Advertisement
Published: March 1st 2011
Edit Blog Post
Lindell Chocolate Shop-Lake Linden
Early 1900's. Still the same decor from 110 years ago. The next morning was Saturday morning. Originally, had we been able to go to Land O' Lakes, WI, we were planning to attend the Frosty Snowmobile Club's Radar runs at Bent's Camp Resort on Mamie Lake west of LandO. One of the highlights of this event is the bikini run with girls wearing bikinis riding the high speed 1000' run on snowmobiles. They do it to raise money for breast cancer. We considered driving the 65 miles down there to see it, but since the trails there were now dirt and the trails up here are fantastic, we chose to stay up here and ride.
We only received about 2-3 inches of snow, but the groomers were doing a heck of a job of churning up the snow and flattening out the trails, resulting in great riding conditions. I thought it would be a good day to show Ed a little of the historic sites from the early 20th century, when copper mining was booming in the Keweenaw. We rode up to Lake Linden, where we stopped at a place called Lindell Chocolate Shop for breakfast. Lindell's is an old soda fountain shop and everything inside is still like it
Old Calumet Firehouse
Built in 1898. Now a museum. was 100 years ago. Very cool.
We then rode up to Calumet. Calumet was the largest town in the Upper Peninsula in the early 1900's with a population at that time of around 100,000. Now the population is around 1,500. When you visit here now, it's almost impossible to envision what this area was like 100 years ago. The economy here was thriving. Mining and logging were booming. Calumet was under consideration to be the capitol of Michigan. Strip mining for copper in Montana and other areas that were far less costly to mine brought all of that to an end up here.
We stopped in at Shute's Saloon, opened in 1890. It is still very much the same inside. There is a large Tiffany canopy over the bar back that was brought in from Chicago in 1901. It is valued at over $1,000,000 and is owned by the city of Calumet. They were celebrating the Gipper's birthday and had a birthday cake to share with us. George Gipp, the legendary "Gipper" from Knute Rockne's Notre Dame's 1920's football team was born and raised here in Calumet.
On our return trip back home, we chose to ride
across the ice of the Portage Channel rather than take the bridge. It was still frozen and safe even after 3 warm days.
We were going to go home Sunday, but the the forecast was for a big snow and ice storm to go through most of Wisconsin Sunday, so we chose to stay one more day and let the roads get better on Monday for traveling the 450 miles back home. (It sure is nice to be retired and not have any deadlines!) So Sunday we rode north again and chose to ride a trail called the Freda Loop. The Freda Loop is a 25 mile trail that goes to Freda on Lake Superior and then back to the town of South Range. Near Lake Superior, at a place called Redridge, there is an old steel dam built in 1900. It is on the Salmon Trout River, which flows into Lake Superior. It is one of only 3 steel Dams ever built in the US. It dammed the river to create a reservoir for water to be used at the Atlantic Mine Stamp Mill.
All in all, we had a great trip to the Keweenaw Peninsula. We
Shute
Opened in 1890. rode about 550 miles and I guess you'd have to say that Ed is no longer a newbie rider. He got a lot of experience in a few days. He picked up handling the machine real quickly and can ride anywhere with anybody. I hope we get to do this again some time.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.3s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 14; qc: 111; dbt: 0.1496s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb