Loop the Loop

U.S. 2 and Michigan 28 around the Great Lakes, Michigan

The Route Largely unknown to people outside the northern Great Lakes region, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — the state’s “extra” piece — is one of America’s best-kept secrets. Although the iron and copper ore that once fueled the area’s economy is largely depleted, the endearingly hardscrabble mining towns remain, as do several wilderness areas and the incredible shoreline views of Lake Michigan to the south and Lake Superior to the north. With U.S. 2 running along the peninsula’s southern region and Michigan 28 paralleling it to the north, you can see it all in about four days by doing a full loop around the U.P. (which is what everyone calls it — even the locals refer to themselves as “yoopers”).

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On the southern leg, stop at Fayette Historic Townsite, a former iron-smelting community now preserved as a ghost town. Nineteen buildings remain, including the foundation and dilapidated ruins of a blast furnace. In nearby Iron Mountain is the Iron Mining Museum, an excellent local history museum literally built around a massive steam-driven pump that’s 54 feet high and weighs more than 700 tons.

Coming back on the northern route, scoot up to Copper Harbor to tour the Delaware Copper Mine, and then head over to the Seney National Wildlife Refuge, home to bald eagles, loons, swans, black bears, deer and otters, among other critters.

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Whatever else you do in the U.P., be sure to try a pasty (“PASS-tee”), a man-sized pocket of dough filled with hearty beef stew. Originally from Cornwall, England, pasties came to the U.P. with Cornish miner immigrants in the 1800s. Most U.P. eateries serve them; a particularly good venue is Joe’s Pasty Shop in Ironwood.


Worth a Detour
The ship’s bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald — yes, the ship in the Gordon Lightfoot song — is among the many artifacts displayed at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.

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Worth a Day You can see the gorgeously mineral-stained cliffs of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore by renting a canoe or going on a boat tour. Afterward, try a hike through some of the site’s 72,000 acres.

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