Wednesday 9-26 Lake of the Clouds

Cold and windy day

It rained all night, early this morning it stopped but everything was wet and soggy. The wind blew all day which made is seem cold, actually the temperature only got to about 50 so I guess it really was a bit cold, we certainly didn't see anyone outside that wasn't wearing a jacket or coat. 

Last night I slept for nine hours, I usually sleep about seven. It has been getting down into the low 40's at night so we have been sleeping with the heater on. When I go to bed at night I turn the heat down to 66, Larry gets up before me and turns it up to 72. When I wake up in the morning it's nice and warm.

This morning we drove seven miles to Lakes of the Clouds, one of the day use areas in the park. There are hiking trails, picnic tables, restrooms and magnificent views of the area. We started out by climbing on big boulders to see gorgeous vistas of the area. You can see where the trees are starting to show their fall colors. We had a great view of the lake. We started off on a hike but after a bit we turned around, due to the rain everything was very wet and for some reason we just didn't want to continue. We walked a boardwalk around the area and back to the parking lot.

Porcupine Mountains from observation point 

A view of the lake at Lake of the Clouds

We decided to drive to Ontonagan, a small town about 20 miles from where we were. Larry had read about the city having camping sites. Ontonagan is a quaint little town. If you want to eat out there's not much to chose from, I think I saw one cafe. But there were a couple of city parks to stop at. We stopped at one and had lunch in the Minnie. The historical society offers tours of the local lighthouse so we stopped by, unfortunately they don't do tours on the off season. We were getting a little low on propane in the Minnie so we stopped by an Ace Hardware Store and they filled it up.

Getting propane

We are camped at the state park in the Union Campground. Once we were back in our site we walked around for an hour. We walked by the boat landing and saw a great fishing pier that had two picnic tables for the fishermen to use. The area isn't protected like the harbors but the ramps were very nice. After the landing we walked by the park store and the Folk School. The Folk School has workshops to inspire creativity, learning and appreciation of the natural environment and culture heritage of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness. We had a nice walk.     

Camping in Union Campground

Leaves changing color

Lake Superior from the campground