The Upper Peninsula

 PH and I have been gone for 10 days on the annual selling trip to the Upper Peninsula.  We drove 2,072 miles.  We tried to think it out and we believe we've done this selling trip for nine years.

I know I've showed you this map before, probably while talking about this trip.  We left the Grand Rapids area and drove to that tip of the mitten where a bridge, the Mackinac (pronounced MackinaW)  Bridge, connects the two peninsulas.  And then turn left.

But first, the Bridge.  Yes, here we capitalize that word.  It's over 5 miles long, it took me until just a couple of years ago to be able to sit up from hiding under the seat to even look while we drive across but now I'm a big girl and can enjoy the view but I doubt I will ever be brave enough to actually drive it.

But the view is magnificent and economically, joining the two peninsulas of the state this bridge was a game changer. 

Back to the map.  We cross the bridge and turn left. and circle the entire western end of the U.P. all the way to the Porcupine Mountains, down into Wisconsin and up to the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula.  The entire U.P. is beautiful, sparsely populated and quiet.  At least till snowmobile season comes, I think.  It gets well over 200 inches of snow a year so you have to either love snow or at least embrace it. You can't live here if you only tolerate it.  They tell us it starts snowing about the first of November and have had snow in May for graduation from the universities. 

We foraged again. If you look at the map, there is a small peninsula just west of Manistique along the lakeshore that juts out into the lake.  It's called the Garden peninsula  because the only teeny village on the peninsula is called Garden.  There is a state park there that used to be a fort called Fort Wilkins. The peninsula is sparsely populated but there is a school, year round homes, more cottages.

Well, all along the peninsula road there are rogue apple trees.  All very old, scattered all over the place.  Some in people's yards and in the fields.  It's always intrigued me and in the past we've picked some.  It's usually hard to do, the animals - deer, bear - get the low hanging fruit and there is usually a drainage ditch that needs to be navigated but I will do it.

This year, the yield on those trees is so full the branches just hang heavy with fruit, making the picking very easy for two old people. 

I mean, look at this tree!!!  They are all lining the main street that goes down the length of the peninsula. We don't go in yards but if the tree is along the road we stop, picked maybe 8-10 or just a few 

We tasted some along the way.  This apple came from that laden red tree.

Some were the size of ping pong balls, some the size that filled our fist.  We only picked the non-wormy ones, too, because this year we actually had a choice!  We picked about a bushel before we had to just stop for running out of room and anticipating what it would take to process them when we got home.

 The Garden peninsula used to grow fruit for Chicago. The way to Chicago is easy along Lake Michigan (in good weather) and Michigan provided a lot for Chicago, our lumber rebuilt the city after their fire, it built the Chicago World's Fair and one of Lowell's own designed the buildings for the Chicago World's Fair - his home is now our museum, and we fed the city with our fruit and sent them Christmas trees. 

I spent yesterday emptying half of them into the pot for apple sauce.  The tiniest apples, the ones that would be hard to peel for their size.

Today I'm going to work on the other half of this yield.