Moving into Yooper Land

Another long drive today of about three hours. I love it when Google Maps tells me as I cross a state line - “Welcome to Michigan” - it makes me feel so welcome in whatever state I've landed in.

I'm heading of a campground called Little Bay de Noc. This is notable because a) it is my first National Forest campsite that I've stayed in and b) because of my advanced age I get to camp at half price - $9.50 a night for those who care. No electric or water hookups and very very quiet. There are three loops here and based on my research, I am looking for a campsite with a bay view. Alas, all the good ones are taken and I end up with one that you have to sort of squint to see the bay. Actually, the bay view ones were the only ones populated. The other campsites were totally empty, all alone in the dark deep woods. It was sort of spooky walking thru those campsites – sort of like a ghost town. The trails were nice – there was a history trail – evidently in the early 1900's – this was quite the resort destination for city folk. All the buildings are gone now, but there were a lot of old-timey pictures of people lounging in the woods.

Why am I here? Two words: Factory Tour!!!! I'm a sucker for factory tours – especially if they have conveyor belts and lots of fancy glittery machinery. This factory tour had none of that but it sort of turned my head around anyway. I went to the Hoegh Pet Casket Company in Gladstone, Michigan sort of as a joke. The idea of pet caskets is rather funny in itself and I expected to scoff at the whole enterprise. I was in for a surprise.

I was greeted very warmly by Tom who was my tour guide. I was the only one on the tour – can't imagine why there was not more demand, but that's ok, their loss. This is a small company which has been in the pet casket business for over fifty years. There must be a demand for the product. Caskets start off with a sheet of plastic. They put it into a heater which does not melt it, but makes it soft. They then put the sheets over a mold and wham, bam – a vacuum force sucks it into the mold. It is like magic. The whole process took about two minutes. I won't go into anymore detail, but there were several more steps to the process. Local women sew the fabric that lines the caskets and drop the fabric off in batches. There is so much demand that sometimes FedEx has to send two trucks daily just to keep up with the shipments. The tour ended in the showroom where you could see the finished products. They also ran a cremation service and they had urns for sale also.

You have your choice of cream, pink, blue and the ever popular camo

The showroom

The Finished Product

Miko and I hiked the Haymeadow Creek Falls Trail to see the waterfall. It was a loop trail but a bridge was out so we had to backtrack. Falls were pleasant but underwhelming.

The last item on my to-do list was to go to the Peninsula Lighthouse which had been decommissioned in 1936. We had to drive down a single lane tiny curvy dirt road to get there. There was nobody there when we got there. The wind had picked up, the waves were crashing on the shores – one of those wild and crazy times. Loved it, but it was starting to get dark and I didn't want to have to drive that tiny dirt road in the dark.

Sort of a lonely little lighthouse, out in the middle of nowhere