Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore [part 1]

It took until I was about to graduate, but I finally made it up to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.) back in October. By the beginning of the school year, my coworkers and I had started to return to the office more frequently (because of staggered schedules and a small group size, our office was operating between low and no density, and that plus vaccines and no huge delta spike meant that people were feeling pretty okay about being there).  One day they got to talking about taking a trip up north to see the fall colors, and I got roped into the conversation and soon found myself agreeing to head for the Upper Peninsula with half the lab.

We left on a Monday morning and arrived at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in time for a late afternoon boat tour. The next day, we spent the morning and early afternoon at Pictured Rocks before driving further west to our lodgings at a state park about an hour away from the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. On Wednesday, we hiked around the Porcupine Mountains, then on Thursday drove up to Copper Harbor before heading back across the U.P. to spend the night in Mackinaw City. On Friday morning, we made our way down to the palm, arriving in Ann Arbor by early afternoon.

For reasons, I ended up planning the majority of our activities with input from my coworkers, similarly to my Acadia trip in the summer. The first day, we agreed to get on the road early so we could arrive at Pictured Rocks by early afternoon with time for a cruise. Everyone held up their end of the deal, pickups started at 7 am, and we were heading north out of Ann Arbor by 8. We stopped at a gas/service station for a brief lunch before continuing on our drive. It was six hours to the Grand Sable entrance at the east end of Pictured Rocks, then another hour through the park to Munising, where the cruise would leave from. We were there at the tail end of fall colors, but the drive through the park was lovely and there was a mix of trees with green, changed, and fallen leaves.

The cruise was scheduled to begin at 4 pm, and even though we arrived about half an hour early, there were already a number of people lined up for boarding. I’m not a huge fan of cruises and other touristy guided tour type activities, but my labmates wanted to go and there are some landmarks that can only be seen from the water so we did it. The company was Pictured Rocks Cruises, and we were actually there during their second to last week of operation for the season. We took the classic cruise that ran for about two and a half hours and cost $40. The boats have two decks, with the top deck open and the right side of the top deck most desirable for photography reasons. We ended up on the left side of the top deck, which worked out fine because on the way back that’s the side that’s closer to the Pictured Rocks’ namesake rocks.

 

East Channel Lighthouse

Miners Castle

The cruise passes by the East Channel Lighthouse, Miners Castle, the Caves of All Colors and Rainbow Cave, the arches Lovers Leap and Grand Portal, Battleship Row, a Flower Vase, and Chapel Rock, among other things. On the way out, a guide described what we were passing by and gave some historical and scientific facts about the rocks. The colors come from minerals leaching out of the rocks – orange and red come from iron, blue and green from copper, brown and black from manganese, and white from limonite.

Lovers Leap

Battleship Row

It was coolish at the beginning of the cruise, then got windy as we got out on the water and a little cold as the sun started setting. Would definitely recommend a jacket (which I had), especially late in the season and the day. The light was somewhat challenging, with the overcast sky being bland while also both blocking ambient light and being bright enough to blow out. I had my camera with both my wide angle 10-18 mm lens and the 18-55 mm kit lens (roughly equivalent to 16-28.8 mm and 28.8-88 mm in the “standard” full frame/35 mm format). The wide angle was generally too wide for how far we were from the rocks and I ended up needing the zoom from the kit lens most of the time. Also, we were continuously moving, it was cold, and I was shooting over and between people for most of the trip. Anyway, if you don’t find the price too steep, don’t really like hiking and/or don’t have much time, the cruise is a good way to see a lot of the big attractions at Pictured Rocks, and you often get better views than you would from land.

Chapel Rock

Rocks and trees

After we docked, we had dinner up the street from the cruise headquarters, then drove back toward the park to spend the night at a hotel, which ended up being the most expensive lodgings for our trip. In the morning, we enjoyed our hotel breakfast before heading into the park to explore a bit on foot.