 | | Country Garden Quilts is one of a dozen personal specialty shops that have sprung up in Michigamme in recent years. Mary Poirier likes fabrics in flowery palettes like her garden. The shop is quite a drop-in gathering place for customers from near and far. | The village's crafts, gift, and home décor shops, sometimes in charming historic buildings, cater to area retirees, to Marquette County residents, and travelers on U.S. 41/M-28. Many shops were early-retirement projects. Now a number of the original generation of retailers have sold or closed to move on to other pursuits. Blooming Bay garden shop closed, and now A Stone's Throw, the original shop, is for sale. The Beary Patch space is now used by a busy quilt shop. It's open year-round, as is Michigamme Moonshine art gallery. In season some ten stores should be open. Local people have created a public library in the building that used to be St. Anne's Catholic Church. The energetic Frederike Roach of Michigamme Moonshine is happy to field general questions about "Moose Country" — the Michigamme/Champion/Three Lakes area.
Moose Days in fall include a 10k run and a children's moose hunt, in which kids earn their antlers by spotting for plywood moose throughout the town. Shops hold a two-weekend November holiday open house starting the first weekend after opening day of deerhunting season. There's a special luncheon, plus refreshments, luminaries, and more. A horse-drawn wagon picks up and drops of customers at every shop, free of charge.
Not all shops are open Sundays in summer. Special points of interest, arranged from east by the lake going up the hill, include::
• CROCK & ROCKER. A very cool, eclectic gift shop, as sophisticated as one might excect to find in Ann Arbor or Madison. 101 E. Main. (906) 323-6214.
• A STONE'S THROW. Around 1980 Mary and Bob Mercier, a Michigamme native and teacher in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, started this, Michigamme's first shop. It's in a small frame house, typical of Swedish immigrants here. The shop offers pottery and dishware, rugs, baskets, watercolors, books about plants, animals, and area history, all with a natural theme, often from France, where the Merciers spend time in winter. On the east end of Main Street. (906) 323-6356. Open Mem. Day thru Thanksgiving. Call for hours. Handicap access: several steps.
• MICHIGAMME HISTORICAL MUSEUM. This museum conveys Michigamme's history with artifacts about logging and mining, fishing and hunting, the Moose Lift, and of course Anatomy of a Murder, a small part of which was filmed here. Life-size cutouts of Jimmy Stewart and Lee Remick make for a nifty photo-op. There are also reminders of the long time the area has been a vacation spot, with old outboard motors and vacation brochures to inspect. A log house has been moved onto the site. 110 E. Main next to Beary Patch. (906) 323-6608. Open Mem. to Labor Day, daily noon to 5. Free admission. Handicap accessible.
• COUNTRY GARDEN QUILTS. Mary Poirier's choice of colors for quilt fabrics reflects the bright pinks, blues, and greens of the beautiful front-yard flower garden. She's helped by her retired husband, Bob; they drive in from Ishpeming together. They have avoided quilt kits, for the most part, preferring to help customers create their own color combinations. Year-round hours have made this quite a local gathering spot; other customers come from quite a distance. Ask about the 10-day spring "Shop the Top Hop," in which 10 Upper Peninsula quilt shops have extended hours, give out free patterns, and more. 103 W. Main. (906) 323-6203. From late May into November open daily, Mon-Sat 10-5, Sun 1-5. Winter and spring: open Thurs-Sat 10-5. Wheelchair-accessible.
• MICHIGAMME MOONSHINE. Artists and art enthusiasts Frederike and Jerry Roach have turned the entire downstairs of their home into one of the Upper Peninsula's leading art galleries, full of accessible art, often inspired by nature, ranging from the abstract or expressionistic to the meticulously realistic, in a variety of media. Children are welcome. A new addition makes space for 40 artists, most with national reputations. Here are Bill Hamilton's watercolors, Tom Larson's wood turnings, fiber artist Martha Fiebig's pieces, and Kathy Savu's folk-flavored memory paintings, often of scenes from her childhood in a forest community of Finns. Ann Arbor visitors will recognize some colorful prints by the late University of Michigan art professor Emil Weddige. Frederike curates six changing shows a year with artists' receptions at the gallery, and other shows in Marquette. Every Saturday in August a succession of artists demonstrate all afternoon. Jerry paints, and also teaches at Baraga High School. 136 E. Main. (906) 323-6546. Open year-round Tues-Sun noon to 5, also by chance and by appointment. Closed Monday. Wheelchair-accessible, including restroom.
• CHURCH IN THE WILDWOOD. A handsome frame Swedish Lutheran church from 1877 now houses a gift shop emphasizing hand-crafted U.P. things - pottery, twig and rustic furniture, birchbark baskets, and more. Few alterations have been made on the interior, which has stained-glass windows and walls covered in decorative pressed metal. 217 W. Main. (906) 323-6144. Open from Mem. Day up to Christmas, Mon -Sat 10-5, Sun 12-5. Handicap access: two short flights of steps.
Return to Michigamme
|
