Weekend in Paradise (or was it Hell) part II

After Mackinac City, we drove to our little motel in Sault Ste. Marie. Not seeing anything promising for dinner, we decided to drive the extra half mile downtown to find somewhere more interesting. Unfortunately, Sault Ste. Marie seems about as happening as the rest of Michigan -- i.e., not very much. It was almost a mini Detroit with many of the shops right on the Main Street out of business. Sigh ... It sounded much better online. But we headed straight over to see the Soo Locks. Thank heavens, because otherwise we would have missed all the ships passing through and had to come back past Andrew's bedtime. Though still not worth a visit to this city, perhaps, the Locks were really cool and the largest ones in the world. The ship going through was sure HUGE!!!



Sadly, we could not find any local, family friendly fare, so we ate at Applebees - which was nice enough. Andrew decided to only eat the fried breading off half a mozarrella stick (he seriously picked it all off and refused to eat the cheese). Oh, well. More Olympics, more sleep.

Sunday morning, we were off again, this time, in a thick fog on our drive to Paradise. Andrew slept pretty much the whole morning, which was good, because his cold and coughing were getting pretty bad. We tried to take the scenic route, and ended up on detour and were back on the highway (this seemed to be the story of our trip anyways - tons of detours!). As we drove, we decided to skip the Shipwreck Museum and the Blueberry Festival in Paradise, so we had time to see everything else and still get home at a decent time. If only we knew our plans would be derailed ...

So, we drove through lovely (very very small) Paradise and stopped 10 minutes away at the Tahquamenon Falls State Park (rhymes with phenomenon). Andrew was thrilled to see that he had woken up right next to the waterfalls. He is a huge fan of waterfalls and wanted to see it all. They were beautiful. Unfortunately, Andrew's coughing and wheezing starting to get a lot worse.

The Lower Falls:




The Upper Falls:





This was really a great park. Everything felt very pristine and wilderness-y. Of course, seeing that the UP was pretty much an entire peninsula of forests, that's not too hard.

Stay tuned for the rest of our adventure.