When I left you last I was eating a sandwich in my tent while it rained. And rained. All night it rained. The good news is that the tent held up and didn’t leak. The bad news was that my site was entirely dirt and pine needles. And when I crawled out of the tent in early morning I saw that there was at least a foot of mud and debris splashed on the outside of all four walls.

I decided I’d go up to the upper falls while waiting for the sun to top the trees and maybe dry the tent out a little before I packed it up to head home. Nothing like folding up a sopping wet, muddy tent for a long drive.

The upper falls are 4 miles away from the campground, and I could have hiked it. But a round trip of 8 miles through the wet woods didn’t sound appealing and I didn’t really have that many hours to fill before I had to be out of the campground. So I drove. And on top of that I accidentally left my fitbit in the tent, so all those stairs down to the falls didn’t count. Almost as if I didn’t do them.

The falls are beautiful, of course. They have a drop of almost 50 feet and are 200 feet across, with a water flow of 50,000 gallons per second! (All of this information was taken from the Tahquamenon Falls State Park website.)

There are two sets of stairs. One set takes you to the viewing platform at the brink of the falls. That’s pretty, though it’s hard to get a great photo. The other set of stairs takes you down a steep cliff to the river where you can look upstream to the falls.

I think that’s my favorite, though there are more stairs to maneuver. Just consider it a great workout.

I enjoyed walk along the river back toward the falls. It was cool and damp, and the colors along the river were subtle but pretty through the trees.

After scrambling up and down both sets of stairs I knew I needed to head out. The park was filling up with holiday travelers, all friendly and happy to be out there, but kind of taking away from the beauty of the place. For me anyway. I went back to camp and packed up the still sopping wet tent. After all the rain it was a beautiful morning.

Since I was so close to Whitefish Point I knew I just had to head northeast. It’s only about 30 miles. And what’s 30 miles in the grand scheme of adventuring? I’ve been there before when it was cold and windy. This time it was just windy.

It was busy here too, the parking lot was full, and there were lots of people at the top of the lighthouse. I headed to the beach, and ran into this adorable little boy.

Don’t worry. His mom was coming along with the other 3 children, right behind that little hill of sand.

And just around that corner was the beach. With waves and wind and a freighter out on the horizon.

Perfect.

I was protecting my camera against the windblown sand. But still…I couldn’t be out there without taking at least a few shots.

Sadly I couldn’t linger long as I had a long drive ahead of me if I was going all the way home. So I needed to get going. Because I was going home. Right?

Well. Maybe not.