In fact, the road we took home from a one-day excursion may actually get more traffic than the road we took earlier. But it was still the long way home, and I'm glad we followed a whim.
Here's the story: On Saturday, we visited and toured an old copper mine. It was about 70 miles from home, to the north and west, close to Lake Superior. We left at mid-morning, when it was cloudy with rain threatening. As we neared the lake, the clouds were lowering, and light rain started to fall ...
But after the tour and then lunch at a cafe in Ontonagon, the clouds started breaking up, and the sun broke out. Before long, there was more blue sky than clouds ...
As I drove home, I got an idea: Why don't we take the long way home? At a crossroads, I turned east instead of continuing south.
It was different scenery for everyone, including the driver. When M-28 reached U.S. 141, I turned south, towards Iron County and home. I started wondering about something: Would the moose be out?
There is a swamp along U.S. 141, just south of the Baraga-Iron county line, and it's well known that moose forage for food there. I have heard about it for years and have even seen pictures of moose there. Many people have told me about it. But I personally had never seen any moose. I have driven that way many times, usually to or from the Houghton-Hancock area, and always slow down when I reach that swamp, scanning around to see if any moose are out. But I had never seen one.
Moose were reintroduced to the western U.P. about 20 years ago, but I have only seen moose in the wild twice. Once was in the mid to late 1990s, when I was driving my wife to Marquette--he crossed the road about a quarter mile in front of us. "That's a moose!" I cried out. Clever, eh? No mistaking it for any other creature, with its ungainly gait.
Then, in the spring of 2003, David and I went to Rhinelander to look at cars. On the way home, east of Eagle River, Wis., one crossed the road in front of us. "That's a moose!" How observant! Neither time was a camera handy, and it wouldn't have mattered if it was: The moose was gone in a matter of seconds.
That's the last time I had seen one in the wild ... until Saturday.
I turned south and later crossed the county line. As I neared the swamp, I saw cars parked on both sides of the road, with people standing on the east side, looking towards the swamp. Aha! ...
"Say hello to Bullwinkle," I said as I pulled over. About 100 yards east of the highway, Bullwinkle stood in all his glory ...
He was there to get a late afternoon snack in the swampland diner. So he usually was bent over, munching on the vegetation. But from time to time he looked up at all the silly people looking at him. What's the matter? Haven't you seen a moose before? ...
We stayed about 15 minutes and took a number of pictures. I used my digital SLR (a Nikon D40), which has a zoom lens that maxes out at 200 mm. I also have a superzoom digital all-in-one that says it has a 20X zoom--the equivalent of 560 mm.
Alas, that camera was home, next to my desk in the computer room.
Unfortunate, but remember that we took that route home on the spur of the moment. You can bet, though, that the next time that I travel north on 141, probably heading for some football game in L'Anse or Houghton or in that area, I'll make sure to take it along for the ride.
By the way, I didn't see a flying squirrel nearby. But I was about a hundred yards away, so there could have been. Hokey smoke!
****
Earlier, my wife, my son and I went north to see and tour the Adventure Mine, located near Greenland. This "Greenland" is in southern Ontonagon County. And it was pretty green, too, with all the rain we have had this summer.
The Adventure Mine is an old copper mining operation. The mine operated from about 1850 to 1920. At no point, we were told during the tour, did it ever turn a profit ...
A few random facts we learned from our highly entertaining tour guide, Jim, interspersed with a few photos:
--Ancient peoples who lived here about 9,000 years ago understood how to work the copper and make tools. But the later Indians who lived in this area before the Europeans moved in (in the 1700s and 1800s) did not have the technology--the knowledge was lost over the years.
--The largest piece of copper found in the area was 300 tons--about the size of a small house. It took a team of 15 men with hand chisels to break it up--no pneumatic drills back then.
--There were lots of bats in the mine earlier in the day, said the tour guide. But we did not encounter any in the early afternoon. The gates, by the way, are bat-friendly--they are metal with horizontal bars through which the bats can pass. He estimated the mine's bat population at about 10,000.
--To mine copper back in "the old days," they had to drill deep holes in the rock, put dynamite inside, light the fuse and run away. Bang! Everything was done by hand. Here's how they drilled the holes: A guy would hold a long steel drill bit to the rock with both hands, turning it a quarter turn each time, while two men took turns hitting the end with sledgehammers. It took about 10 hours to drill a hole three or four feet deep using that method.
--Later, they had air-powered drills. Much noisier but much faster: one hour to drill a hole. Later still, hydraulic drills, which carried away the silica dust and did the job in 10 minutes. The Adventure Mine was closed by then.
--No artificial lights inside the mine: We walked by the light from our miners' helmets. Back when the mine started, the miners worked by a single candle's light. At one point we turned off our lights, and waited a minute. Yes, we could see the walls somewhat by the candle's light. But not very well ...
That's how much light the miners worked by. It had an effect on their vision over the years, and there was a lot of depression and alcoholism among the miners, as well. At one time, 500 men worked in the mine, and 90 bars circled the hill.
--There were many low spots along the way. I had to duck down quite a bit to avoid banging my helmeted head. "You have to remember, at the turn of the century, the average man was only 5 feet tall. So there would have been plenty of room for them." ...
--They had rails on the bottom of the line, and men pushed the ore cars out of the mine on those rails. They never used animals: "You had to buy an animal, you had to feed an animal, you had to care for an animal. Men were expendable. Sad but true."
Inside the gift house, they had a lot of pretty copper for sale ...
Along with other interesting sights ...
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