Day thirteen of our RV journey through Michigan with highlights of the trip, sites and destinations along with food, fun, and ideas for your trip through Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. We have been finding things to do in Michigan with fun adventures, places to see and visit, and more. Today we enjoyed Da Yoopers Tourist Trap and traveled to our last destination together: Hancock City campground.

August 31

Today was our final travel day with Bill and Zappo. We are camping three more nights together, at Hancock City campground.

Hancock is just across the Keweenaw Waterway from Houghton, which is home to Michigan Tech University. The Keweenaw Peninsula is rich with rugged terrain, winding rivers, and unique geology. More about that in the days to come.

After packing up the camp site, we started today’s journey at the dump station. Bill was in line, and a Flagstaff MicroLite was also waiting. It’s like we had our own mini-micro gathering. HAHA

While Tony finished the dirty work, I finally took the short walk to the waterfront and looked at the Bay Furnace, for which the campground was named. The furnace was once used to melt iron. It is huge, and the information poster said that about half of it is missing from its original form. With an arch height of 14 feet, the building was originally 45 feet in height.

On the road

Our route took us north and west. We stopped for lunch at Jasper Ridge Brewery in Ishpeming and had some really tasty sandwiches, chips, and onion rings. The guys tried some beer and we bought a couple cans to save for evening.

Just one more mile down the road I asked for another stop. You see, some of my favorite words were on a giant sign: “rocks” and “tourist trap.” How could I resist? Da Yoopers Tourist Trap does have a terrific rock shop, plus a big gift shop with lots of fun thing and UP souvenirs. But around back is where the fun begins.

Similar to Lakenenland (which we visited on August 29), Da Yoopers is a yard full of crazy art. We had fun checking out the art and taking silly photos, and we bought a couple of souvenirs. Then we got back on the road to camp.

Houghton

We drove through Houghton on the way to the campground. Being a college town in an otherwise lightly-populated area, it reminded us of a movie set with a huge campus, lots of interesting shops and restaurants, and a bunch of fraternity houses. I’ve never actually seen a neighborhood of fraternity houses, and I was reminded of “Animal House,” a movie I watched dozens of times!

Hancock City Campground

We arrived at the Hancock City Campground and filled our water tanks. We found our side-by-side sites and it took each of us a bit of work to get in our sites. Bill especially had a tough turn into a narrow site. I chose these because the map seemed to indicate that there were fewer trees to the north of us. Well, I guess relatively speaking that is true to an extent. But there are still a lot of trees. I’m glad we have electrical hookup, because the shade might cause trouble for our solar panels. Tony did get Starlink to find a signal but it’s a little sketchy.

We sat around for a little while and Tony made wraps for dinner. After we ate, we decided we wanted our Lippert gazebo so Bill helped us set it up and fill it with chairs.

I went for a walk around the campground. I discovered that the sites I chose are probably the smallest, tightest sites in the whole park! In my defense, I think a lot of the sites were already booked when I made the reservation. All is well, but it’s funny how many big, wide, exposed sites there are here!