MICHIGAN TRIPLE TIP
Overlanding Route in Michigan's Upper Pennisula, derived from the 7 Hour Plane Crash route with additional segment into the Huron Mountains.
The Background
You could say that this route has been in the making for many years, I spent many summers through my childhood with my Dad bombing around the seasonal and back roads of the UP, in the most unlikely of vehicles, mostly mini vans. A large majority of this was in the Huron Mountain area to the north and east of Marquette stretching over to the Huron Bay, and into and up the Keweenaw Peninsula.
So, 25 years later when I came across the route for the 7 Hour Plane Crash, running from Crandon Wisconsin to the tip of the Keweenaw I knew exactly how to add a day or two of additional travel and exploring to our very first Overlanding adventure. Finding a route into the Huron Mountains, my old stomping ground was obvious, and it kept us moving east, back toward home. So it was an easy addition.
The Setup
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Like so many things several factors came into play all converging on a spot in my life that ended up propelling me out into my first ever Overlanding trip. I have always liked to take off down some two track road and see what was there, drawn by the unknown. And I'd done a lot of it here and there. But never have I set out with as much planning, desire and equipment!
I'm a traveler, the last 7 years of my life I've visited someplace in the world at least once a month, I'm fortunate that I do this travel for work. When COVID lit up and travel my company issued mandatory travel bans I was actually in California on my way home. That was in February, as the weeks of no travel wore on I knew I needed to get back out into the world somehow.
A buddy of mine recommended a show to watch, Expedition Overland and I was hooked on the adventure and the exploring through the unknown, and far away places. Then, my lease was called in and I was offered an early lease termination do to the shortage of used cars. Now I had an opportunity to order a new car, the one I wanted and have it setup in a specific way. A trip was starting to form in the back of my head I just didn't know it yet.
The final factor was, stumbling across a Youtube video done by @Wanderlost (https://youtu.be/9WVWKWgllkk) of the 7 Hour Plane Crash. That was all I needed, a route setup with a review that lead me to be pretty confident I could do this in my Subaru Crosstrek. As I dug into it deeper, I discovered that not only could I do this route, but people were doing a lot more in their Subaru’s.
Day 1 - Heading North
Leaving from West Michigan in early afternoon we headed on up to Iron River and spent the night there at the Lakeshore Motel on Ice Lake, a great little Mom and Pop hotel on the east side of town just off US 2. The weather was not good, and in fact somewhere on US 2 cutting across in a thunderstorm and the dark we ended up hitting a tree that was down across the road. I saw it in time to get mostly moved out of the way, and the only impact was on my mirror which popped the plastic but didn't do any damage, and that was before we were even off pavement!
Day 2 - 7 Hour Plane Crash, Crandon WI to Bob Lake Camp Ground
After a restful night of sleep, and a good breakfast at The Main Street Cafe in downtown Iron River, we were headed west out of town on the way to 73 to head south to the starting point in Crandon Wisconsin. As you cross into Wisconsin 73 turns into 55, as we came to the 55 junction with 32 we found that the road south to Crandon was closed, the detour took us up to the same road we were going to come north from in Crandon, so we opted to just go ahead and start just north of Crandon, dropping off the pavement shortly after turning onto forest road 2174.
Day 2 - 7 Hour Plane Crash, Crandon WI to Bob Lake Camp Ground
The first 30 miles or so was all gravel road, a great start with a lot of fall color to enjoy as we went. We snaked north through the National Forest on the gravel roads making good time till we hit pavement again on County Road A for a few miles, till we made our turn north on Kaine Lake Rd.
The trail that heads north west from the end of Kaine Lake Rd. I had gotten some information on so I was prepared for what it could look like, it's a river crossing, or from what I could tell in videos more like a river and the trail converging for a bit. Especially with the amount of rain that had fallen in the area the 3 days prior we were prepared to have to go around, and that is what we did. Once we drove up to the end of Kaine Lake Rd, the two track was pretty easy to spot, as was the water that was running down the ruts on both sides of the two track. I knew, based on video from a week earlier and how high the water crossing was then that my Subaru wouldn't be making that water crossing on that day. We headed back out to County Road A, headed west to Mail Route Road, and within a couple of miles meet back up with the route and continued north. Route in blue shown to right.
Day 2 - 7 Hour Plane Crash, Crandon WI to Bob Lake Camp Ground
Our stopping point for lunch tuned out to be a bit more eventful than we had originally anticipated. After breaking out the sandwich supplies, I suddenly became aware of a hissing noise from the rear of the car. It was coming from somewhere on in the tread, but although I could feel the air, I could 'find' what was in the tire. When we lifted it up on the jack, the air stopped hissing, and when we put it back down it didn't return. At that stop we were unable to locate the leak after that, although we knew it was their. We topped the tire off to get back to our running PSI and after lunch were back on the tail.
We would later discover that our assumption was correct, what was in the tire was in fact a very small, and very sharp rock fragment, what they referred to as 'mine rock' at the Tire Shop in Hancock, and with no weight, or in different positions the tire was sealing around it. It never lost more than 2 PSI the rest of the day.
The remainder of the day was spent primarily on forest service roads, we definitely encountered more water, but that was to become the theme of our trip, water, water every, where! The entire day we spent in areas of peak color and it was a fantastic start to our trip. Among our noted stops for the day were the Lower Dam Lake, which is a former lake (and had some really fantastic camp locations to take note of) and the dam and the value house and everything is stil intact. Very neat to see, also was cool to see an old island protruding. So that is on my list of places to hike over to if I'm ever in the area again!
Sidnaw was our designated 'decision point', from here we were going to decied where to camp based on the time of day, how well we'd been progressing etc. When we set out in the morning, we really didn't have any idea what our average speed would be and how far we'd actually get. I had some estimates, and they turned out to be reasonbale. From Sindaw we pushed on north, on the 7 Hour Plane Crash Route, which to the Bob Lake Campground, which was a great little National Forest Rustic Campground.