Michigan day 1

September 8

We awoke in the Marquette, MI Walmart parking lot ahead of the sun today, with a sense that autumn is not far away. The temperature was in the mid-40s F (below 10° C). Our morning routine at Walmart is familiar to us by now. We got underway without much fanfare. While inside this Walmart, I passed a stand of pink lemonade for a dollar a bottle so I bought four of these to justify being in there; a great price, but a disappointing product, once we tasted it.

We drove back to Ishpeming, MI to see the synagogue, Temple Beth Shalom. There was a time when Jews lived up here in greater numbers than they do now. They contributed to the timber and mining industries by supplying goods and services. The Getz and Cohodas families were and still are important names in the Marquette area, according to background material I had read before we arrived here.


The synagogue is located at the end of a quiet street. It has lovely stained-glass windows. It was too early in the morning to find anyone there, but just standing before an active Jewish house of worship in these remote surroundings was enough to make this stop worthwhile for me.

We drove to Munising, MI and stopped at the Hiawatha National Forest Visitor Information Center. They had some very useful nature guides and literature that I would have loved to have owned were I stilling living in the US (but don't) and some nice souvenirs. One I particularly wanted to buy, if only they had had the right size and color, was a T-shirt with the printed slogan "May the Forest be With You." Tourist season officially ended with the passing of Labor Day. Their inventory was allowed to run out around now because so few visitors are expected until next spring. The ranger informed us that a survey just taken of these trees had produced a fall-color-change index of 10% among them already, this far north. We are looking forward to seeing fall colors in the northeastern US by the time we get there in October. This information brightened our prospects of seeing them.

We took a local road in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore through dense forest to Miner's Castle on the shore of Lake Superior. Razelle was impressed by the view, particularly by the fact that the far shore of Lake Superior was much too far away to be seen. The "pictured" cliff faces along the shore did not impress her as much.

We considered visiting another worthwhile natural wonder while we were up in the Upper Peninsula, but because it would involve too much walking for Razelle, we dropped Tahquamenon Falls from our itinerary. Instead we headed straight to the Straits of Mackinac to see a man-made wonder: Mackinac Bridge. We paused at a scenic overlook beside the bridge with views of Lake Michigan, the Straits, and Lake Huron in the distance. At this overlook we encountered a couple my age and the man was wearing a "Mud Hens" baseball cap. I told him I had once lived in Toledo, Ohio (home of this baseball team) before even asking if he had come from there himself. He had. It seemed serendipitous to me to have met a fellow Toledoan a day before I expected to reach that important intermediate goal. They were impressed by our account of our round-the-world travels so far. We talked about Toledo nostalgically for a short while, then shook hands and parted.

Before crossing the bridge we took a few moments to visit the Father Marquette National Memorial. A number of informative panels are mounted here along a landscaped walkway; these put his life and achievements into perspective. An open-air roofed structure with a tall stylized cross on top was the centerpiece of this memorial.

As we crossed the Mackinac Bridge into the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, we had a sense of crossing a threshold from the western US we had spent so many, many days touring, to the eastern US that now awaited our own exploration. We hadn't crossed any state lines; we hadn't crossed any time-zones; we had simply exited one geographical mindset to enter another.

Although we may now have crossed a mental threshold, according to our GPS, we still had a long ride ahead of us before we reached our destination in the northern suburbs of Detroit five hours away, give or take. We pushed ourselves to cover the distance. We stopped for coffee and gas in Standish, MI, at a gas station and café that had much to be embarrassed about. I needed a cup of coffee to stay alert. The coffee in the pot on the hotplate was old and stale, but I asked to have it instead of the fresh pot the owner was just getting around to preparing – there's nothing like yucky coffee to keep ones eyes propped open! She didn't believe I was sincere, but I was, so she gave me the coffee for free. It did the trick. I drove on well after sunset all the way to Detroit without fatigue (and without heartburn either). We listened to a live radio broadcast of President Obama addressing Congress about his plan to create jobs for the unemployed. This kept our attention focused on something other than the endless miles of Lower Michigan we had left. After his speech we heard a call-in radio talk show, where listeners commented on how they perceived his speech – so much consternation, so little contemplation in this heartland of America.

The lights of heavy municipal traffic dazzled me. A light drizzle made peering through the windshield even more challenging. I was glad to finally pull up at our hosts home when we did. This day comprised 10 hours of driving; the longest haul we've pulled on this entire trip, I think. Our hosts made sure we found their home. They guided us in with flashlights.

These are the parents of a woman we know in Beer Sheva. When they were visiting her we got to know them and bonded with them. They knew of our travel plans and were eager to host us, were we to be in Detroit. When we realized we would be including Detroit in our itinerary after all, we called them. The invitation was absolutely sincere, and here we were. Their son was also there when we arrived. His fiancé visited with us briefly before she had to leave. They also have a dog (Razelle is allergic to most dogs). The reunion was warm and sincere and their son prepared his special toasted-cheese concoction for us before leaving for his own home.

Then, because we'd had a long and exhausting day, we bid them good night and went to bed in the van (because of the dog this was the best arrangement, and besides, we liked sleeping out there by now. Our van's electric hook up went through a driveway light fixture, but I was able to unscrew the bulb and still benefit from the current that charged my laptop and phone overnight. We slept soundly and securely in the driveway of these, our friends.