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Hunts' Guide to Michigan's UPPER PENINSULA

JUST OUT! A new edition of Hunts' Mapguide to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Over 300 entries, all conveniently located on maps and chosen because we think they are the coolest things to do in the U.P. (No ad tie-ins!) Great choices for restaurants, hikes, shops, adventures, museums, boat trips, waterfalls, vistas, road trips, and much more! To learn more click UP MAP GUIDE

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GRAND MARAIS
POINTS
OF INTEREST

Pickle Barrel Museum. A summer house in two giant barrels for the creator of the long-lived Teenie Weenie cartoons. Now saved from rot and open to the public with historical displays and period rooms circa 1930. ... more

The Campbell Street Gallery. Much of the space in this restored frame building is given over to owner Maeve Croghan's vivid expressionist landscapes, reminiscent of Canada's Group of Seven ... more

Gitche Gumee Agate & History Museum. Agates, rockhounding, geology, commercial fishing, and the self-sufficient local lifestyle after the lumber company left – Karen Bryzs's heartfelt museum tells these stories ... more

Marketplace. A showroom for a members of Grand Marais Cottage Industries. You'll find photographs, handknits, lamps, novelties, art glass, carvings ... more

Harbor entrance, range lights, pier & beach. People fish from the long stone pier jutting far out into Lake Superior, protecting the harbor. The long beach, the range light, and two museums, one in the old Coast Guard station, draw people to Coast Guard Point ... more

Grand Marais Maritime Museum. In the former Coast Guard station the National Parks Service installed this spare museum with photos and a few artifacts ... more

Light Keeper's House Museum. Built by the Coast Guard in 1908, This 1908 Coast Guard keeper's house houses a hands-on local museum strong on stories. ... more

Grand Marais Agate Beach. Prized for their interesting patterns of concentric bands of translucent red and clear or white, agates attract rockhounds to Lake Superior's northern shore. This long stretch of beach is a convenient place and thus more picked over, but a storm may bring up fresh rocks ... more

Goewey’s Garage. Lee and Betty Goewey make very popular fish carvings as well as art glass windows ... more

Crystal Pine Cone. Beach stones become landscapes and maritime scenes, or animals and people. The Woropay family’s studio/gallery is in a cabin among pine trees ... more

Creative Enterprises. Bob and Nancy Weston’s interesting studio/shop in the woods features nature-inspired crafts from U.P. craftspeople and their own photographs and paintings ... more

Sable Falls. Take a walk through the woods to the top of this delightful waterfall. Go down a stairway to a rocky agate beach and wander east for awhile ... more

Grand Sable Bank & Dunes. Vast dunes seen from the trail here create a dramatic view, especially when the sun is low ... more

Grand Sable Visitor Center. A good place for information on the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, regional nature and history books, and a 2-mile trail through a shady beech-maple forest ... more

North Country Trail/Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Hike the trail connecting the lakeshore's prominent sights to experience them more fully than a drive-up-and-go-on view. Plan your hike so a shuttle bus can take you back ... more

Log Slide Overlook. Almost 300 feet above Lake Superior, there are splendid views to the Au Sable Lighthouse and the immense expanses of the Grand Sable Dunes. Exhibits show the scene when loggers rolled logs down for loading on ships ... more

Au Sable Point Lighthouse. A picture-perfect lighthouse on the rocks, a tower to climb on scheduled tours, shipwreck skeletons in the sand ... more

Twelvemile Beach & White Birch Trail. Walk the long beach or head inshore along a 2-mile nature trail through an unusual forest of old white birches ... more

Kingston Plains Burns. The best-known of the U.P.'s eerie stump fields or ghost forests created when forest fires across the cutover were so hot they burned off the soil's humus and the forest couldn't grow back. Pine resin preserved giant stumps. Some still remain ... more

GRAND MARAIS

Light Keeper's House Museum

The bungalow near the range lights, built by the Coast Guard in 1908 as the keeper's residence, houses the local museum. The active Grand Marais Historical Society has tried to furnish it as a working-class home using artifacts from the area. More contemporary wallpaper sets a discordant note at first, but plans are to replace it with something closer to the original. In any case, the museum is more about stories and things than décor.

Historical society members have recorded a lot of oral histories from old-timers, resulting in tours that include some good stories that go with things in the museum – like one of the bicycles driven by gears not a chain. It was used by a local couple who, around 1900, bicycled on Indian trails and country roads from South Dakota to Grand Marais, long before highways. As a hands-on museum, nothing is behind cases. Kids can play the piano (it's out of tune because the museum isn't heated), use an old hand coffee grinder to grind a few beans, crank the phone, and ring the "blueberry bell." Picking blueberries was an important source of income. Families would camp in the cutover areas where blueberries flourish. Children had to stay within hearing distance of the blueberry bell. There's also a document room. Search for "Grand Marais Historical Society" and you'll come to its web site, with a gallery of historic photos for sale to raise money.

Take Lake Ave./M-77 through town. Just before it ends at the beach, turn right onto Canal/CR 702 and go east past the North Shore Lodge. Open daily 1-4 from July 4 thru August. Open in June and September on Sat & Sun, 1-4. Other times by appointment, which can be spur of the moment. 494-2404 or 494-2210. Free. Donations welcomed. Handicap accessible except second floor.

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