realized that the train was not pulling away from me. It became a race. I found a little extra energy and got my speed up to 16 mph. I was now gaining on the train. Car by car I passed it until I pulled even with the engine. At that point, there was no further need to race. I let it go on ahead to Shingleton and Munising.
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