MLive says: “According to some Michiganders, Lake Superior is the most beautiful of the Great Lakes. See for yourself while checking out the view from Whitefish Point. Besides the beautiful beach covered in colorful rocks and driftwood that looks like natural art, you'll find a lighthouse to check out. You will also feel a connection to history here, as many shipwrecks occurred near Whitefish Point. The water you'll be looking out upon is the resting place of many ships.”
August 30, 2019
Whitefish Point was the first of many stops on a 10 day trip along Lake Superior’s coast in the Upper Peninsula and Lake Michigan’s coast in Wisconsin. On Friday morning, after a very tetris-like game of packing up my little Subaru with ten days of camping, backpacking, and traveling necessities (including a folding expedition kayak), we hit the road.
Whitefish Point is home to a gorgeous beach, some wicked wind, a wildlife & bird refuge, a lighthouse, and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. We explored it all.
We started with the Shipwreck Museum, which houses the restored bell of the ever-famous Edmund FItzgerald, pulled from the depths of Lake Superior in 1995. The displays detailed shipwrecks that had all happened up near Whitefish Point, and included some really cool information about how divers explore and recover shipwrecks and artifacts. The coolest thing about the museum is that you are allowed to bring your dog inside (not actually the coolest thing, but I spent a lot of my time in there staring at dogs instead of reading about shipwrecks).
After the museum, we walked around some of the historical buildings, including the lighthouse keepers’ home and the building where they used to send out life-saving crews during shipwrecks (the former U.S. Life Saving Service, now the U.S. Coast Guard).
We braved the wind and ventured onto the beach, where granules of sand were pelting my legs like a free exfoliant that I never asked for.
After the beach, we headed down a short boardwalk trail to the bird observation area. There were many signs up about Piping Plovers (Michigan’s cutest bird species), because a lot of them are spotted and counted at Whitefish Point.
Despite the gorgeous scenery, our stomachs were telling us we were well past lunch time. We headed back down the walking trail to the car, where I snapped a few extra photos of the lighthouse against the intensely blue sky.
The plan that night was to camp at Andrus Lake State Forest Campground, but someone pulled in about three minutes ahead of us and snatched up the last campsite…timing is everything. Instead, we drove into Paradise, Michigan, and stayed at everyone’s favorite weird motel: Curley’s Paradise Inn Motel! We’ve stayed there before, on a trip to the U.P. during December a while back. It was hilarious to go back and stay there yet again as a last resort. Luckily, in the summer, Curley’s has a basketball net set up in the parking lot and recliners set up behind the motel on the lake. We spent the evening drinking beer, shooting baskets with a young kid from Germany, and watching the stars in plastic lawn recliners. It was unplanned and perfect.