Gitche Gumee

A couple weeks ago Katie and I made our way up to the U.P. to spend some time with my family at a family camp called Gitche Gumee Bible Camp. We had a great week. We were very active and did a lot of fun stuff. So much so that Katie wrote a separate blog post just about our climbing adventures in the U.P. which you can find by clicking here if you like. I'll go over the rest of our adventures in this post. 

The main purpose of this trip was to hang out with mi familia.
A pretty cool lookin bunch.

The first stop on our trip was to visit Katie's parents who had been camping all week up near Rogers City at Hoeft State Park. We left on a Friday so that we could visit with them for the evening, crash on their campsite, and make our trip the next day just that much shorter. While there I got to experience my first hobo pie where you stuff a bunch of ingredients between two pieces of bread and cook them in these metal clamp things over a campfire. Their advisement of sticking with pizza ingredients was right on because my hobo pies were delicious. And then after stuffing ourselves with dinner we drove into Roger City and stuffed our selves even fuller with ice cream. Totally worth it though. That night we were originally planning on setting up our tent, but with rain as a possibility we decided it best to just sleep in their van since we'd be needing our tent the rest of the week and didn't want it getting messy or smelly. Plus it helped me sell Katie on how cool it'd be to have a car we could easily camp out of the back of. Win Win!

The next day we left bright and early so that on the way up to Gitche Gumee we could stop in Houghton to hang out with Katie's brother. He recently moved up to that area for work, so it worked out perfect to see him on a few occasions while we were in the area. While hanging out with him we got to see his place, hike around and explore McLain State park, and explore downtown Houghton a bit. We tried out The Library Restaurant and Brew Pub which ended up being really good, both food and beer wise. And we also made a stop at Keweenaw Brewing Company. Both places we all split a flight. 

Katie and her brother resting after
adventuring out on the rocky pier at
McLain State Park

We eventually made our way up to Eagle River to meet up with my family and figure out the whole housing/camping situation. The cabin my family was staying in could technically fit us all, but it seemed like it would make life a lot more pleasant if we weren't all on top of each other all week. So we chose to camp all week, but luckily instead of having to stay over in the normal campground area we just set our tent up outside the cabin which made it easier to hangout with my family all week. We eventually had to move inside later in the week, but I'll get to that later.

The format of the rest of the week was basically as follows: meals 3 times a day (which makes it feel like you are always eating), 2 chapel services that you're encouraged to attend "most" of, afternoons free to do whatever your heart contents, and finish off the night with the "canteen" opening for snacks and ice cream. The food wasn't quite as good as I remembered it being the past, but it was still good for camp food. The services were better than I remember. Maybe it's a sign I'm getting old. But I found it at least easier to stay awake. Plus every week they have two speakers that trade off speaking, a missionary (or missionary family) and one Bible teacher, so that adds a bit a variety to the week as well.

As for activities, on the first day, Sunday, Katie's brother came up to the camp for a bit. We kicked around a soccer ball since he had never played with Katie before given this was a new interest of hers. We eventually got a spirited game of 3 on 3 after a few kids came over wanting to play. And then to cool off we spent some time on the beach with my family and swam/played catch with my cool water-skipping-ball in Lake Superior.

Monday was one of the best days we had because that afternoon we ventured off to a place called the Devil's Wash Tub to do some cliff jumping. It's a place I always had heard about, but never had found. But luckily this year with the help of some google searches, we managed to find it. For those that want to know it's across the street from the Dapple Gray B&B just about 2 miles before Copper Harbor on 26.  It ended up being a really cool spot where you can jump off a short cliff on one side of this rocky bridge structure, swim underneath through a tunnel to where you could touch on the other side, and then climb back up to do it again. It was awesome. We also did a little bouldering (aka climbing) which Katie talks about in her post.

I took the first jump

Katie jumped too, of course :)

After all our cliff jumping we then continued up to Copper Harbor to try out Brickside Brewery. It was an entertaining place to visit. It's a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, which works well for that area cuz they don't need to be big or anything. But their beer was really good. We got a flight and quickly found a couple of favorites. We got to chat with the barkeep and one of the owners/head brewer. It was clear they just really like making beer. We laughed at overhearing a conversation the brewmaster had with another patron who happened to own a restaurant in Houghton and the brewmaster seemed kind of indifferent about taking on more business. He seemed content with just keeping up w/ what they're already doing. Good for them I guess. Hopefully they stay open so we can visit again next time cuz like I said, they make some good beer.

We ended our afternoon adventure with driving down to Cliff Drive to hike around a bit based on a climbing guide we had with the hopes of finding some spots to climb later in the week. But we really didn't find much. It was a little bit of a damper to what seemed like a perfect afternoon. But the evening turned better again. While away my family made plans to skip the chapel service after dinner and have some more family beach time. So we joined them and again got to watch my niece and nephews try to dam up the creek flowing into Lake Superior and got to play more ball-skip-catch with my family. My brother and I threw the ball around till both our arms were sore, and then we both tried switching and throwing lefty. Good times were had indeed.

My niece and nephews trying to dam up the creek.

Tuesday's afternoon activity was the whole family driving up past Copper Harbor to a place called Horseshoe Bay where there were a lot of rocks and boulders in the water we could swim to and play on. The drive takes you on a few miles of old dirt logging roads, so it took longer then we thought to get there. We had a pretty good time there. It is certainly a beautiful area. But for whatever reason the black flies were particularly bad there and water was on the chillier side. It was still worth it though to see my siblings' kids climb around on stuff and be adventurous. We have some definite potential climbers on our hands. 

Playing on some rocks in Horseshoe Bay

The pebble beach and some other rocks we all climbed around on.

We had hoped there would be enough time to stop at the Devils Washtub with my family on the way back, but sadly there wasn't enough time for everyone to go since nothing is fast with kids. So it was just Katie and I who made a quick stop again since we could be in and out in 15 minutes. We even brought my mom along to watch us take a few jumps. I think she was happy we were enjoying ourselves, but some adventures involving heights are best appreciated by her from afar or by pictures. But I was proud of her adventurous spirit. 

Later that evening Katie and I went back down to the camp beach because we had heard they had kayaks we could use. Good thing we did because it was the last evening of a semi-calm kayakable lake. That night the weather changed and from that night on we had a pretty steady strong wind which caused the lake to get really wavy, which may be fun for playing in (which we did later that week), but not so good for kayaking or cliff jumping. And as it turns out, also not so good for camping seeing as that night we got next no sleep with our tent shaking like crazy. And eventually the wind tore a hole in our tent, possibly from some debris that got picked up. We decided it best to sleep the remaining two nights in the living room of the cabin. 

Wednesday afternoon Katie and I climbed, so that is again covered in Katie's post. But since the lake got super wavy, we of course needed to make time to play. Luckily my brother felt the same way. So before bedtime we went down to the lake and Katie, myself, my brother, and his kids went wave jumping. It was awesome. I was super impressed with my oldest nephew. The waves were way taller then he was, but he didn't back down. Again, some super awesome times were had.

Playing in the waves

Thursday was our last full day of camp. We spent the afternoon hiking around and exploring this place down the road from the camp called Jacob's Falls with the whole family. I've explored the falls a bunch of times before, but this time we came in from the backside of the falls by way of a some trails that some monks in the area have developed. It was a beautiful hike. And the falls were pretty too. Also fun to play in. Afterwards we made another quick stop off at the beach since it was still windy and played in the waves some more.

Climbing around on Jacob's Falls.

And that was our week at camp. We left after breakfast on Friday and went climbing near Baraga, MI at Silver Mountain. Afterwards it timed out perfect to backtrack a bit to Houghton and hangout with Katie's brother one more time before heading home. We went out to eat again, crashed at his place, and continued home the next day. We made one more stop in Lansing, MI. Yes, it was a bit out of the way, but there they have Panchero's, the best burrito place ever. So we met a friend there and afterwards went to the Saturday night service of Riverview Church. We really miss being able to go to that church regularly given that we live in Holland. So whenever we're in the area we make a point to go. And as usual both the music and sermon were amazing. If you are in the Lansing area and have never been, you should seriously check it out! So for us it was lovely way to end our week-long trip. 

The last thing I'll mention about our activities was that we played a lot of this board game called Pandemic. It's a game Katie and I got into playing with friends a few months before, and so we requested it as a birthday present. My mom waited until camp to give it to us, which worked out perfect because then we got to introduce it to our whole family. We played it quite a bit to fill time between things and in the evening before bed. The premise of the game is that you work as a team to cure/prevent the spread of disease across the world. Sadly most of the time game won... aka, everyone in the world died. But on a couple of occasions we managed to save humanity... You're welcome everyone.

So as you can probably tell, overall we had a really great week. It was especially great to see family. The kids were much better behaved than we thought they'd be, so that was a blessing. And we had amazing weather. Perhaps even the best weather I've ever had there. And weather impacts a lot at camp since in bad weather you're very limited in your choice of activities. I've had to remind Katie to keep her expectations still low if we go again in future years cuz I'm not sure it'll ever be that good again. I think our only complaint is we could have really used some more sleep. For various reasons, we just did not sleep well. But we survived. 

And that was our week at Gitche Gumee. We are very thankful we were able to go the whole week, which we might not have been able to do had we not been on sabbatical. It's really nice when we can use some of this extra time off to spend it with family. And we're very much looking forward to being able to spend even more time with them and others over this next year. 

I hope you enjoyed following along on our adventure up to the U.P., eh! Until next time. Cheers