Day 113: Welcome To Paradise

Spring

time of year

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We got Breakfast from The Breakwell, a new breakfast and lunch spot in Grand Marais, with a small gift shop. The interior is beautifully crafted and you can eat with a view of the Bay. We recommend getting the blueberry pancakes.

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Tahquamenon River Mouth on Lake Superior to eat our breakfast leftovers for lunch.

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We stopped to see Whitefish Point Harbor, a quiet place for local fishermen to launch from. You may have heard of Whitefish Point from the song The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot.

Seney National Wildlife Refuge Whitefish Point Lighthouse, and Bird Observatory, Whitefish Point, MI.

The Seney National Wildlife Refuge and its Whitefish Point Unit are nestled in the eastern point of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This preserve is a birders paradise with populations of trumpeter swans, common loons, osprey, bald eagles and hundreds of other bird species. Visitors may spot red fox, deer, bear, porcupine, fisher or other mammals on or near the refuge. We walked the boardwalk and saw Chickadees and the area that was protected for the Piping Plover which nests on the sandy, rocky beach. We’re so close to Canada that my phone sent me a text for an offer on a Canadian daily rate plan.

Whitefish Point is well known as a geological funnel for migrating birds. In particular the spring raptors migration(including hawks, eagles, vultures and falcons) is phenomenal. This is because most raptors use the Great Lakes shoreline as guides to their Northern breeding grounds. 15,000-25,000 raptors migrate through this area each spring.

https://www.fws.gov/refuge/seney

8.5

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We walked around the lighthouse area, which seems to be very well preserved. They have a huge 2 story rudder on display from SS M.M. Drake,9 a wooden steam barge that towed consorts loaded with coal and iron ore on the Great Lakes. She came to the rescue of the crews of at least 4 foundering vessels in her 19 year career only to meet the same fate in her final rescue attempt.