Thursday, July 17, 2025 Hancock Recreation Area to Lake Linden City Campground, Lake Linden, MI

Deb here. We both slept great once again and are happy to report that our heater works just fine. With the overnight temperatures going down into the 40’s we’re appreciating the heater and haven’t missed air conditioning (which our van doesn’t have at the moment anyway).

Last night I managed to score a campsite for tonight at Lake Linden City Campground just a few miles away. The UP is quite a vacation hotspot, and camping spots are hard to come by with no reservations. So all in all we both felt incredibly lucky, especially since hotel rooms (the few that there are) seem to be $200+. It’s great to pay $25 for last night’s site and $35 for tonight, both with flush toilets, hot water and showers. Not a bad deal!

Anyway, woke up to a blue sky day. Today’s focus was learning about the Michigan copper mining experience, so first order of business was our 9 a.m. tour at the Quincy Mine. The Keweenaw Peninsula has a rich copper mining history, dating back to the 1850’s. Bisbee’s mining history didn’t start until the 1880’s, so this area had a 30 year jump on pulling copper out of the ground.

The Quincy Mine tour was great, including both above ground and below ground portions. Our tour guide, Sarah, is a geology student at Michigan Tech and she really knew her material. The Quincy Mine had the world’s largest hoist, still beautifully preserved, and venturng into the tunnels was interesting. 

Following the tour it was late morning and we were hungry, since we’d only eaten bananas for breakfast. Pasties are a big deal around here, and our tour guide recommended stopping at Amy J’s for pasties, which we did. We sat outside at a picnic table eating delicious beef pasties, which included shredded beef, potatoes, carrots, onions and rutabagas, all wrapped in flaky pie crust. So good. Amy J’s also bakes cookies, so of course we had to get a package of the chocolate chip cookies for the road.

After lunch we went to Calumet (only a few miles down the road) to visit the Keweenaw National Historical Park Visitor’s Center. What a place! It turned out to be 3 floors of mining history info and the rangers on staff were a wealth of information. The National Park Service has a partnership with 15+ local sites related to mining history that they jointly publicize and promote. The rangers recommended we drive out further to Copper Harbor and around the bend to Eagle Harbor and Eagle River. We drove the loop route in the afternoon and I was so happy to get some views of Lake Superior. I’m such a Great Lakes gal at heart!

By this time it was late afternoon and time to check into our campground. We’re in a lovely spot tonight, a lot smaller campground than last night’s and right on Torch Lake. We learned today that Torch Lake had all kinds of mine tailings dumped into it and around the shore (pulverized as sand) and the state is in a major reclamation project to clean up the soil, but it’s still a sweet little lake! We walked into town to have dinner at the Loading Zone II, the only local dinner spot but that turned out to be pretty good, then back to our campsite to enjoy the sunny evening.