Fall U.P. Retreat- Days 3 and 4

Saturday, October 7th

We again had a dreary, slightly rainy morning on Saturday. The forecast was showing just clouds, but there did seem to be intermittent rain showers, too.

Saturday was our last full day, so we were hoping to get out and see a few more local sights.

By mid-morning, after breakfast, tea and a little relaxing, we headed out.

Ethan drove. Our first stop was to be a couple of other waterfalls near the cabin. We followed the map (thank goodness for paper maps, because seriously, our phone service was SO bad….).

The road was very empty and very pretty!! Some nice color in this area.

The tourist map we had was not 100% accurate, though. (I also had a real map, but this little back road did not seem to… make sense, exactly.) We managed to miss the turn to the falls and drove quite a long way down a dirt road before we realized something wasn’t right. Fortunately, we were able to backtrack and eventually figured it out.

I was a little annoyed that the tour magazine blurb about these falls totally left out the fact that you had to TURN down another road, though!! They totally made it sound like the parking area was just on the main road. Anyway. Poor editing. 😉

Black Slate Falls

The tiny “parking area” for the walk to the falls was empty, and it was drizzling rain. We waited briefly until it lightened up/ mostly stopped.

This place was GREAT!! If it had been a warm, sunny day, this was totally the type of place we could have lingered for a long time. There were big flat rocks around and shallow water pools among the waterfall that would be perfect for Ethan to wade and play around in. I would have loved to bring a book and picnic.

The temperature was pleasant and it was so peaceful here. Like I said, totally empty!! This is like my dream nature destination. I LOVE finding places that are just enough off the main tourist path that they are people-free, but still amazing.

Here’s me feeling very happy and at peace. 🙂

And another timer shot… no other people here to take our picture!

I liked this bridge/ leaf scene:

Quartzite Falls

Just across the parking area was another short trail in the opposite direction, leading to Quartzite Falls. This area was SO pretty, too! We almost missed the little sign (signage in general is pretty poor in this area! These are not like “major tourist attractions”, but they kind of appear in the guides/ maps. I wish they promoted them a little better, or at least had better signs! So many people likely miss out or don’t even realize they are there. But I suppose resources are probably fairly scarce for that sort of thing.

How pretty is this fall scene?! 😍

The sun came out a little at this point and we just hung out for a while. Ethan found a few rocks to skip.

From here, we drove back to the cabin for lunch. We were debating if we wanted to do a longer hike up to the “highest point in Michigan”, which would also involve a sort of hairy drive on poor roads (potholes, etc.). I decided I did not want to do that in my new van (which has already had one flat tire…). Plus, we weren’t sure if it was going to start raining again or not.

So we stopped back and had lunch at the cabin, and then headed out again to do a shorter hike to a place called “Little Mountain”.

This was something that was also barely mentioned on the map, but I read about it in the cabin guestbook. Someone had written that it was a nice, short hike was beautiful views. I found some old blog post online about it that gave a little direction as to where the “trail head” was.

Basically we drove down a dead end road, where we looked around and did not really see a “trail head”. Finally I saw a spot where it kind of looked like there was maybe a trail, or used to be. We left the van and started out.

After a bit it seemed evident that, yes, this was the “trail”. (Again, totally empty, and the trail looked like it hadn’t been traveled recently at all!)

Well. It was beautiful in there, but the “trail” quickly deteriorated. Once we got more into the wooded areas, it mostly all just looked like…. leaves. There were a few blue dots on the trees to guide us, but spread out and then seemed to like, disappear. Ha. We spent, oh, probably 30-40 minutes traipsing around through the woods, trying to figure out which way the trail went.

I was getting almost disoriented with so many leaves!! And also frustrated, because the photos I saw on the blog post looked like it was a really pretty view from the top.

EVENTUALLY, as we were literally about to give up, we caught sight of a “maybe trail” going in the opposite direction from what we had originally thought. I swear we tried that way in the beginning and it seemed to be a dead end, but who knows.

The good news is- we found it!! We were kind of laughing at the goofiness of all of it… we were like, okay, we just need to be able to find the car again…. hahaha! No way are we surviving in the wild if we get lost. 😆😆 (We weren’t in too far, so I was not actually worried about being “lost” yet.)

It really only took 10-20 minutes to reach the little summit once we got on the right trail. And it was SO beautiful!!

On the opposite side, the view was equally stunning:

We sat on the big rock and just looked out for a while. We also realized- hey, we have cell service up here!! Guess we must have been close to a tower or something. We took advantage to call Ivan and check in on Charlie before hitting the trail back down.

The trail out seemed oddly obvious… we again were laughing like, wait, how did we not see this?!?! lol. Who knows! I evidently maxed out my Girl Scout skills at the “Junior” level…. no Eagle Scout abilities here.

By this point it was about 3:00. We wanted to have time to just relax at the cabin, so we started the drive back. (Only about 10-15 minutes away.)

We decided to take a small detour loop to stop by “Second Sand Beach”. I at least wanted to see pretty Lake Superior up close.

Here it is! Very, very pretty, indeed.

There was a HUGE group of kayakers loading up their cars in the parking lot. Must have been some kind of kayak club?? There were a dozen or more.

I had unloaded a picnic blanket and thought maybe we’d sit for a bit, since the sun was out. But, no. The particular location here was super windy. And it was NOT a warm wind. The beach was also shaded at this time of day.

So we basically looked at the water, said, oh, how pretty! Okay, let’s go. 😉

Kayak Adventure!

Back at the cabin, it was not windy, and the skies really cleared. I told Ethan we should take advantage and use the kayaks! They were stacked up right by the river, just a few hundred feet from the cabin. The weather had not been kayaking weather yet thus far.

Ethan originally said no, that he didn’t want to. So I walked down to the river alone and decided I’d go out alone. The river was shallow and calm.

The owner had told us we could kayak all the way down the bay. So I wanted to try that.

I kayaked through mostly just wilderness, though the river was dotted with other cabins and homes here and there. Mostly I saw no one, except a couple out working in their yard who said hello.

After a while, after I made it to the bay and turned around, I ran into Ethan! He had decided to join me after all, but I was way ahead of him. He surprised me! I didn’t think he would go out on his own like that.

I was really happy he did, because we were able to kayak the whole way back together. It was beautiful. (I feel like I’m not the greatest kayaker… I really have only kayaked a handful of times before. I seem to like, run into the kayak with my oar fairly often? I’m probably doing it wrong. lol.)

It was a bit chilly out but I didn’t really feel cold until the end. My pants kept getting progressively just a little bit wetter and wetter as I dripped on them from my oar. By the time we got back, I was fairly wet on the bottom half!

We hoisted the kayaks out and I made a beeline for the sauna in the cabin.

This was nice! I sat and puttered around writing a blog post on my phone. Then I got out and let Ethan take my place after a bit. He had a wood fire going downstairs. We both just did our own thing for a while after that.

At dusk I made our (last!) bonfire. We roasted leftover hot dogs and had more s’mores.

Eventually Ethan decided he was cold, so I (cautiously) stayed out alone a while longer. 😉 Happy to report no bears got me.

We remade the indoor fire and settled in to watch another movie. This time we watched The Man From Toronto on Netflix. We both LOVED the cozy setup in the cabin for watching movies by the fire. This was one of Ethan’s favorite things about the cabin, he said.

Sunday, October 8th

Sunday morning we had to pack up!! Being an Airbnb, we had to take out the garbage and strip the beds, etc. We didn’t have much time to do anything else before our 10 a.m. check out.

Of course, after two rather dreary days, it was full sunshine on our final day. Hmph. Oh well. I do not really feel the rain really negatively impacted our trip particularly. In fact, it definitely added to the cozy ambience, I think. Would have been nice to have sunshine for our time at the waterfalls and hikes, and rain while we cozied up in the cabin. 😉

Ethan again took the driver’s seat. I had mapped out a different route home which would allow us to stop by a BIG waterfall called Bond Falls.

It took about an hour to get there. Definitely a way different scene- the parking lot was full! I was happy that our cabin location was a little more off the beaten path and not packed with tourists.

A short walk down a paved path led us to this!

My parents claim that we were there when I was a kid once, but honestly, I have no recollection of it.

We walked along a long boardwalk to see the very wide falls from all angles.

There’s even a trail that goes back behind the falls, so we wandered on that for a while, too.

We probably spent an hour poking around here before we hit the road. With all the people around, at least we were able to ask someone to take our picture. 🙂

And that was our trip! Ethan and I traded off driving another ~4 hours home, stopping for lunch in the very-busy-and-touristy Northwoods town of Eagle River, WI.

This was a fantastic fall getaway!! Like I said, I would 100% return to this exact cabin. Either alone (😉) or with Asher or Ivan. It’s a 3 person max cabin, so it’s not a place we could ALL go as a family. Which is fine. I think its small, cozy size is best suited to really a max of 2 people.

I especially LOOOOOOOVED having all this 1:1 time with Ethan! I don’t think I’ve ever gone on a solo trip with either kid, unless you count going away for soccer games or swim meets.

Hope you enjoyed my fall scenes and trip recap, if you’re not in a fall-weather place! If you are, have you been out to enjoy the leaves and fall weather yet?? 😊

Oh, and don’t worry- puppy update post coming soon! Though I won’t promise when. If you couldn’t guess, life has been a little CRAZY since I got home with him in the family now. 🤪

Here’s a pic from yesterday- Charlie enjoying the sunshine before a few rainy days moved in now!