Gitche Gumee And Some Family History

It's still raining so I'm still writing.  In the last post, I rode across the Mighty Mac at noon on Monday 8/27 and stopped at an observation tower just west of St Ignace to take a picture of the bridge.  My next stop was another couple of miles west on Highway 2 at Lehto's Pasties for lunch. Many believe that Lehto's makes the best pasties in the UP.  You can't eat there...they don't even have a picnic table, but a half mile to the east is a roadside park with tables, toilets, water, and a view of the lake.  They make one kind of pasty at Lehto's, containing beef and potato, and it is large and very good.  I sat at a picnic table in the park looking at the pasty and thinking there was no way I could eat it all, but once I got started I couldn't stop until it was all gone...and then I licked the paper.

I left the park full and satisfied and continued westward on highway 2 to highway 77 north, to 28 west into Au Train, a small town on Lake Superior, twelve miles west of Munising. A little west of Au Train on Au Train Bay is where my foster cousin Ruth and her husband Mark purchased a "camp" a few years ago.  The camp consists of a two BR cabin and a large out-building where they store all manner of vehicles and equipment.

I should explain "foster cousin".  My Finnish mother, Aina Ellen Syrjanen, was brought to the UP by her mother in 1920 at age 10.  Her father Gust Syrjanen preceeded them by 7 years and operated  a bakery in Marquette and later in Chatham.  When their mother died young, Ruth's father, Paul, and his sister, Signe, were partially raised by my grandparents and my mother.  Ruth and Mark, who were both raised and live in Florida, have taken a keen interest in the Syrjanen family history, and have done a tremendous amount of research including two trips to Finland and many many trips to the UP culminating in the purchase of their camp where they now spend summers.  They now know a lot more about my mother's family than I ever did and probably ever will. I love getting together with them and learning more about the Syrjanens. This is a shot of the Lake Superior shoreline that lies just beyond the trees in the shot above.

Monday evening, we drove a couple of miles east on highway 28 to eat at the Brownstone Inn which is also right across the street from the lake and has been in operation since 1946.

The dining room is rustic and the food is good.  I enjoyed the Lake Superior White Fish.

The current owner is jolly fellow Jeff Van Bremen.

The bar is both rustic and cozy, just the way you want it in the far north woods.

Tuesday morning, we headed about 10 miles south to Chatham, where my grandfather's second bakery in the UP was located. Before leaving the Lake Superior shore, I stopped to look at a cabin my Uncle Jorma used to rent as a summer getaway.  Current rent is $1,000 a year if you are interested.

The shortest route to Chatham from Jorma's cabin is south on Rock River Road, a beautiful gravel lane through the north woods.

The current population of Chatham is about 230.  The entire village burned to the ground in 1925 with the exception of two brick buildings...the Pacific Hotel, shown here, and another building across the street.

Today the hotel operates as a restaurant, and that's where we ate breakfast.  I had "Fish In The Boat", Lake Superior lake trout with fried eggs and hashbrowns, yum yum.  Here's an old photo of the original Pacific Hotel.

My grandfather's bakery was one of the casualties of the fire. This was the original Chatham bakery.

And this is the bakery after the fire. That's Grandpa Gust Syrjanen 2nd from the left.

The bakery in Chatham was rebuilt, along with most of the rest of the town, and operated as a bakery for several more years, but has since been torn down.  Gust died in 1933 at age 65.  His son, my Uncle Jorma, built a bakery in 1928 in Trenary about 12 miles south of  Chatham.  That bakery is still in operation and ships "Trenary Toast" nationwide.  That story coming in a future post.

A Sturdy Stuff Tradition And The Mighty Mac

I left Dowagiac, MI Sunday afternoon without a definite destination in mind.  I knew I wanted to be in Au Train in the UP on the shore of Lake Superior sometime Monday afternoon, so I needed to cover part of that distance Sunday afternoon.  I made a quick stop at an old classmate's house to give him a photo of our young grandson, playing with a Sturdy Stuff Toys farm tractor and trailer.

I found Steve mowing his grass. He and I went to school together from 1rst grade through high school, and then even on to college at Michigan State. In grades 1 through 8, we attended Baker, a one-room country school near our homes in rural Van Buren County. He and I were always the only two students in our class.  

Steve's mom and dad were farmers, but they also made Sturdy Stuff Toys...wooden toy tractors, trucks, trains, and even boats. They sold a lot of toys to local kindergartens. As a kid, I had just about every Sturdy Stuff Toy in the catalog. The "toy factory" was in the barn.  During summers as a young boy, I used to help make the toys, doing whatever a young boy could safely do...mostly sanding.  When our son Michael was born in '77, Steve's folks gave him an Oliver 70 tractor and trailer which he played with for many years, and which I still have, although it is sorely in need of restoration.  Many years later, after both his parents and the company were long gone, Steve took me to the barn and dug out a brand new Oliver 70 tractor and trailer and handed them over in the event that Michael ever had a son.  Well, Cameron is now a year-and-a-half old and is enjoying his tractor every bit as much as his dad and granddad once did.  He makes a very realistic tractor sound as he pushes it around.  How do they learn that? It must be in the DNA.  

I left Steve and headed west about 20 miles to Lake Michigan and rode the Blue Star Highway north through South Haven, and Saugatuck, and then jumped on 31 to get through Holland, Grand Haven, and Muskegon.  North of Muskegon, I was planning to hug the shoreline on the two-lane back roads and visit Silver Lake where Penny and I honeymooned  back in 1966. But, 20 or so miles south of Silver Lake it began to rain steadily.  So I stopped in the middle of Michigan farm land, suited up, abandoned the narrow back roads, and hastened eastward to the 4-lane, limited-access ease of Highway 31. Back on 31 I hustled as quickly as conditions would allow to the next significant town, which turned out to be Ludington.  Ludington is the departure point for the ferry across Lake Michigan to Manitowoc, WI.  I figured there would be plenty of motels in Ludington to service the ferry traffic, and I was right. When I passed a sign that said Food, Wine, and Lodging, I knew I had found my place for the night.

The food part turned out to be breakfast only, so I still had to find a restaurant for dinner, but as it turned out, Scotty's was a good restaurant with good seafood very nearby.  I enjoyed one of the best seafood pasta dishes I ever ate...loaded with shrimp and scallops in a white wine, lemon, garlic sauce.  The wine part was interesting.  They ran a tasting room in the lobby for a local Lake Michigan winery, Fenn Valley.  I paid a couple of bucks to taste a variety of reds and whites, and bought a bottle of the Meritage to take to the UP.

Monday dawned clear and bright.  I needed to make my way to I-75 which leads to the Mackinac Bridge, the gateway to the Upper Peninsula.  Roads in Michigan are laid out on a grid to the extent possible.  Getting to I-75 in a scenic way involved riding a series of intersecting east/west and north/south roads.  I rode 10 east out of Ludington to 37 north to Mesick, then 42 east to 131 in Manton, and took 131 north through Fire Lake to Mancelona.  A lot of these roads were through the north woods, and I kept an eye out for deer.  In Mancelona I turned east on County 38 which runs eastward over to Otsego Lake, and may be the only twisty road in Michigan.  For a few minutes as I approached the lake, I could have been on a  curvy NC mountain road.  After picking up I-75, it was a straight shot north to The Bridge.

There was no place to get a good shot of the bridge before entering it, but luckily, the right lane was closed for construction and I could pull over between the cones and stop for a photo.  Fortunately, no cops came along, as they would probably have frowned upon that maneuver.  The bridge, which is 5 miles long and 200 feet above the water at mid-span, was opened to traffic in 1957.  The towers rise 550 ft above the water, and the water is almost 300 ft deep in the middle.  I hear that you don't want to ride it (or even drive it for that matter) on a windy day. There is a story about a Yugo, driven by a young woman, plunging off the bridge in 1989, with high winds being a contributing factor:  http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-10-03/news/8901190020_1_suspension-bridge-accident-car .  You can have a state worker drive your car across for you if you are too panic-stricken to do it yourself, but I doubt that you can get them to ride your bike across for you.  Crossing the "Mighty Mac" is something every motorcyclist should experience.

St Ignace is the town in the UP that anchors the northern end of The Bridge.  Route 2 leads west out of St Ignace, closely hugging the Lake Michigan shoreline.  About a mile out of town, an observation tower rises from a small parking area between the road and the lake. For $1 you can purchase the privilege of climbing 200 steps to the observation deck.

I didn't know how many stair-steps there were when I started, but I do now. I'm not sure I would have climbed it if I had known at the start. But if you persist, you are rewarded with nice views of the bridge and the lake.

Next episode...riding the UP from the one great lake to another.

A Reunion Of Oldies But Goodies

I've been riding this summer, but not taking the time to write about the trips. It's a rainy day here in Lake Lure...a good opportunity to post some words and photos from the summer's travels that are now becoming bygone memories.

2012 marked the 50th anniversary of my graduating class from Dowagiac Union High  in southwestern Michigan.  Our 50th class reunion was held the weekend of Aug 25.  It was a good excuse for a ride to experience a healthy dose of Pure Michigan.  My plan was to attend the reunion and then do a Lake Michigan circle tour which would give me the opportunity to visit some cousins in the UP that I rarely get to see. Wife Penny drove to Dowagiac for the reunion, then headed back to Lake Lure on Sunday to prepare for Labor Day weekend and the large family gathering that has become an annual event at our place.

It was great seeing a bunch of old classmates, several of whom had never before attended a class reunion. I think there is something special about reaching the 50 year mark that moves people to want to get together with old friends from their youth.  In any event, it was good to see some folks that I haven't seen in 50 years.

Here are a few shots of happy 68-year-old faces...people who were glad to see each other after 50 years.

Roger and Jack

Henry, Walt, and Earle

Larry and Mary Anne

Barbara

Butch and Ron

Liz, Suzie, and John

Penny and me

We had reunion activities Friday and Saturday. On Sunday we spent time with Penny's brother Bill, his wife Barb, daughter Morgan, and son Mike.  Mike was involved in a violent head-on collision back in May and was newly out of the hospital and living at home with Bill and Barb.  He was just relearning to walk with the aid of a walker and was wearing a "halo" with a shoulder and chest harness and pins into his scull to immobilize his head and neck due to the severe damage to the neck muscles and tendons suffered in the accident along with a severely smashed pelvis and leg.  His X-rays show a bewildering maze of pins, plates, and screws holding his pelvis and hips together. The latest word on Mike, just four weeks after our visit, is that the halo has come off and he has been able to trade the walker for a cane.  Way to go Mike.  What a tough guy.

On Sunday afternoon, Penny headed south for NC and I headed north for the UP.  The next episode will be devoted to my ride around Lake Michigan and my visit with "Yooper" cousins.

Photo Montage Video Of Past Rides -- I've Been Everywhere

Post Script

We just spent an enjoyable two days with Carole and Laurent, the adventurous French couple that we met in Alaska as we boarded the ferry in Juneau, bound for Prince Rupert, BC. You may recall from this post that they are now three months into a twelve-month journey, traversing most of North, South, and Central America. They modified their original route slightly to swing through North Carolina on their way down to Florida to rendezvous with their grown children for a vacation, or as they would say, a holiday. I rode over to Knoxville Sunday afternoon to meet them for dinner and a nights rest in one of Tom Bodett’s finest. They had spent the previous night in Louisville at the home of Inspector Gadget. Dave W fed them filet mignon and sweet corn. The corn on the cob was a first for them and they said it was good, but they spent the rest of the night brushing their teeth, trying to remove the silk. The reason for meeting in Knoxville was so I could accompany them down to Deal’s gap on the Tennessee/North Carolina border to ride The Tail Of The Dragon. It seems this 11 mile stretch of Highway 129 with its 318 curves has an international reputation and is on the bucket list of riders the world over. Here is a video clip of pieces of The Dragon, shot by Carole from her rear perch on the GS. Laurent also has a camera mounted on his right-side crash bar, but when we looked at the film, all you could see was the tops of trees.

At the East (NC) end of The Dragon lies the Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort. There you can eat, drink, sleep, and have your picture taken.

A lot of high testosterone sport-bike riders like to test their skills against The Dragon. Sometimes they win and sometimes The Dragon wins, in which case surviving pieces end up on The Tree Of Shame. Carole didn’t want her picture taken with the Tree Of Shame because it might bring bad luck. Sorry Carole…I was taking a photo of the tree, and you wandered into the scene.

The guy on the right is Nathan Mende, owner of Boxerworks BMW shop in Watkinsville, GA. They specialize in restoration, service, and repair of older air-head Beemers. This is a link to his website. We met Nathan and his girlfriend at a stoplight in Marysville on the way to Deals Gap. They were on their way home from attending the AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, OH. Nathan’s girl friend was born in France and really enjoyed the opportunity to talk to Carole.

After leaving Deals Gap, we rode a good portion of the Cherohala Skyway and then the Blue Ridge Parkway, running into rain again as we started down the mountain on NC 276 into Brevard.

We arrived home in Lake Lure, soaking wet, just in time for one of Penny’s wonderful meals of roast chicken with croutons, potato galette, green beans, and blueberry crumble.

Tuesday was a beautiful sunny day, and we took advantage of it with a tour of the lake, including a picnic lunch on the water. Laurent scored another first by trying his hand at driving a boat instead of a motorcycle.

Their visit ended all too soon, as they headed on down the road this morning, hoping to make it to Miami sometime early Friday. Au revoir good friends. We hope to see you in France next year.

Ride Maps

I thought I would post maps of the Alaska trip. In Google Maps, the map is divided into daily segments with beginning and end points and mileage. Thirty-seven days wouln't fit on one page in Google (and therefore on one map) so I divided it into the route to and in Alaska and the route home. This link will take you to the map in Google if you want to see details. You have to click on next at the bottom on the left side to see the second (return route) page, and you have to click on individual daily segments on the left to see details.

The Rest Of The Story

My last report on the Alaska trip was two weeks ago. We are home now. The trip is over. My long time dream is now a memory. Unfortunately, the last few days of the odyssey turned sad. Dave W’s ailing brother, Jesse, passed away. We were making our way home, and had just gassed-up in Vernal, Utah on Thursday 6/30 on our way down to Rifle, CO and I-70 when Dave got the news. (Gadget has a Bluetooth com system in his helmet that allows him to make and receive I-Phone calls on the go). He rode for 2 ½ hours, staying from one to two hundred yards behind me, thinking about his brothers, the two that are now both gone, and Jo, his still vibrant and sharp-as-a-tack mom.

When we finally reached Rifle around 5:30 pm and pulled into a gas station, he quietly said, “Jess died, I have to get home.” We sat down and talked about it awhile. I knew I wasn’t up to the kind of hours he was going to put in to get back to Louisville as quickly as possible, so we decided to split up. Gadget headed east on I-70, hoping to make it beyond Denver before stopping for the night, and I started looking for a motel in Rifle. Dave made it home to Louisville two days later on Saturday evening July 2, while I arrived home in Lake Lure to fireworks on the 4th of July.

Now I need to back up and fill in the gap between arriving by ferry on the north end of Vancouver Island and receiving the bad news about Jesse in Vernal, UT.

It took about 7 hr to ride the 300 miles from Port Hardy at the north end of the island down to Victoria on the southern tip of the island. The only wildlife of note that we saw along the way were a couple of eagles. Victoria is a beautiful city and the capital of British Columbia. We spent two nights at Marketa’s B&B on Superior St, a couple of blocks from the harbor, the Parliament Building, and the ferry docks. That’s the Parliament Building behind us.


If you turn around and snap another picture you see the harbor and the Empress Hotel.


The breakfasts at Marketa’s were delicioso. I had eggs benedict two mornings in a row because I enjoyed it so much…high cholesterol be damned…I’m on vacation. I hope my cardiologist doesn’t read this.


You can read all about the great food we consumed on this trip on Penny’s food blog if you are interested.

One of the highlights of our stay in Victoria was a visit to one of Penny’s blogging friends who lives in the Highlands on the outskirts of Victoria on several acres with a couple of ponds, some ducks, chickens, goats, an unwanted American Bullfrog, and a loveable Cairn Terrier named Rory. Her blog, Pondside, is beautifully written and heartfelt. She and her husband, The Great Dane, a retired Canadian Air Force Officer, invited us for lunch on Friday 6/24 and it was a pleasure getting to know them. She chronicled our visit in a post, from which I borrowed this shot of us departing through their gate on our way back to Victoria.



The next morning it was time to board our fourth and final ferry for the 2 ½ hr ride to Port Angeles, WA and bid adieu to the fair city of Victoria.


After disembarking in Port Angeles at noon, we headed west past the very scenic Crescent Lake in the Olympic National Park, to the Pacific coast of Washington and down the coastline on WA 101. For some reason, all the pictures I took along the way have disappeared into the ether. Our destination was The Inn At Crippen Creek Farm, a two-guestroom B&B in a very rural setting a couple of miles north of the tiny burg of Skamokawa, WA.

Penny has written beautifully about our evening and morning at Crippen Creek in a post on her blog here, so I won’t try to compete with her except to say that both the dinner and breakfast that we were treated to were true feasts. And, the dinner guests around the table that Saturday night, 6/25, were a varied and interesting group that included the author of Hold Me Tight And Tango Me Home who has also been a spotter pilot for commercial fishing fleets in Alaska.


Also at the table were a semi-retired commercial Alaskan fisherman who is now doing fish research on the Columbia River on a government contract, a civil rights attorney who founded the ACLU Chapter in Washington, and a commercial free-lance photographer who has worked as a commercial crabber in Alaska with the Deadliest Catch fleet. The dinner conversation was interesting to say the least.

Here we are with the Inn Keepers, Don and Kitty Speranza.


Our final scheduled stop was Sun River, OR where Dave and Tulin have good friends from Louisville, Michael and Deborah Diven, who moved to Oregon several years ago and own the Village Bar And Grill (VBAG for short) in Sun River. While Dave and Tulin stayed with Michael and Deborah, Penny and I were graciously hosted by their good friends, Gary and Kate Brooks. We stayed a total of three nights in Sun River and had a great time sightseeing and hanging out at the VBAG with a large group of friendly and funny folks. The VBAG has a definite Cheers vibe to it.


We drove some and hiked some to see an obsidian lava flow field near Paulina Lake, south of Sun River. Here Kate, Deborah, and Tulin show-off their high tech hiking footwear especially designed for trekking in snow.


On our last night in Sun River we all gathered at Gary and Kate’s house for dinner.


Michael made his famous Oysters Rockefeller.


I must have eaten a couple of dozen of them. Early the next morning, Wed June 29, Kate and Deborah drove Penny and Tulin to the airport in Redmond to fly home. Penny said the girls wanted to know if the oysters worked...she wasn’t telling.

Meanwhile, Gadget and I took off for home heading down OR 31. At that point of the journey, California remained as the only state that I hadn’t ridden in, and our route was taking us within 20 miles of the OR/CA border. So, instead of turning left on OR 140, the only route eastward, we continued south to Goose Lake and the California state line. We stopped at the first “Welcome To California” sign, took a picture, and turned around and rode back to the junction with 140, then headed east. I can now color in all of the remaining lower 48 states on my riding map in addition to Alaska and all remaining Canadian Provinces except Northwest Territories, The Maritime Provinces, and Nunavut which isn’t accessible by land. The continental US map will be all red as a result of this ride….woo hoo!

That day we made it to Wendover, UT where we found the light on at Motel 6. For dinner, we rode back two blocks to the west to West Wendover , NV to eat at the Montego Bay Casino. There is a line painted on the street with NV printed on one side and UT on the other. The string of casinos on the Nevada side abruptly stops at the line.

On the way to Wendover, we passed through Winnemucca, NV. I’ve now been just about everywhere…you got nothing on me Johnny Cash.


On Thursday, 6/30, we continued eastward across the Bonneville Salt Flats and past the Great Salt Lake. It was strange to inhale air that smelled like the ocean in the middle of a desert. I am hereby adding to my bucket list a return ride to the Salt Flats during Speed Week. Another minor bucket list item was about to be checked off as we rode into Salt Lake City. I have been wanting to see the Morman Tabernacle and Salt Lake LDS Temple for many years. We took the time to exit I-80 and seek out the Temple. I was disappointed that non-Mormans are not allowed inside the Temple, but it is still impressive from the outside, and they have a cut-away model in the visitors center to show you what it looks like on the inside.


Here’s the Temple as viewed from the 10th floor of the Joseph Smith Building across the street.


Here’s the cut-away model. It’s as close as we non-Mormans will come to seeing the inside of the Temple.


Later on that day, we made our way on down to Rifle, CO, passing through Vernal, UT where Dave got the news of his brother’s death. I spent the night in Rifle while Dave rode hard for Louisville. The next day, July 1, I bailed off of I-70 at Glenwood Springs and headed south on CO 82 through Aspen and across Independence Pass. This is a beautiful and challenging road. In some sections, it is very narrow with shear rock faces on the left (going south) and steep drop-offs on the right with no guard rail. Several mini waterfalls were flowing down the rock faces and contining across the road, presumably from melting snow above. At 12,095 ft, Independence Pass is the second highest in Colorado after Cottonwood Pass which only exceeds it by 31 ft. It was pretty cold at the top of the pass with lots of snow still on the ground.


As I descended the south slope, the temperature increased quickly, and I would soon come to cherish the cooler temps higher up as the temperature eventually climbed into the low 100’s. I spent that night in Dalworth, TX, a small cattle and oil town north of Amarillo. I was in Amarillo by 9 am the next morning (Saturday) and called the Suzuki dealer about installing a new chain on the bike because mine was making ominous noises and I was worried about it lasting until I got home. They said to come on in and they would install a new one, and they did, which only took about an hour. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it out of the parking lot before the new chain jumped the front sprocket and broke the clutch control rod that passes in front of it. This little mishap took another three hours to repair. I was finally on the road again by 2:30 pm….too late to reach my initial goal of Fort Smith, AK, so I settled for Oklahoma City. After spending another night as Tom Bodett’s guest, I managed 650 miles on Sunday with the temperature stuck at 102 F. This put me in Dickson, TN about 35 mi short of Nashville, for another night at Tom’s place. It was an easy 5 ½ hr ride home on Monday, arriving to the aforementioned fireworks in Lake Lure.

In summary, it was a heck of a ride and the topmost item on my bucket list, but not the last. There are still all those Maritime Provinces to see, the Lake Superior circle tour to do, not to mention the four-corners tour. But those will have to take a backseat to Penny’s top list item…France. Next year it will be France Or Bust, but not by motorcycle.

Been there, done that.