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Ocean Michigan or Bust  



Route Talk
Palouse Wash Elberta Mich
GPS will always route you to the interstate or around towns. Pack the atlas and follow the slow roads for a better drive (and better pit stops!).





Day 1 (Saturday)Palouse to Great Falls, Montana
400 milesInterstate 90 to Highway 200

Overnight
O’Haire Motor Inn and the World Famous Sip N Dip Lounge
17 7th St S
Great Falls, MT

Notes
Bust up the road! Leave by dawn (5:09am), take shifts, eat snacks, get that gritty black snake of interstate behind you. Take a swig from Elmer’s Fountain for good luck upon your way. If you get to Great Falls in good time, there is a bookstore and many great junky thrift shops as a reward! The mermaid bar is most likely the place where you will get covid or measles, but it will be worth it.

Points of Interest
Lincoln, Montana is where Ted Kaczynski hid out and wrote his famous manifesto; I learned this while partying with ghosts in a haunted steakhouse in my early 20s (the ghosts locked us in and the lights wouldn’t stop popping off trying to communicate)

Listening Library
🎶 The Gathering (on shuffle)
🎶 Mountain Misery
Project Unabom
Stolen (Season 1)
Welcome to the Campiest Place on Earth (NYT) 




Day 2 (Sunday)Great Falls, Montana to Underwood, North Dakota
575 milesHighway 200 West
Interstate 94 West
Highway 85 North
Back on 200 West

Overnight
The Underwood Inn
(701) 401-6130
222 Lincoln Ave
Underwood, ND

Notes
Leave as early as you can, it will be worth it so you can slow down once you get out to lakes country! Construction zones across (all) Montana highways make it brutalizingly stop-and-go this summer. The hardest thing about this long drive is you gotta get past Teddy Roosevelt before hotel prices go down and you gotta get past the Bakken oil fields to avoid the man camps. 

The Bakken is the Tar Sands of the USA; they’ve now boomed and busted, so  towns are full of blown out man camps and hollowed out rural economies. Eyes out for  pump-jack flumes and oil riggers, bikini bod coffee drive-thrus and truck-nuts on everything.

Points of Interest
Teddy Roosevelt National Park
Bakken Oil Fields

Listening Library




Day 3 (Monday)Underwood, North Dakota to Upper Wisconsin
530 milesHighway 200 West 
Highway 2 West or
Highway 13 West

Overnight
Willow Hotel (Herbster, WI)
North Coast Chalets (Washburn, WI)
Washburn Motel (Cash only)
Indianhead (Ironwood, MI)
Ironwood Motel (Ironwood, MI)
Silver Street Hotel (Hurley, WI)

Notes
Tribal nations, wild rice, lake swimming, locals-only thrift stores! Follow the highway across the north woods but don’t forget the bug spray if you decide to hike around. Plenty of swimming spots all along the way, including the shores of mighty Lake Superior once you come down the hills into Duluth. The dumpsters behind Duluth Trading Co. are always full of good fabric scraps, and it’s worth visiting the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial downtown. Catch a sunset on highway 13 (Lake Superior Scenic Byway) and try to find a bonafide Wisconsin Supper Club for dinner!

Points of Interest
  • Lake Itasca State Park (Headwaters of the Mississippi River)
  • Thrift stores (Fosston, Minn)
  • Thrift store & Senior Center Thrift (Bagley, Minn)
  • Thrift store & rural Korean market + restaurant (Solway, Minn)
  • Thrift stores, Bemidji Co-Op, & Paul Bunyan with Babe (Bemidji, Minn)
  • Big Fish Supper Club (Bema, Minn) *Closed for business, photo only
  • Green Scene, rural market and eatery on Leech Lake (Walker, Minn) 
  • At Sara’s Table, amazing farm-to-table restaurant (Duluth, Minn)
  • Thrift stores (Superior, Wisconsin)
  • Chequamegon Books (Washburn, WI)

Listening Library




Day 4 (Tuesday) Upper Wisconsin to Grand Marais, Michigan
350 milesHighway 2
Highway 28
Highway 45

Overnight
Grand Marais is great for an overnight--you can explore Pictured Rocks en route and it should set you up to hit Mary’s bookstore down south in the morning (if she’ll open up for you). Small town, good food, great bars, public beaches you can walk to from any of the motels. Smoked fish at the gas station, neighborhood breakfast diner opens early. 

Superior Hotel, call (906) 494-2539 (Old boarding house rooms, shared bathrooms, shared living room)
Beach Park Motel
Woods Resort
Dunes Motel
Voyageurs Motel

Notes
There’s not a single bad way to cross Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Pasty shops, fish markets, smoked everything, thrift stores, flea markets, swimming beaches galore. If you’re feeling wild, don’t miss exploring the carribean blue waters along Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The water is clean enough to drink--our favorite cocktail is a Lake Superior Fireball: you swim as deep and far as you can, get a mouthful of water and swallow it before coming up for air.

Points of Interest
  • Chequamegon Books (Washburn, WI)
  • Thrift stores (Ironwood, MI and Hurley, WI)
  • Thrift store (Bessemer, MI)
  • Da Yooper’s Tourist Trap (Ishpemig, MI)
  • Lakenland Sculpture Park (Marquette, MI)
  • Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (Munising, MI)
  • Thrift store (Engadine, MI)
  • Second Edition Books, Too (Brevort, MI)
 




Day 5 (Wednesday)Grand Marais, Michigan to Elberta, Michigan
270 milesHighway 77 South
Highway 2 West
Highway 31 or 131 South
River Road south and west from Benzonia, all the way home

Overnight
Sawbill Surf Club 

Notes
Last leg! Call Bookstore Mary (numbers listed: 317-727-3767 or 906-298-1457 or 906 292 5513) in the morning to see if she’ll let you in the shop for your summer reading. Watch your time so you don’t miss Vinyl by the Bay at the Cabbage Shed, but treat yourself to some freaky stops and some great west Michigan thrift stores. Go ahead and greet the big lake at the overlook upon your arrival (we can meet you there).

Stop and get hot pasties for lunch at:
Dune Shores Resort
“D’ere Yooper Good!”
Working class vacation motel, cash only, on the beach, ice cream scoops available and pasties are made in-house (Mary’s #1 favorite pasty in the entire UP)
(906) 643-7693
3318 US Highway 2 W 
Saint Ignace, MI, US 49781

Points of Interest
  • Second Edition Books, Too (Moran, MI) - Call Mary!
  • St Ignace Mystery Spot (St Ignace, MI)
  • Thrift stores (St Ignace, MI)
  • The Mighty Mac (Mackinac Bridge, MI)
  • Thrift stores (Petoskey, Michigan)
  • Thrift stores (Charlevoix, Michigan)

Listening Library