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Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Houghton to Munising and an Irresistible Impulse.

[url=https://new.spotwalla.com/trip/7bb3-63e5c-98ff/view]Houghton to Munising Map



Our trip to this point had been substantially a northward trek; well except for Mike and Jennifer who came up over the top of Lake Michigan and south to meet us. Our departure from Houghton would begin our eastward journey from the base of U.P.'s dorsal in Houghton fin to the tip of its tail fin in Paradise. Our last base-camp for the week would be in Munising. We would stage from there on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The homeward turn would be on Friday, our last day together as a group.

On July 31, 1952, Lt​. Coleman A. Peterson, who was stationed in Big Bay, MI for the summer, shot and killed Maurice Chenoweth, a local bar owner. John D Voelker, a local attorney, represented the defense in the matter of People v. Coleman Peterson and used a rare version of the insanity defense called "irresistible impulse". Mr. Voelker later wrote "Anatomy of a Murder", a fictionalized account of the case which was made into the movie of the same name in 1959. The movie is considered one of the best trial movies in the history of cinema. It starred James Stewart and Lee Remick and was filmed entirely on location in Upper Michigan, a first for a full-length movie.

They filmed all over the Upper Peninsula including some scenes in Big Bay, though not in the actual bar where the real shooting took place. Many of the street scenes were filmed in Michigamme, MI and Mike, knowing I'm a big fan of this movie, arranged our ride to include a stop in the unincorporated little burg. Michigamme is a one stoplight town, without the stoplight. It seems to exist to serve visitors to Lake Michigamme and not much else. It being the time in the pandemic where we were still concerned about outdoor transmission, there were not a lot of visitors to the lake and almost every business on Main Street was closed, although I'm sure that many had been closed long before the pandemic descended upon us.









The only sign of life in the town was the partially renovation of the one of the old buildings. No workers, mind you, but the freshly installed lumber indicted that human lifeforms were in the area. We parked across from a building that said "Museum" across the front of it. I recall there was a sign informing potential museum visitors to knock on the front door of the neighboring home. I do remember that Glen and Laura walked over and before too long a thin older man walked over and introduced himself (by a name that I've since forgotten) as the curator of the Michigamme Historical Museum.


Mike and Jennifer, the museum and Jennifer's Indian

We had a delightful time at the museum. There was a lot of war memorabilia that drew the attention of Glen and Jennifer in particular. Myself, I was fascinated by the old outboard motor collection and the large display of photos and keepsakes from "Anatomy of a Murder" Our curator knew a lot about the movie and pointed to the buildings on Main Street that appeared in it.




I seem to recall that the curator raced outboard hydroplanes back when he was young.

We spent the better part of an hour with our host at the museum. He seemed to have a intimate knowledge of every artifact in the place and there were lots of artifacts-- literal lots of them. We took a very quick (you'd have to crawl to make it slow) pass through town to get a view of the lake and across it to the Mt. Shasta Inn. In the movie, James Stewart finds Lee Remick at the Inn, dancing and flirting with some servicemen, presumably her incarcerated husband's friends, and gives her a stern warning about how such behavior could impact her husband's case.


Now


With the stunning Lee Remick in front of it


Time to ride. It was already past our lunch time and it would take about 45 minutes to get to Marquette and a place to eat. Anyone who has read anything about this crew knows that Mike was toeing a fine line between hungry and angry -- "Hangry" -- and no sane person knowingly crosses that line. We stopped in Marquette for gas and food. I don't recall much about the town. It seemed much larger and less interesting than any of the towns we've been in on this trip. We passed through it on the 4-lane with a center turn lane US41 which undoubtedly contributed to my impression of non-impressiveness. I honestly don't know where we stopped to eat or IF we stopped to eat. I recall us stopping at a visitor center to get our bearings and that it and the other places we stopped in Marquette were all on the left side of the road which translated into several left turns across multiple lanes with multiple bikes. No harm, in the end, but it was more dicey than it needed to be.

The trip from Houghton to Marquette was on a fairly tame section of US41/M28 that drops fairly far south of Lake Superior, but reconnects to it at Marquette. The ride was fine, but nothing more than fine. The stop in Michigamme was easily the highlight of the trip.

We made that last left turn out of the gas station (or was that the lunch place? Did we even stop for lunch??) and onto Munising via M28 which splits from 41 just east of Marquette. Prettier than the first legs atop US41, M28 ribbons along through a few more small towns with glimpses of the big lake and a couple of small ones before getting to Munising. Munising is not as big as Marguette, but seemed to be a prettier harbor town, despite the incredible amount of road construction in their downtown. We'd come back to Munising a couple of times later in the trip, but it was just another town to pass through at this point in the ride.

We arrived at the Econo-Lodge Inn & Suites Musining around 3:30 in the afternoon. Not a bad place, but not worth the room rate which is artificially high with Munising being very much a tourist destination during the summer months. Covid kept the number of guests to a minimum so we had the picnic tables out front to ourselves. This day is a little blurry in my mind as you may have already ascertained, but I recall having snacks on the picnic tables shortly after arriving -- maybe that was lunch.


Checking at the Econo-Lodge


Cheryl looking annoyed....probably at my photo taking


Bikes checking out their accomodations

Hung out for a while. Weather was a little warm, but pleasant. Mike lead us on a trek for dinner that took us to the place that had the best reviews of anyplace nearby. It was closed because the owner couldn't find anyone to work since they all went on unemployment due to the pandemic. At least that was the gist of the rather terse note on the front door. Mike found another place, The Buckhorn, which took us about 1/2 to get to because his nav system plotted out just an insanely long route there and back to the motel. The food was very good and the place is really in the middle of nowhere. I think it caters to ATVers in the summer and snowmobiles in the winter. More on this in the next installment -- Turns out that if you did a normal route to Buckhorn only takes a few minutes from the Econo-Lodge so we went back the next day.


View from inside Buckhorn



Never quite figured out the "giant furniture" phenomenon, but the girls look adorable, masked or otherwise.

That was a fun read MTC.

I imagine you told her that you weren't posting the photo publicly online.

( ... like I wrote: I imagined it.)