Before we get to the photos, a little background.
I was given a special invite to go on this trip, and rather than focus on writing a story with interviews, I decided to focus on photos and video.
Rather than write a formally-styled story like usual, I’m going to place as much information as I can in the photo captions.
The event was staged from just outside of Skanee, but people drove in from several other states and stayed in hotels in L’Anse and Baraga. I saw several people from downstate, as well as Indiana, and even an Arizona license plate! More than 100 machines were part of the adventure tour but were broken into four groups with alternating route directions and start times. My group left the area at about 9:30 a.m. on Saturday.
Machines were looking pretty clean at the beginning of the trip. That changed almost immediately. The recent rain kept the dust down for most of the day, and made for lots of mud and big puddles. I caught a lot of this on video, but that takes longer to edit.
This is Quartzite Falls, our first stop. The combination of a long shutter time and a fader lens to capture waterfalls isn’t something I’ve mastered yet. Since we were on a schedule, I didn’t manage to get many decent shots. This one is passable, but the shutter time was still too long, which is why the tree branches are so blurry.
I took this picture to show how Quartzite Falls got its name. The white backslash in the middle of this photo is a vein of quartz. You can see several on the bottom of the Slate River when walking from the road to Quartzite Falls.
Each group was pretty sizeable, but not big enough to sate the hunger of a fresh hatch of mosquitos. With long-sleeved shirts, head nets, and DEET, we made it through. The mosquitos just helped keep us all on schedule, as they’d build up the longer we stayed in one place.
Bodie, 10, from Sand Lake, Michigan, spent each stop scrambling over rocks and jumping from dry spot to dry spot.
Tour participants were also given a gift bag that had a few odds and ends but also a coupon sheet for discounts at local businesses, including the Baraga County Lakeside Inn, The Finns Bar and Grill, and Carla’s Cozy Inn and Restaurant.
Our last stop before lunch was the historic rock cut.
The story is that a company wanted to build a railroad from Champion to Huron Bay, and so they had to cut through this hill to make a passable grade. The work was hard, beleaguered, and went well over budget. Then, during the very first test run of the track, the locomotive derailed. After having spent $2 million, the investors decided to cut their losses, pulled up what materials they could and this is what remains. You can still see railroad ties and even a couple of rusty rails in the bed of the stream.
The view from Mount Arvon’s peak. The DogFather met us at the parking lot there to serve hot dogs, brats, and nachos for lunch, too. The tour organizers also managed to arrange a porta-potty there, despite some red tape.
This was probably the best waterfall shot I took. The exposure is still a little long, but the surrounding plants still came out pretty sharp.
