Abraham Online

After a quick breakfast in the restaurant, we unloaded the sleds from the trailer and got them started and took care of a few issues with them before heading out for the day.  We wanted to get up to Copper Harbor, and we headed out a little later than anticipated.  The trail took us up toward Chassel, where we topped up with gas and had a hard time finding the point where the trail crosses westward.  We ended up riding the side of the road for a while and eventually picked back up on the trail in South Range.  While on the road, the biggest steer I've ever seen in my life charged at me as I drove by.  I don't know if it is my imagination or what, but this thing was huge!  Honestly, I didn't think cows got that big!  We continued up through Houghton and crossed the bridge over to Hancock, which was a very interesting ride.  I was impressed with how well the trail ran through these two towns and the design of the bridge to accomodate snowmobiles.  About 5 miles out of Hancock, we stopped at Quincy's  tavern in Dollar Bay and enjoyed a nice lunch.  I thought that since I just started a diet I would behave and order a salad, but when they delivered my Cobb, I realized it was anything BUT healthy, with a full chicken breast, hard boiled egg, several slices of bacon, loads of cheese and garbonzo beans.  At least I didn't go hungry.  Once lunch was out of the way, we decided to shorten our trip to a loop up to Calumet and then turn around and head home, since it was getting to be too late to make it all the way up to Copper Harbor.  Rick and I were probably the most dissapointed, as we have been hearing about how wonderful Brockway Mountain Drive is, but we knew that we would be miserable if we pushed forward.  The loop from Hancock around Calumet was very nice, and on the way back we saw a house fire that was way out of control.  Firemen were putting water on it, but the fire had punched through the roof and the whole house was engulfed.  The neighboring houses seemed safe, and we completed our trip and ended up back at the hotel by 6pm.  Rick and I headed down to the hot tub and pool with Scotty and Vinny, and afterward everybody showered and some of us met down at the restaurant for dinner, while the group that went out for pizza went out in search of it again, since they ended up at a bar that only served frozen (yech!).  Tonight I had meatloaf, which turned out to be very good but again, not at all healty.  I headed to bed early again, as we had an early ride planned for Friday.   Daily mileage: 130

Day 2 (Friday, January 9, 2009) click here for log

I couldn't help but feel old as I heard about how the folks that stayed up closed the casino, and here I was at the opening of the restaurant for breakfast, just 2 1/2 hours after they went to bed.  Today we were heading to the Porcupine Mountains area, and we made it out earlier than Thursday, but still a bit later than we planned.  Vinny was not feeling great, and decided to rest for the day.  There is still some debate as to whether he was sick or hung over.  Feel free to leave a comment on your opinion on this.  Heading out from the hotel was a spectacular ride, and we were the first ones on the trail as evidenced by the perfectly groomed conditions which had hardened up very nicely with no traffic on them before us.  I remember thinking that this was as good as it gets while we rode out that morning into the snow flocked trees.  The trail seemed quite a bit more remote than the ones we rode in the Keewenau the day before.  We made it to Ontonogon where we stopped at Roxey's for a bite of lunch.  I ordered something called the "Bitch burger", which was a burger loaded with jalepeno's and topped with pepper-jack cheese.  It was quite delicious, although not very good for my diet.  We spent a couple hours at lunch, since there was only one cook and she could not prepare all of the food too quickly.

 

When we headed back, we decided to take a trail that ran north to Winona from Greenland and made its way back down.  This was another really nice run and we enjoyed that quite a bit, although we ended up going to Twin Lakes and backtracking a ways to the right trail.  Part of the trail crossed over a couple valleys that had wooden bridges which provided a spectacular view of the river and surrounding area.  I wish we could have stopped here and taken a picture or two, but everybody else on the trail seemed to have the same idea and we just moved on through.  This day turned out to be a longer ride than we originally thought, and we ended up back at the hotel at around 7:30pm.  Once the sun went down, we all got very cold and had all of our handwarmers on full blast, which was not helping much.  Rick and I used the hot tub and sauna again and spoke with a group that was saddlebagging their way across the U.P., which seems like a very cool thing to do.  I had originally tried to arrange a saddlebag trip quickly, but did not have enough time to research locations, hotels and distances and decided to just book this hotel and do day trips.  Anyhow,  the restaurant was closed by the time we got cleaned, so we ordered some pizza and hung out drinking a few cocktails.  Daily mileage: 195

Day 3 (Saturday, January 10, 2009) click here for log

After an early breakfast, we headed down to get our snowmobiles started and I had to get mine jump started.  It was very cold out, and the lock was frozen on the trailer too.  Vinny was feeling better and would be riding with us, but Ryan had to sit out the day because he felt sick.  I don't think there is any doubt about him being sick because he didn't get drunk the night before, and for him to sit out a day of riding, it must have been bad.  Today we were heading to Big Bay, which was to the east and not as long a ride as the previous 2 days.  That was okay with us since we would need to load up the trailers and pack up that night anyway since we wanted to get an early start home in the morning.  We passed through the town of L'anse first, and then had a nice but uneventful ride over to Big Bay, where we stopped at the Lumberjack tavern for some lunch.  The bar has the distinction of being the location where the historical events that led to the true story behind the movie "Anatomy of a Murder" took place.  I had a chicken salad for lunch, and figured it was fairly healthy, except it was not enough to fill me.  We agreed to head over to a steak house that I saw advertised for dinner, so I wanted to save myself for that occasion.  On the ride back from lunch, we stopped for a beer and a cigar on the trail at a scenic straightaway.  I decided to use up the remaining room on my video camera, so I took a few videos of the group coming down the trail, then put on the handlebar mount and shot some video of the last portion of trail before getting back to the hotel.  I wish I would have thought to do this earlier, as the trails had deteriorated quite a bit by this point and I ended up getting video of the barest, bumpiest chunk of trail that we experienced the entire trip.  I also realized that I need to bring breath mints, since the cigar taste is awful when confined in a helmet.  Ryan was feeling better and met us outside where we loaded up the sleds, cleaned up, and got on the road to the steak house.  We arrived at the steak house only to find that they were closed for a staff Christmas party!  Chris, who seemed to know every bar in the U.P. knew of another place, and we headed that way.  We were glad to have been diverted, since this was a really nice place, and dinner was fabulous!  We had a nice red wine, which was so cold it should have been frozen.  Not sure what was up with that, but oh well.  The chef came out and chatted with us, which was nice and we ended up having a great final meal.  Daily mileage: 130

Next day we were all up early and we checked out an got on the road by 6:00am.  Everybody was anxious to get back home, and the ride was looking like it could be bad.  It turned out okay though and we did not get any of the stormy conditions that we had seen on the news.  We were back at my house at 3:30, and only stopped once for gas and a quick lunch, so we made pretty good time.

Although we did not get to all of our destinations, and it was a long drive, I will definitely make my way back to the Western UP again.  Hopefully next time we will be able to saddlebag and spend a night up at the tip of the Keewenau!