Late Monday afternoon we chugged into Houghton, crossed the bridge to Hancock and got ourselves a motel room. Immediately I collapsed on the bed because I was dang tired! After a short while I was ready to take on the world, showered and we started hoofing it back over to Houghton.
Houghton is pretty impressive with wonderful old stone buildings and lots of restaurants and things to do. It's the home of Michigan Tech so it seems to have a young attitude. We ate at the Ambassador Restaurant which has the original back bar from 100 years ago. We sat at the back window overlooking the Portage River (or canal). Then we headed back to the motel and prepared to face another day of adventuring.
The next day I still had 4 miles to get done in Houghton County so I got up early and walked around the neighborhood in Hancock. That city has seen better days but some of the houses are pretty impressive.
This house has good bones and would be a knockout if renovated. There are lots of houses like this and I'm guessing it's a situation like Detroit. They have more houses than people to fill them.
Speaking of which: Our next stop was Calumet. The whole city is a Historic District and its heyday was back when the copper mines were operating. Again there are impressive stone buildings. There are lots of churches and I'm guessing that's because there were so many different ethnic groups living there.
An abandoned house in Calumet. Actually I bet a lot of these buildings will be worked on but maybe there is red tape with it being a historical district. 
In 1913 the miners went on strike. A famous tragedy (or crime) occurred during a children's Christmas party at Italian Hall. To this day it isn't known exactly who yelled "Fire" but it caused a panic. 73 people, mostly children, suffocated to death. This is the memorial on Elm Street.
One of those beautiful churches.
While I was walking around town getting the last of my five miles in Wes was sitting at this cafe reading "The Stand". He keeps telling me about what part he's at and I keep telling him that I don't remember it that I read it about 15 years ago. Finally I completed that county and we were on our way up to Keweenaw.
We went all the way up to Copper Harbor and went to Fort Wilkins State Park and wandered around there for a while. It was built to guard the copper interests. Right on the grounds there is a big hole where they first found copper but it never yielded much. There are neat old barracks and it's really informative with explanations of what the buildings were used for then and how they were restored or rebuilt. We also walked a trail in the park that went along Lake Superior.
I still needed more miles so we walked up a very long gravel road which seemed to take forever. Finally we got done then went to eat at a restaurant down the street. They had a very bossy menu and said that if you get a pasty you could get gravy and coleslaw but don't ask for them if you aren't going to eat it. I thought that was funny....
This is the lighthouse at Copper Harbor.
We took Brockway Mountain Drive out of town. This is the view from on top of the "mountain". It is supposed to be one of the most scenic drives in Michigan and I agree!! I was white knuckling it for most of the drive.
Then we drove all the way down the Keweenaw Peninsula and went to Ontonagon. The town itself wasn't much although it is on Lake Superior and has the Ontonagon River running through it. I walked across the bridge and back into town but I was so hot I couldn't stand it. We decided to find a motel in the area. There were some on what used to be the main highway out of town and we got a nice room at an old motel that was right on Lake Superior. I was finishing up my miles that night and realized that the sun had come out. It had been really hazy all day because there was a forest fire in Ontario and the smoke was drifting over to the Keweenaw. So I figured the sunset would be pretty great and as you can see below...it was.
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