Friday - Day 9

Still in Ishpeming tonight, and plan on being here tomorrow night. It was 63 degrees INSIDE the camper this morning when I got up. We are LOVING the temperatures. Supposed to be 57 tonight.

Kathy slept in this morning. I went out for breakfast. I had the Lumberjack platter. It was big, but the food wasn't all that great. The best thing was the homemade whole wheat toast.

After breakfast I took the tour at the Cliffs Shaft Mine Museum. It is the site of an iron mine that was active until the 1970's. The concrete structure in the photo houses one of the "head frames" that hoisted miners, equipment and ore out of the mine. There is another structure similar to this one and a newer version between them. The bottom level of the mine is a little over 1,000' below the surface. This mine is in downtown Ishpeming.

After lunch at the camper we walked around downtown Ishpeming a little. It is kind of sad. Seems to be another small town that is struggling. I think there is now only 1 remaining iron mine in the area, and that is struggling. When the copper mines in Ontonagon County, where we had our picnic lunch yesterday, closed in 1995 the population of the county dropped from 10,600 in 1970 to 6,200 in 2016. In 2016 there were 1,050 union miners employed at the Empire and Tilden mines in Marquette county. The Empire mine has been "idled" which cost the area 300 jobs, but Tilden is still operational. Cliffs Natural Resources, which owns the 2 mines, still employs over 900 people in the county. Only the UP Health System - Marquette, and the government (college and school employees) employ more people in the county.

On our way into town we saw a place that advertised itself as a tourist trap. When Kathy was looking for things to see in the area she saw some posts that said people should really go check it out, so we did.

Yoopers are people from Michigan's UP (Upper Peninsula)

There was lots of tourist stuff to buy but the outside stuff was the most interesting. The following photos don't cover half of the stuff we saw. Almost all the pieces have signs that tell who built the stuff.

Then we went out for some local cuisine. Kathy had a cudighi (some type of sausage sandwich) and I had a pasty (round beef & onions inside a piece of bread)

Kathy ate half of hers. I ate maybe a quarter of mine YUCK!

Paid $3.30/gallon for last 2 tanks of fuel.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.