Harley Times in the UP

1150 miles, great weather except for the last day riding home and cool things to see in the western end of the UP

The first photo of the trip is the bridge at Houghton/Hancock....the "start" of the reason I wanted to visit this area.

The wildflowers were in bloom all over the UP so I stopped to smell them
The story of highway 41. From here you can take a dirt road all the way out to the tip of the peninsula to the Copper Harbor lighthouse.

As I said, the wildflowers were in bloom. This is highway 126 on the west side of the Keweenaw Peninsula. It reminded me of the coastline of Maine.

Typical vista on the west side of the Keweenaw.

Eagle Harbor view. I stopped here and found a geocache.

No idea who these guys are but look above them on the lake horizon and you see a freighter.

Another great sunset on Lake Superior on the west end of the UP

The Porcupine Mountains viewed from Ontonagon beach

Click on this to enlarge. It is 7 separate photos stitched together to give an idea of the panoramic view from the tallest viewing deck in the Porcupines. You can see the Apostle Islands on the left horizon.

The Carp River flowing out of Lake of the Clouds in the Porkies

Lake of the Clouds. A beautiful day!

If you enlarge this photo by clicking it you can see a footbridge on the lower center of the photo. I hiked down to there...about a 2 mile walk there and back.

The view from the same bridge looking up to the cliff where I was standing in the photo.

Going into Wakefield I saw a sign for pasties and it was lunch time. I've had a lot of pasties all over the UP but this place makes, in my personal experience, the best pastie in the UP! The lunch special was coffee and a pastie for $4, tax included!

The Black River on the west end runs north of Bessemer to empty into Lake Superior. Along the way there are 3 very beautiful waterfalls as well as lots of rapids. Each requires about a 1.5 mile walk in/out and lots of steps but well worth the effort and time.

Conglomerate Falls...about a 50 foot drop in all.

Another view of Conglomerate Falls

Rainbow Falls which has about a 60 foot drop in all.

Rainbow Falls straight down

I stepped through the railing to do what so many people do....go off the path! This is an outcropping right over the falls. I had to have my daily cigar and since I ran out of water I had to have a little of the wine that I packed. Even cheap Cabernet tastes great on a day like that in a place like that!

Hi Rose, I'm home! I had to wear raingear for the ride home from Bark River just west of Escanaba. But, I'm not complaining. The weather for 3 days was magnificent and I never hit any hard rain.