Mad Girl chills with the Yoopers

I recently went with some of my family to take my grandfather's ashes up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he was born. Grandpa's last wishes were to have some of his ashes scattered up there and this had been a trip one year in the making. My grandpa only lived up there for a short amount of time as a child, but a lot of his family remained up there so he returned to visit from time to time. Ever since I was young he took me on trips to visit the UP.

For those of you who don't know the UP is about an 8 hour drive from Chicago. You basically drive to the end of the earth and then keep going another 30 miles or so. We stayed in Houghton, which is where my grandfather grew up. It's one of the bigger towns around there and home to Michigan Tech. You can easily book a hotel downtown and are walking distance from some great bars and restaurants as well as a really nice lake front path. Houghton is right on Portage lake which leads out to Lake Superior. Here are a few of my favorite things to do in the area.

left: main street of Houghton right: Houghton/Hancock bridge over Portage Lake

First off, you MUST go to Suomi Restaurant for pancakes and nissau bread. This is one of the very vivid memories I have of the UP. Suomi is your basic hole in the wall dinner, but they serve these amazing Finnish pancakes which are the size of a large dinner plate and are slightly sweet. They are thinker than a regular pancake, but you really only need one. I also tried the pannu kaku which is a Finnish pancake which was sort of custardy and served with a side of raspberry syrup. You can also get nissau here (try the nissau french toast) which is a Finnish bread flavored with cardamom. I prefer to have mine with thimbleberry jam which you can only get up in this area. Thimbleberry is sweet and sort of like a raspberry. It costs about $10-12 a jar because it's so hard to make. We always get ours from The Jam Lady. The one other food item you have to have is the pasty. They are meat pies that the wife used to make for the miners. They were easy to put into their pockets and eat on a lunch break. I eat mine with butter and a little ketchup on top. If you had an English meat pie it's similar. As you can tell, the Finnish settled this area. Across the lake in Hancock you will find Finlandia university and all the street names are in English and Finnish.

left: pancake middle: Jam Lady right: The Ambassador

The other must eat at place on my list is the Ambassador. It's a prohibition era bar that serves some awesome pizza and drinks in fishbowls. It is a college town after all. You can get some great views of the Houghton-Hancock bridge as well.

We took a nice drive further up the peninsula and scattered my grandfathers ashes in various locations. He is now resting happily at Brockway Mountain, in Lake Superior, at the Eagle Harbor light house and many other stops along the way. My grandfather said that he felt reborn again when he went up to Brockway Mountain. How can you not feel renewed when you are staring out at miles of pristine wilderness? You really do get away from it all up there.

view from Brockway Mountain

There are also some breweries that have popped up in the area. I'm a beer geek so I had to vi st these places. We went to The Library and the Keweenaw Brewing Company. Both had decent beers to try and The Library has food as well.

So if you are looking for a place to escape and don't mind driving to the end of the world then you will enjoy everything that the UP has to offer. The locals are super friendly and full of stories. The food is comforting and the beer is flowing.