TP. 60 HIGHWAY 2, MICHIGAN U.S

Highway 2 has a starting point just north of the Mackinac Bridge landing in the Upper Penninsula, MI, and a westward orientation towards Everett, Washington. In 1926, because of the southern protrusion of Canada into the Great Lakes, US/Canada border, US 2 disappears near St. Ignace, Michigan, and shows up again in Rouses Point, N.Y. to continue east to Houlton, Maine. Somebody at the peace delegations drawing up the new borders after the War of 1812 couldn’t see the future of automobiles. IDIOT. Anyway, people need to experience the beauty of this 304-mile segment as it penetrates the geography of the UP. The highway punctures the southern portion of the land between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan/Huron (see FORMATION OF THE GREAT LAKES, December 2022). It embodies mines of valuable dolomite until you reach Manistique, where the scenery is Supreme. Don’t forget the Big Spring at Kitch-iti-kipi. A little side trip to Fayette is also highly recommended as it is the introduction to iron country. Moving through this strip that is continuous all the way to the Wisconsin border, it has pulled billions of tons of battleship and tank armor out to keep US citizens safe and toasty at home. Now the better protector is uranium, which our good buddy Canada has. We are now much toastier. The crown jewel up here is the boreal forests pushed down by Hudson Bay. The amount of lumber extracted here exceeds our iron rape by powers of 10 because it’s renewable, just like humans. Make sure you drive through the Sylvania Wilderness to experience nondevelopment. It’s a refreshing change from concrete, fast/fat foods, and tur(d)moil (see TURDS TP.15). A time frame of 5 days is recommended for this 60-mile/day adventure into beauty interspersed with capitalistic history to make it a diverse experience.