Iron Mountain, Michigan to Ishpeming, Michigan (Day 4)

We spent the day today driving around the the townships in the Upper Peninsula. We started by leaving Iron Mountain and we drove to Ishpeming.

 Right on the outskirts of Ishpeming is Yooperland. It's a tribute to the people who live in the UP and it is owned and run by the lead singer and song writer for da yoopers. They sing the christmas song, "Rusty Chevrolet". If you don't know the song look it up on Youtube. It's pretty funny and a lot of things said in the song relate to the UP.

 He had a little museum set up and this car was there. It was in pretty rough shape. My Dad knew merv and this car.

 I need to build one of these for my boys to mow the yard with.

 This is the king of all tricycles.

The largest chain saw in the world is right here in the UP.

 They get so much snow here that everything has a plow on it. This ford was built to move some snow.

 And so is this Buick. I told you everything has a plow on it.

 Finally after 3 days we made it to Ishpeming.

Here is the official Ishpeming sign. Ishpeming is an old mining town. It reminds me of Park City without the resort feel that Park City has.

This is old Ish. The person the town was named after. If you have ever seen the movie "Anatomy of a Murder" this statue is shown in it. In fact the whole movie was filmed in Ishpeming when my Dad was a teenager. I think it was written by a guy that lived in Ishpeming.

 This was a bank in downtown. My Dad remembers leaning against the marble in the summer when he was young because it was cool to the touch. Here over 50 years later he is doing it again.

 This was the first place my Dad remembers living in. His family lived in an apartment that was the top floor of the house.

 He then moved here and this is where he lived until they moved to Utah.

This is the Church my Dad attended. He started going to this church on his own when he was young.

 It has a nice stained glass window in the front.

 In Michigan they take football very seriously. This is where my Dad played football in High School.

 The library was an awesome old building downtown. My Dad remembers hanging out here.

Main street was all torn up. The building are kept up nicely though.

 This picture doesn't do this hill justice because it's pretty steep in real life. This road was not plowed in the winter and this is where all the kids would go sledding. You could sled down each side of the hills and when cars went by at the bottom they would "shack" a ride hanging on the back bumper. Sometimes your gloves stayed on the bumper of the car though it it was a tight fit.

 Ishpeming is known for Suicide Hill. It is a ski jump and people have come from all over the world to jump there. I'm not sure who named it but it would make me think twice before attempting to make a jump.

 Here are the jumps. I guess they light it up and every year they have a weekend of ski jumping and it ends with fireworks. The fireworks are suppose to be awesome when they reflect off the snow.

 We drove over to Marquette and checked out Lake Superior. We were just in time to see this ore boat just finishing up loading ore. We waited to see if it was going out on the lake but it didn't look like it was going to move for awhile.

 Here you can see the ice on lake superior. I guess 94 percent of the lake iced over this year because the winter was so cold. The coast guard just barely cut through the ice so the ore boats could come in to dock. They had to cut 8 feet thick ice to get the ore boats in. I was surprised to see how much ice was still on the lake.

 The last thing we saw was the local ski resort. They had a few lifts but I guess I am spoiled by Utah's Ski resorts. Ha Ha.

It has been a great day hearing stories of my Dad's younger years in Ishpeming. He lived here until he was 15 and then ended up coming back for the time he spent in the air force. We also went and saw sawyer international airport which was previously sawyer air force base until the government closed it down. The barracks and shops are still there but in pretty rough shape. I can't wait to see more of the UP tomorrow.