The Admiral's Epic Trip Up North, part 4 · 10:44am Sep 20th, 2021
We’re gonna pick up where we left off, in Petoskey.
Some of these are Petoskey Stones!
The detour was still in place in the morning, but this time I knew where to go and headed further south.
My first stop (after fuel) was Charlevoix. You can see the lights of near Charlevoix (probably Bay Shore) from Petoskey, don’t you know.
Years ago I went to Fisherman’s Island State Park which is about as close to North Fox island as the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula. I couldn’t see it then, I might have seen it on this trip. Hard to say; Beaver Island’s taller.
You’ll have to zoom in to see any islands
Fisherman’s Island has campsites right on the beach, and I took advantage and backed into one to eat breakfast. Lake Michigan was angry, and one of the upsides (or downsides, depending on your point of view) with those campsites is in heavy weather, you might get spray off the lake or even waves.
The most practical way to get home would have been to follow US31 along the lakeshore, but I had a different destination in mind: East Jordan.
There are many places in Michigan where, if you look down at the manhole covers and sewer grates, you’ll see that they were made at East Jordan Iron Works. I’ve driven by one of their distribution centers (in Sunfield, MI), but never the plant itself.
They’re located at the south end of the south arm of Lake Charlevoix (which connects to Lake Michigan), and I would imagine back in the day being located somewhere a freighter could get would have been a great location. A freighter can probably still get there, I don’t know. Also back in the day, they would have had rail service, too; as best as I can tell, they don’t any more. You can get to Traverse City by rail, but I don’t know if you can get any further north than that in the Lower Peninsula any more.
Unlike the Marquette ore dock, East Jordan Iron Works isn’t particularly photogenic.
M32 took me through Elmira and Gaylord, and then it was the traditional (for Michiganders visiting ‘up North’) I-75 southbound. As long as you’re not travelling on a day when flatlanders are headed north or returning home, there isn’t much traffic at all.
North of Higgins Lake, US-127 splits off, that’s the gateway to middle Michigan. That also is hit or miss a highway and a rural route; when I was younger parts of it were limited access but also had occasional traffic lights and cross traffic and an active railroad crossing (which is now ‘exempt’; busses and hazmat trucks don’t have to stop for it). They also didn’t have exit numbers on some of it, or if they did they were just numbered 1 through whatever in the local area, rather than by mile).
I took a detour through Harrison to see if I could find the mythical Airport Auto. They always had cheap cars and trucks. Sadly, they are no more.
Then it was through Claire, stopping at the rest area/welcome center. Claire is considered by many to be the gateway to the North.
Round about Ithaca, I was thinking that I could cut across M57 and visit my old hometown, maybe stop by the dealership where I’d gotten my van and see what they had on offer for cheap pickup trucks. That used to be a signal-controlled intersection, but it’s been replaced by an overpass. Just north of it, though, there’s that exempt rail crossing I mentioned.
I also decided while I was going that way, I’d head up to Marion Springs and find the road I got my truck stuck on many years ago. Y’all need to remind me to tell you that story, it’s a funny one.
Anyway, I went down that road as far as I dared in a minivan. Since it hadn’t been raining, it was passable, although I did have to back most of the way out. Now there’s a dead-end sign and the bridge is closed (not that I knew about the bridge; I didn’t make it that far with my truck).
The dealership didn’t have anything that appealed to me, so I decided that I ought to head to Durand. There’s a back way to Owosso and a more back way to Owosso (I took the ‘more back way’), and then you just follow M71 and you’re there.
Durand used to be the crossroads of two major railroads, and they built their train station at the diamond so it could serve both. Now it only serves Amtrak, operating on Canadian National trackage.
The other line is currently Great Lakes Central, formerly Tuscola and Saginaw Bay, formerly formerly the Ann Arbor Railroad.
I poked around at the small display of rail equipment they’ve got and also paid close attention to the Great Lakes Central train that was waiting to depart from the yard. I figured they were waiting for a CN train to cross the diamond, and they were. Not only was I alert enough to get a video of it, but it also had an oversized load right in front:
And then the chase was on. I watched the GLC train roll by and followed it most of the way to Howell. I wasn’t the only one; a few railfans were gathered in Cohoctah, and I got a couple good shots of it and decided that maybe I ought to invest in a tripod that could hold a cell phone.
Also maybe one of those fluffy ‘blocks wind’ things although they probably don’t fit cell phones.
The road parallels the tracks more-or-less until Howell, and it was then that I made my next destination decision.
Up in the UP, I visited Paradise, so there was only one thing to do. Go to Hell.
It wasn’t frozen over, but later in the year it would be.
And with that, my Epic Trip Up North came to an end.
I put about sixteen hundred miles on my van, visited nearly exclusively Holiday gas stations (which is a chain most of y’all will have never heard of)
Source
and went to both Paradise and Hell. Saw train after train pass through Gary on their way to and from Chicago, big long trains of autos or shipping containers, and then on the opposite end trains of pulpwood for the mills in the UP or a largely grain train headed out of Durand.
I also did find the truck I was looking for, as it happens. But I’ve already blogged about that.
Maybe I’ll get frisky and fix the ‘upstream error’ pics in that blog post, click through and see 
Somewhere between East Jordan and Gaylord
The other dealership I haven’t seen advertised in a while is Vanderhyde Ford. Back in the day, they had hilarious ads in Michigan Auto & RV (”1999 dump truck, perfect for contractors or dirt-hauling hobbyists”) . . . probably took a page out of Terry Hanks’ book when it came to advertising.
Wow! I've never seen an image load from right to left like that before, much less sideways! (The first image in this post.)
This is the first year since 1987 that I’ve not been to Michigan.
My in-laws have property on “Paradise”, originally and more appropriately “Carp”, quickly becoming “Invasive Species” lake.
5584403
Phone orientation sensor?
5584408
loaded right to left for me too and I'm on a laptop.
Biscuit, what digital witchcraft have you obtained in your visit to Hell?
Wow nearly been a year since you did this trip if my memory is correct. Now the question becomes did you take a quick vacation this year or will you be taking one soon?
5584408
No, I'm on my desktop computer at home.
5584403
5584408
5584441
I assume it has that tag that tells image display engines to automatically rotate it, and the right side is actually the top.
Edit: Yeah, the EXIF tag 'Orientation' says "Right top".
Y'know, I've lived in western Michigan most of my life, yet I've never been to the UP. I should fix that sometime.
"A freighter can probably still get there, I don’t know. Also back in the day, they would have had rail service, too; as best as I can tell, they don’t any more."
I mean, if it's a large, active ironworks, I'd assume they have at least one of those services.
...Though, looking on Google Maps, it does look, if I'm looking at the right place, like they don't have either. Huh.
Thanks for the trip report! And the trains. :)
By the way, reading about your roadtrip here, I was reminded of this video I saw a while ago. It's a bit long, and no obligation, of course, but I thought I'd link it in case you found it interesting.
5584394
Huh. That's a business dealing in both horseless carriages and carriageless horses, sounds like? :D
5584394
You've just reminded me of car dealer ads for Cal Worthington Ford from Seattle in the early to mid 80s.
"Cal Worthington and his dog, Spot."
The one animal Spot Wasn't, was a dog. Cow, llama, elephant... But never a dog.
5584403
Yeah, it confused me that it does it that way, too. I assume it has to do with how it was posted, but I don’t know for sure. Lotta wizardry going on to make pictures in blogs, y’know?
5584407
Oh, man, you missed out (but you’ve still got time!) It was a pretty good year, weather-wise and natural beauty-wise.
Seems all our lakes are becoming ‘invasive species’ lake. And our lawns. Sigh. Used to be my neighbor had goats, and they loved the invasive bushes, but now the goats are gone and I’m left to deal with them on my own.
5584408
That would be my guess, and then how it was uploaded to Discord for posting on FimFic. But I don’t know; I’m guessing it treats the top right as the start of the photo and works from there as it loads. I think that’s how it loaded on Discord, too.
5584441
I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.
I’m guessing it has to do with how the phone was oriented when I took the picture, and then how Discord (where I first uploaded the image) and FimFiction dealt with that.
I seem to recall in some other blog having a photo that was sideways that I couldn’t easily fix, which I assume was due to cellphone orientation when I took the picture.
5584447
Yeah, that sounds right. I think it was October last year, don’t remember when exactly.
This year I went to EFNW but didn’t blog about it, and also a couple daytrips just ‘around.’ I might go to Ciderfest in Milwaukee in October this year, and if I do, I might take a ferry across Lake Michigan rather than drive around the bottom. That I will blog about if I do, since I’ll be geographically near North Fox Island, and the terrain and visibility are similar.
5584643
I think he meant, like 5584685 said, how the phone was oriented when it took the photo and how that got loaded into the metadata. I can’t cast my mind back a year and remember exactly what the phone settings were, but I think I had it on ‘rotate’ mode and took the photo in landscape more or less straight down.
I uploaded to Discord first, where if I remember right it also loaded the image from right to left, potentially implying that the top right of the photo is what it considers the top left (although how a phone or computer determines photo orientation is beyond me, I assume it’s stuff in the metadata and wizardry).
5584709
You should, the UP’s a lot like the lower peninsula but treeier and you gotta pay to go over a bridge to get there (unless you have a boat). Also cell phone reception is terrible or nonexistant in much of it.
Also, I’m not that far from some parts of western Michigan, shoot me a PM if you wanna hang out sometime.
5584720
You would assume that, yes.
I’m guessing you can get a freighter in there, but I don’t know for actual fact. I assume back in the day they had trains there, too, but they certainly don’t any more.
That’s kinda longish for my attention span and/or free time, but I’ll toss it in my ‘watch sooner’ list, it does look like it could be interesting.
Yeah, he’ll sell anything where he thinks he can make a profit. Even drugs back in the day, although he doesn’t do that any more.
For people from the middle part of Michigan, love him or hate him, his low production value commercials have been a fixture since the 80s, maybe even before that. And they do have a riding stable which has been on my bucket list forever, but I’ve never actually ridden a horse there. Since I do work somewhat close to Sundance on Saturdays, maybe when I’ve got a half day, I’ll go to the stables and get a rental horse for a while.
5584747
"You would assume that, yes."
"I’m guessing you can get a freighter in there, but I don’t know for actual fact. I assume back in the day they had trains there, too, but they certainly don’t any more."
I am curious -- but not enough to do more research, at least at the moment, with everything else I've got in my queue.
:)
Yeah, I thought it might be, both longish and potentially interesting to you. No worries on my account, at least, when or if you get to it.
Huh. Thanks. :D
And if he's that much of a fixture, it sounds like his business model is working.
Good luck on getting that item checked off, and I hope that if/when you do, you have a good time!
Sounds like its been a fun trip.
5584731
Heh, that’s a nice little thing.
I think sometimes big budget ads just don’t work, especially if you want a hometown feel. I’m pretty sure that some of Sundance’s radio ads are the TV ads without a picture, so he’ll say things like “Look here, it’s a Chevy Silverado” which of course you can’t see.
Even their website is lazy or brilliant: 1800Sundance.com. ... I’m going to lean to brilliant, since I didn’t even have to look it up, I just know it even though I never visit it.
5584779
I did a bit of googling. The East Jordan and Southern Railroad (which interchanged with the Pere Marquette near Charlevoix) ran there until 1961, when East Jordan Iron Works stopped shipping by rail. The Detroit and Charlevoix railroad also went there, although it was abandoned in 1932 (also by 1932, the D&C had been acquired by the Michigan Central [which in turn was absorbed into the New York Central and now whatever trackage they’ve got left in the state is operated by the Lake State Railway (currently called Great Lakes Central) or Norfolk Southern. The old Michigan Central train station in Jackson, MI is the oldest continuously operated passenger station in the US]).
According to an old issue of “The Petosky News-Review,” East Jordan was served by lake freighters back in the day. Judging by the chart I found, it’s likely less than 20 feet deep around East Jordan, although they may have dredged it back then. Or else they used smaller boats and carried the cargo out to the main body of Lake Charlevoix, which is plenty deep enough.
It does seem to be, he’s got a few stores now.
Thank you!
5584780
It was! And now that I’m finally done blogging about it, I wanna do it again.
5585448
:) Save up the vacation time and do it again. Going out to Wyoming in the near-ish future myself.
5585445
re the first section:
Ah, thanks for the information! :)
re the second section:
Ah, aye, then.
re the third section:
:)
5585468
I should. I was considering leaving after work on Saturday and going down to near-Chicago to watch trains on Sunday. Probably won’t, though, ‘cause I’ve got a bunch of stuff I need to do at home.
Ooh, that sounds fun! Haven’t been there in a long, long time. Post pictures!
5585799
No problem! Satisfied a bit of my curiosity, as well. I’d made some assumptions and a half-hour on Google proved some of them correct and disproved others, as is often the case.
Heck, if I was really motivated, it would be interesting to do some more research on the East Jordan and Southern, could be a small railroad like that had interesting operations which could be suitable for a modeler. Apparently back in the 60s (and maybe before) they were offering occasional excursion trains, and from the few pictures I found on my brief search, they had an older small switching locomotive in the diesel era, maybe a Plymouth.
Probably could find some more pics, or if I really wanted to track (heh) more details down, East Jordan’s not that far from me, and I’m sure they’ve got a historical society or something. Could also be some interesting stuff on EJIW’s webpages, too.
5586625
Yep, I believe I've had that experience. :)
Neat; well, let me know if you do find out more, please -- though I believe I've also had the experience of knowing I could probably find out more interesting information about something if I was sufficiently motivated, which I wasn't, so no problem on my end if you don't. :)
...Actually, with this very thing, even; I could have put a lot more effort into tracing potential former railway lines in the area when I looked at some aerial photographs earlier.
Those also seem like potential places to look, aye. And if you do look, good luck!