The Great Michigan North

There are some who would not consider Marquette, MI in the upper peninsula to be a 'day trip'... These people are wrong.

However, the journey was not without its disappointments. 

The locations I was going to explore in the U.P. ended up being demolished or under renovation.

One of them had people working on it when I arrived so... 'no go' on that one. 

Fortunately it wasn't all a bust, on my way to another location in Escanaba, which turned out to be demolished, I came across a large stretch of abandoned factories running along the coast.

On the last couple hours of my ~14 hour round trip, just outside Baldwin, I was forced to stay the night in a hotel due to the freezing rain that made travel impossible. 

The following morning, I visited an old cement factory.

Due to the icy conditions, I opted to not explore the rest of the grounds, and will return on a slipperyless day.

Marlborough Cement Factory

On the way back, I paid a visit to my friend Nick, who is the brew master [and co-owner] at Newaygo Brewing Company. He took the afternoon to show my a nearby site of the old Newaygo mill.

In order to get to the mill, we had to take a downhill service road covered in ice,

though we had our doubts, my car got us both up and down that hill with no problems, 

like the champ it is. Traction (and lunch) is for wimps

. 

My car, Appa, is cooler than your car.