Road Trip, Day 27, Gwinn to Marquette & Negaunee

These Yooper names may seem strange to people who didn't grow up hearing them, but when I asked John, "What's the name of that town where we got the pork pies and Fin Toast and he said, "Uh, Ishmish?" I really cracked up. It was so strange sounding that suddenly I realized how ridiculous the correct answer actually was, as I remembered the right answer was Ishpeming. My spell checker would really be going nuts here if this program had one. (Oh, what's a Yooper? It's someone or something from the U.P., the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.)

Today we harassed more relatives, arriving unannounced at the hardware store and lumber yard where cousin Dennis works and trying to rent a cousin. He figured out who I was pretty quickly, and we managed to have a nice visit between customers and phone calls. Then John and I headed up North even further to Marquette County, first stopping at Marquette itself, where we visited St. Peter's Cathedral, with its beautiful spires and turrets. Then we crossed the street and walked down a couple of blocks to the Marquette County Courthouse, another amazing structure, infamous as the site of Teddy Roosevelt being put on trial for being a drunk. Yes, it's true. Google it if you don't believe me. Or watch the old movie, Anatomy of a Murder, filmed in this same courthouse.

After that we went over to Big Bay, on Lake Superior, a few blocks over, and visited the Maritime Museum and filmed the lighthouse there. Then followed a string a "hug and run" hour long visits with a bunch of relatives we hadn't seen in a couple of years. Aunt Dorothy looked great, and her home is still museum quality. Her daughter, my cousin Clare, we managed to track down at work. She's the manager of the large Peter White public library. It's huge, and another historic building, with grand architecture. After that we got lost looking for Uncle Peter. We finally found him in Negaunee - or at least on the road leading to Negaunee. He lives in Negaunee like we live in Loveland. Our mailing address says Loveland, but we're a thousand feet above it and 20 minutes outside it. He's about five miles before Negaunee. We just didn't start looking soon enough.

Then we traveled through Negaunee and Ishpeming to the other side of the area to the little shop that makes pork pies and Fin toast to take a treat back to Aunt Cookie tomorrow when we head back to Wisconsin. We're also bringing back some breakfast pasties. Okay, I've mentioned pasties a couple of times here. They're meat pies. Picture a pie crust, stuffed with cubed steak, potatoes, onions and rutabagas. They're folded over and baked, and they're wonderful. (Pronounced pass-tees.) A breakfast pasty has eggs, potatoes, cheese and onions; just what you'd expect. What we bought was all frozen for travel.

So we'll do a little sight seeing on our way back to Wisconsin tomorrow, but we're basically winding our trip down now. Blogs will get shorter. Sleep will get longer - we can hope. Tomorrow there will be no internet, and no cell phone. Try not to need me.