05/24/2026
What have I been up to lately? ☀️
I’ve been planning a little Upper Peninsula road trip while taking my son to engineering summer camp at Michigan Tech, and honestly… I’m getting so excited for it already.
Cabin in Marquette? Booked.
Pictured Rocks boat tour? Planned.
Waterfalls, hiking trails, scenic stops, and lots of coffee along the way? Absolutely.
Not every trip has to be far away to feel special. Sometimes a good road trip and a beautiful view are enough 💚
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore stretches 42 miles along the Lake Superior shoreline in Michigan's Upper Peninsula between Munising and Grand Marais and contains some of the most dramatically beautiful coastal scenery anywhere in North America. Sandstone cliffs rise directly out of Superior's surface reaching heights of up to 200 feet, stained by mineral deposits into colors ranging from copper green to iron red to manganese blue to pure white quartz, all carved by centuries of waves and weather into arches, caves, and formations that look genuinely otherworldly against the cold blue of the largest freshwater lake on Earth.
The colors are what stop people completely. Photographs of Pictured Rocks consistently look digitally enhanced to people who have never seen them because the mineral staining produces combinations that seem too vivid and too varied to be natural. They are entirely natural. Iron oxide produces the reds and oranges. Copper creates the greens. Limonite adds the yellows. Manganese produces the blacks and blues. Superior's waves have been carving these formations and the minerals have been bleeding through the rock face for thousands of years creating something that no artist could have designed and no engineer could have built.
Pictured Rocks became the first designated National Lakeshore in the United States in 1966, a recognition that what existed on that stretch of Superior shoreline was worth federal protection and worth preserving for every generation that followed. Michigan knew what it had long before the designation made it official. The kayakers who paddle beneath those cliffs in summer and the hikers who walk the North Country Trail along the bluff edge are experiencing something genuinely irreplaceable, a place where Superior and sandstone and time created something Michigan gets to call its own.
