40 years ago, Geoff was attending his first year at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan. Now, he is back for the first time in about 28 years. We came up when the kids were young and we were living in Colorado. On the first full day we traveled up the Keweenaw Peninsula, first stopping off at the Quincy Mine in Hancock. In the 1990s, they created the Keweenaw National Historical Park and included many of the old mine sites. The Quincy Mine and Hoist site provides tours of the Hoist House and a tour into level 7 of the mines, one of the few not under water since it was shutdown in the 1930s. The Hoist House is amazing because the hoist system is very well preserved. It looks like it could be run if you could just supply some steam. Then they take you down the side of the hill towards Portage Lake and into one of the mine entrances. You get to see a lot of the old mining equipment still down there and get a very nice presentation by the staff. It is a very worthwhile trip.
After lunch, we headed up the Keweenaw Peninsula to Copper Harbor out on the very tip. There we went out to Fort Wilkins State Park and saw the Copper Harbor Lighthouse across the bay. We also drove up to the start of US 41, which runs from there to Miami, Florida, a length of 1990 miles. After stopping off at a couple of interesting stores, we headed up Brockway Mountain Drive. It is, as we have seen them called before on our trip, a “rustic” road. But it climbs quickly to a very nice overlook of Copper Harbor and Lake Fanny Hooe. The next stop was Eagle Harbor and another lighthouse. On the way back to Houghton, we came across a sign which indicated snowfall amounts in the Keweenaw Peninsula from 1957 to 2011. It indicates a record snowfall in the winter of 1978-79 of 390.4 feet. That is more than 30 feet of snowfall. The average is about 20 feet. This sign is built to the height of these total snowfalls. It is quite impressive.
On our last day, Geoff finally got to return to the “scene of the crime”, his old stomping grounds, the campus at Michigan Tech. It has gone through many changes in the passed 40 years but, in many ways, it is still good old MTU. At first, it looked like we would have to settle for just outside pictures of the old dorm, Douglas Houghton Hall, because they have card coded locks on all the doors and it looked like it was not being used for any summer classes anyway. (It just dawned on me that, in the Summer of 1974, when I was here for classes, I had to move out of DHH and into Wadsworth Hall across US 41 for that quarter – Geoff). However, when Geoff went back for the car, he noticed a door marked as Custodial Services and tried it. It was open and the head custodian was there. He showed Geoff up to the dorm and lounge area and allowed him to take some pictures. It was a wonderful nostalgia trip for him and he had promised some pictures for his college friends on Facebook that he is in communication with. We picked up some souvenirs at the Michigan Tech Book Store in the Student Union before heading out.
So that was the return to Tech, perhaps for the last time. Next, off to Munising again and then to The Soo.
