Ever since my first visit to the famed Porcupine Mountains last Summer, it has been amusing me and fascinating me during subsequent trips - be it the colorful drive with Dr. Orlando, or portrait trip with few buddies before winter made its grand appearance. My last attempt, to see this region when some snow still around, was however marred by road closures and not having proper transportation. But it was during the same trip that a park ranger gave me a pretty detailed map of the area surrounding the park and reading couple more books later in the spring enhanced the curiosity to shoot some of the many waterfalls around here… Spring snow showers in early April only prolonged this visit but DNR opened the roads this past Thursday (it was kinda sad - Walter would have loved to see them and hike) and that pretty much decided my weekend plan

Friendly Note: If you are planning to visit the Porkies, be sure to call the DNR office for road closures and other information. And yeah, you will need a Michigan State Park sticker on your vehicle to save some time at many of the places.

Union River Gorges

Starting a bit late in the morning forced me not to visit the usual Lake of Clouds area and the first stoppage was for the Union River Gorges. The trail, as the name claims, is very interpretive - has a little story boards every once in a while that takes one back in time. Though there are few enhancements (wooden bench to sit down and enjoy the river), it’s not too hard to imagine how this place was few decades ago… Nearly half of the trail is along the Union River and offers many photogenic spots. This particular branch of the gorges was designed (i.e. man-made) to generate some electricity to help the mining process. Pretty impressive given the time and the tools people had at their disposal during those days…

Union River Gorge - this particular one was man-made to generate about 3-4 Horse Power of electricity during the good olden days of Copper mining

Overlooked Falls

Next random stop, thanks to the map, was along the rugged Little Carp River Road. End of drivable road signals the beginning of many a trails - some leading to couple of waterfalls, while others to some other lakes. Just around the parking area, one gets to see the Blowdown Creek jumping off some rocks just before it merges with the Little Carp River. Not too far from this merging point is the less known Overlooked Falls - a sequence/series of 5-10 feet roaring plunges that makes just about anybody stop and enjoy their beauty.

Overlooked Falls of Little Carp River

It was while hiking futher down the stream and attempting to shoot the Greenstone Falls sequence that Sun decided to come out of cloudy cover and play spoil-sport in a what was till then a wonderful photo expedition. Too much Sunshine caused too much reflection off the water and not even the combination of ND4 and ND8 filters along with circular polarizer was of much use I guess I have to pick another cloudy day to come back and do this all over again…

Presque Isle Unit

There are quite few places in the Upper Michigan by the same name that one needs to further specification to uniquely identify it. That said, this place would be specified as Presque Isle Unit of Porcupine Mountains (one other I have been to few times is the Presque Isle of Marquette). While driving along the South Boundary Road to Presque Isle, I got to see a surpirse visitor on the road… which I later learnt (thanks to Kyle Pullen, one of my buddies) was called a Boxed Turtle.

Boxed turtle crossing South Boundary Road

Too much Sunshine for rest of the day made photography (or the act of lugging around a 25+ lbs bag) a very tedious process. But I did enjoy walking around the Presque Isle and along the Presque Isle River… one of the branches is too roaring while the other one is very very quiet and like is the norm up here, pretty much every stream leads to the Lake Superior; and shooting couple of birds as they decided to take off…

I think I scared them away… but was just able to catch them in their act of taking off; water in the foreground is the peaceful branch of Presque Isle River while that in the background is Lake Superior

Quite a day given the amount of traveling and hiking (and shooting pictures) I got to do in about 7 hours and I only wish this place was closer and at least, more cloudier. May be next time…

PS: Rest of the pictures, if you are interested, are here.