It's time to get off the crowded expressway and throw the GPS out the window. get out and explore Michigan's back roads, towns and trails.
A guy, a camera, and a Jeep, and sometimes a black lab named Cooper
Located around Charlevoix are some unique houses constructed out of stone with thatched roofs. Many people refer to them as the “mushroom houses” because of their unique construction. They were built by self-taught builder Earl Young using locally sourced building materials. One of the more interesting houses he built is known as the ” Half
You probably heard the phrase ” win one for the Gipper ” at a football game or from the Knute Rockney movie where a young Ronald Reagan played George Gip. What most people don’t know, is the Gipper was a Yooper. George Gipp was born in 1895 and raised in Laurium on the Keweenaw Peninsula.
Many claim this old hospital built in 1927 is haunted. It sits abandoned on a hill where the Prairie River and the Rocky River meet in the southwest Michigan town of Three Rivers. The hospital closed in 1987 after a newer one replaced it. Many people say the old hospital is haunted, and I can
Last year on this date I was heading home from a long trip around the U.P. As I was crossing the big green bridge, the Stars And Strips were proudly flying on one of the twin towers of the bridge. At the moment I saw the flag I rememberd that it was 9-11. I was
The Pigeon Depot was constructed in 1908 and served two railroad lines. In 1883 the Pontiac, Oxford and Port Austin Railroad, a north-south line, had been extended to Caseville and a depot was built at Berne, one mile north of here. Around 1886 the Saginaw, Tuscola and Huron Railroad built tracks through the Tamarack Swamp
North of Glen Arbor in the Leelanau Penisula is an old grist mill that sits along the Crystal River. It looks like many other hundred-year-old mills used for grinding grain, but this one has a unique story to tell. Long after it stopped grinding grain into flour during the 1970s it was turned into a
If you are in the Upper Peninsula in the early fall you may get to witness one of natures wonders. The Monarch Butterfly migrates 1,900-miles south to their wintering grounds in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. Usually, around September thousands of Monarchs gather around the remains of the old Peninsula Lighthouse at the tip
Every night during the shipping season the S.S. Badger sails into Ludington Harbor and the north breakwater light welcomes it home. When the Badger is gone it is as if the lighthouse stands in the harbor waiting like a mother for her child to come home from school. The Badger is the last steam-powered passenger
Most people are unaware of the old historic Civil War-era fort next to the Detroit River near downtown Detroit. When I tell people about Fort Wayne they think of Indiana, but it is the name of the fort in Detroit. It was built in the 1840s and used by the army all the way up
This United Central Methodist Church is in downtown Muskegon and has a historical marker in front of it that reads: The first Protestant society in Muskegon began as a mission station served by itinerant preachers. In 1843 the Reverend M. Warring held Muskegon’s first service in Martha Ryerson’s boardinghouse. Deacon Abner Bennett, a black lay
