Waterfalls and Black River Harbor, MI…

Our next stop was at Eddy Park in Wakefield, Michigan where we found a site one row from the edge of Sunday Lake. This is another township park and typical in that we only have electricity (50/30/20 amp) and water.There are some sewer sites but they were either full or too un-level. We will stay here for four days even though it took us a while to find a site that wasn’t too sloped so that we could get level. The rates are great in that we are paying $15 for this site and we have certainly enjoyed the lake views..

Needing a few things we went out and explored the towns nearby. Wakefield itself is a very small town with only fulfilling basic needs. It is nice but we were looking for a larger grocery store so we drove a bit further west through another small town of Bessemer (bigger than Wakefield) and on into the town of Ironwood in Michigan then into Hurley just across the border in Wisconsin. 

The history of these towns is fascinating and it explains why the adjacent towns of Hurley, WI and Ironwood, MI are so different. We really noticed the differences when we crossed from  Michigan into Wisconsin and noticed that every other building in Hurley seemed to be a bar. Most of these bars would be classified as “dive bars” and they mostly appear to be in decline. It turns out that Ironwood wanted to separate itself from the debauchery found in Hurley so most of the bars and bordellos ended up in the nearby town of Hurley. Ironwood celebrates its mining heritage after all and lets be real… all those miners had to have somewhere to go after a hard days work!

The next day we took a drive over to Black River Harbor where we took a few hikes in the area. There is a dry camp campground there as well and we did see one 40 footer RV sitting in a spot, however, most sites appeared to be more suited to smaller rigs.What attracted us here was the five major waterfalls with hiking trails running adjacent to them.

Man there were fungi of ever type everywhere along the Black River which made me wish even more I had taken a class in Mycology when I was in college. I am sending many pictures to Dawn of Dawn's Bloggy Blog hoping she can enlighten me on some of them. Also we saw a plant with beautiful blue fruits that start out white that I wished I knew what was (pictured above left). We hiked many of the Black River trails and took in all but one of the waterfalls (not sure how we missed it). At the tail waters of the Black River is Black River Harbor and it features a very picturesque park with a cool pedestrian suspension bridge.

The suspension bridge took us over the harbor onto the shore of the very beautiful Lake Superior. We walked along this nice little beach and on our return found a bench that faced out over the lake where we watched the waters of the Black River intermingle with the placid waters of Lake Superior. A great way to end the day…