When I walked by the Cooperage building, I could hear lots of hammering and sawing inside. Curious, I looked inside the huge sliding doors . . .
. . . into a cavernous barn with no real floor and disarray everywhere.
Scott looked like he needed a break and came outside to talk. He told me he's a kayak guide for an adventure company (renting the building) that's closed for the season. He said he's been a paddling guide for excursions in Alaska and also substitutes as a teacher for the grade school on Madeline Island.
He added that he's not a contractor, but is learning fast. In this off season, he's rebuilding half of the Cooperage building to house the complete kayak business because the building's owners (who also own the ferry to Madeline Island) now want the large barn half to store vehicles.
His project the day I was there, was building new Men's and Women's dressing rooms in the smaller space the kayak company is squeezing into. He said he didn't mind if I wandered all the rooms and took photos.
His own personal Jensen racing canoe was hanging from the rafters - a canoe shape I've never seen before.
A ladder that seemed to go nowhere into to the ceiling was used when train cars (on long removed RR tracks) pulled up beside massive wooden doors, now boarded and barely visible.
At one time a local fishery filled the entire block. Early sailing vessels would bring their harvests to be salt packed in barrels and shipped to markets. The Cooperage (the only remaining building of that fishery) was where five skilled coopers assembled barrels around an open hearth. The coopers turned out high quality, hand made barrels that held 150 lbs. of salt fish each.
Several of these large rooms have been preserved and are behind glass just down the dark narrow hall from Scott's kayak trekking business.
Marquette, MI is full of very old buildings including this giant one near downtown (the rain was pouring!) -
and hundreds of rotted piling stumps, remnants of old piers - none of which exist today.
Farther east, driving to Munising - yet another sculpture park . . .
Some personal statements. The sign above the pig reads, "Genuine North American Corporate Greed PIG" with an Enron logo on its side. The sign beside the little man figure in pig poop, reads, "Average American Worker (2004)".
And this one says, "One more fight over there and I'm drop'in ya's".
The beaches at Grand Marias, MI (Lake Superior) have beautiful soft white sand blown into small dunes. Thin grasses grow on the mounds - the wooden walkways make it feel like east coast ocean beaches.
The wind came up and it started to rain again. Just as I was leaving the walkway, I noticed someone had carefully made Michigan's shape, both the upper and lower peninsula, with rocks in the sand.
By night, I made it to Saint Ignace, MI where multiple points of land (Michigan's two peninsulas) meet Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.
All the small lake side towns have cemeteries that are at least 100 years old.
I watched the local birds around the water in Eagle River. It's always sad to see a dead one but it does give a chance to see them up close. The rocky beach is a favorite for agate hunters. Either the sand is rocky or covered with autumn leaves and even a floating apple - but the most pretty is where the creek meets Lake Superior.
The grounds around the store is a museum of old cars, farm equipment, ski doo's and stuffed animals and people in comic situations. It's nuts.
Trying to establish sides . . .
. . . and denying it can be done.
But this chiropractor got busy with both sides of their sign . . .
And this cow sign was identical on both sides. 
Some beaches along the Lakes have no visible sand - just huge shell dunes of the non-native, invasive zebra mussel.
The cemetery in town is on a hill that slopes down from the church.
Most residents have small farms with rustic buildings. 
When Robert heard that, he laughed. He said Ken didn't know what he was talking about and besides he's (Ken) never caught anything as large as the 72" sturgeon Robert caught recently. Then Robert got out his tackle box to show me his gear and what he used.
I left them climbing on the railing and arguing about how to best hook the fish that started biting in the water below.
