Here it is already a week since we drove home from our UP adventure and I still have more to show you. Maybe I should stop talking and just let you look.

On our third and last day in the UP we got headed west toward Grand Marais where I assured my friend we’d find more stones.

But along the way we drove up to Deer Park, north of Newberry, and then along Lake Superior’s coast and stopped at a delightful little beach with the prettiest stones!

I don’t think I found any flat white ones, but my friend found quite a few beautiful souvenirs.

And we left a souvenir for someone else to find too.

And then we headed over to Grand Marais.

Many people searching this beach are looking for agates. I wouldn’t know an agate from a rubber duck, so I just looked for flat white stones to paint. I didn’t find many of those either.

But the weather was beautiful with big fluffs of white clouds dressing up the sky and we had a great time wandering.

We didn’t stay long, we were hungry and still had miles to go to get to Munising, our next stop. But we left a painted treasure for someone to find before we left.

It’s kind of a long way to go for a sandwich, but we enjoyed the glimpses of Lake Superior that we found along the way. We were hoping to stop at a couple of waterfalls in Munising before heading back to Whitefish Point for the sunset.

We ate at Subway, noting exotic, but filling. And of course we stopped for a visit with Munising’s Bigfoot, where we left another treasure.

The traffic was terrible in Munising, backed up for miles coming into town from 3 directions. We decided to nix the idea of getting in line to get out to one of the waterfalls, and headed to one that was on the way out of town, Wagner Falls.

There’s a short mostly flat boardwalk back to the falls, and we were lucky that there weren’t many people stopping for a visit.

We took a few pictures…

…and then hid our treasure and were on our way back toward Whitefish Point.

We had a long drive to get there before sunset, but we arrived early enough to appreciate the golden light on all the driftwood, and the clouds streaking the sky. This could turn out to be a stunning sunset!

We wandered the beach, noticing how pretty everything was in the evening light…

… and how the beach moves and changes every day.

We found a couple of places to hide more treasure and then waited for the sun to settle down and set.

Most people left the beach once the sun was below the horizon, but we were out there for the long haul (and to find Yooper Lights) so we waited in the cooling air to see what would happen next.

And we were rewarded by intense color and beautiful shapes. It just kept getting better until it finally died into grey. The sun was done for the day, but we weren’t.

After the sun was down we looked for Yooper Lights (stones that glow in inferred light) along with a few other late night stone addicts.

Though we didn’t find any that night, the night before, on a cold windy evening, we witnessed a young boy and his dad find a stone that glowed. The boy was soooo excited, jumping up and down in the cold Superior waves. We got him and his dad to show us what the stone looked like, and in the midst of the conversation the boy turned and looked at us, his eyes wide and said:

“I really wish I was wearing long pants!”

We roared in laughter, in all the excitement he’d been running in and out of the water of the coldest lake around without a care. Until he stopped to talk to us.

And that’s kind of the way our whole trip was. We didn’t always find what we set out to see, the perfect rock, the perfect view, the perfect sunset.

But the excitement of the whole experience kept us motivated to continue the adventure regardless. And though there were moments we wished we were wearing long pants, on the whole, it was a perfect summer trip. Mosquitoes and all.

And just think, there are all those treasures out there just waiting to be found.