I really wouldn’t recommend Munising for a long holiday. There is basically only one reason why tourists visit Munising – the Picture Rocks – which I will describe later. It is a small town on an enormous lake. Lake Superior is the size of Austria and has an average depth of 483 feet, if you spread it out like Marmite across the entirety of North and South American, it would cover it to a depth of 30 centimetres!
We booked a boat trip at midday, so we had the morning to explore Munising. About 10 minutes would have been enough, there really is bugger-all there. The main employment is a paper mill, and then a small number of shops and banks in a few street parallel to the lake shore. It was once famous for making wooden bowls, but Ikea has now cornered that market.
Martin went back to the campsite to get his hat, so we literally had to run to get on the boat with about 50 other excited tourists. A couple of miles from the harbour the Picture Rocks begin. They are Limonite (a type of iron ore) cliffs which have been stained with manganese (black) and copper (bluey green) in very pretty patterns. They also have caves and rock arches underneath them, which collapse occasionally. For a couple of hours, we chugged up and down and admired their loveliness, and waved to the people at the top of the cliffs.
There are not many places to eat in Munising, but there is a rather excellent branch of Subway. I always hesitate when I have to choose a combination of bread, meat and various salads and condiments, it makes me feel a bit doddery. I was brought up simply asking for six penn’orth of chips, no choices apart from salt and vinegar.
In the afternoon we drove out of Munising to a State Park where we could walk along the top of the cliffs, with great views of the lake. There is a rock formation called the Castle which is fenced off to prevent people climbing up it and wearing it down. Sadly it didn’t stop this bloke, he did make it down again after his mate had taken his photo.
Once we had seen Picture Rocks from all the angles, we felt that we had seen all that Munising had to offer. So we returned to the campsite to cook some more food and swore at the pathetic barbecue which only managed to simmer our chicken dinner and burn our sweetcorn on the open fire. But what the hell, I was hungry and anything tastes good if you wash it down with enough beer.
timharnesstravels 