The Yooper Chronicles: Day 1
This blog series will cover my ten-day adventure around the great lakes, I’m calling it ‘The Yooper Chronicles’, and this is day one:
I’m sure every married man feels the same, but I have the perfect wife. There are many reasons why, but for the purposes of this blog, I will focus on two. First, we discovered disc golf together, and her passion of the game might be just slightly more than mine. Second, we travel well together. Our first trip was to Las Vegas just a few weeks after meeting. They say the best way to know somebody is to travel with them, and we got along so well that it was inevitable that we would end up married. I only mention these things because ever since moving to Illinois, her and I have traveled to countless places, all with disc golf at the epicenter. And this month, we took on our biggest adventure to date; a 10-day, 1200-mile trip around lake Michigan. In this blog series, I will share with you our journey, most of it disc golf, but sprinkled with breweries, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, and other oddities. Thanks for being here to partake in this retelling, let’s jump into it!
We left in the early morning of Friday, September 15 on our way to Trout Creek, MI. Along the way we knew we wanted to stop at a course around the half-way mark, and as fate would have it, that put us on track to drive through Steven’s Point. We had earlier put out a poll on Facebook and the overwhelming response was to visit Standing Rocks. This course has achieved legendary status, with the property hosting 33 glorious holes on several loops. There are multiple ways to play the course, and because of time constraints, we chose to play the Mid and East loops. This gave us access to 21 holes of tight woods golf. We don’t know it yet, but this ‘tight woods’ is going to be a recurring theme on this trip. Accompanied by lots of elevation. There was plenty of variety, and signage and tees were great. This is the kind of place that you should spend a week at so you can experience the entire course. Unfortunately for us, we could not do this, but our time there was still special, and we will certainly be going back in the future.
Back on the road and heading north, we eventually found our first lodging spot, the Two Rivers Motel and Cabins located in Trout Creek, MI. I found this place on Hotels.com, and I had no idea other than the online pics what to expect. First, the property is on Ottowas National Forrest land, and secondly, it is at least 20 minutes from anything else. The cabins themselves were very clean and cozy. There was a communal firepit where we visited with other guests, and we quickly discovered that everybody staying there were hunters. “Oh, we are hunters too!”, I said. “Except the birdies we hunt are on the disc golf course.” Yes, they called it ‘Frisbee Golf’, and yes, I spent about a half an hour explaining the game to them. I think a couple guys might give it a go when they get back home.
Exhausted but very content, we bed down for the night, hoping that we don’t attract any bears or moose. It was a long and eventful day one, but we’re just getting started. We will be in this location for four days, and the plan is to head out in each of the cardinal directions and explore. In the morning, we head north.
