The U.P. is a forbidding place—dark,
endless winters, gloomy forests, hordes of biting insects, fearsome wildlife and desperate human inhabitants. Visiting the Upper Peninsula will be one of the worst mistakes of your life. I can guarantee that once you get here, your entire energy will be devoted to how to flee.

The local residents know all this but cannot or will not leave because they are addicted to suffering. Just consider these names of only a few locations in the U.P.: Misery Bay, Dismal Seepage, Germfask, Pine Stump Junction, Hog Island. Don’t those names conjure up beauty and tranquility? Paraphrasing Gertrude Stein, there is no here, here. Why would you want to visit 16,347 square miles of desolation?

The Upper Peninsula is beyond the end of the road. It is far away from any modern civilization, and the residents don’t like to follow any of your usual rules. If you want to have a good time on your vacation, don’t expect it up here—head for the Wisconsin Dells or Disney World instead.

You probably think I’m exaggerating.
Well, let me tell you about what happened last deer season at the Kernow Hunting Camp in Big Bay.

The members of the Kernow Camp are all getting a bit long in the tooth and most of them are nursing various ailments. Instead of hunting alone, they decided to pair up so that if someone had a problem, his partner could summon help. Old Bernie Medlyn, who had been through some heart troubles, was paired with his good buddy, Harvey Treloar, and on opening day they went up to a new deer blind on the Salmon Trout River.

It was almost dark when Harvey struggled back into camp dragging a beautiful eight-point buck. All the old guys ran out of the cabin to admire Harvey’s deer. It was the best whitetail buck taken at Kernow Camp in many years and Harvey basked in all the praise and awe. When the excitement had settled down, Alex Pentreath asked, “Say, Harvey, where’s Bernie?”

Harvey looked down at his deer and then up at the circle of his longtime hunting buddies. “Well, guys, Bernie got real sick after lunch... and he died,” Harvey said. There was a collective audible sigh of shock and disbelief.

“But Harvey,” Alex said incredulously,
“you dragged this here buck back to camp and left Bernie in the woods?”

Harvey took off his blaze orange Stormy Kromer hat, looked down admiringly at his eight-point buck and replied, “No one’s going to steal Bernie.” The men looked at each other, nodded in agreement and filed back into the camp to have a celebratory drink to Harvey’s successful hunt.

GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — After Thursday nights third shift, which goes into Friday morning, the Kwik Trip at 515 W. Walnut Street near downtown Green Bay will no longer have overnight hours.

No exact reasons were given for the change, but Green Bay Common Council President, Brian Johnson, says certain behaviors occur at businesses with overnight hours.

“Late night hours sometimes attract individuals that maybe have been out and have had too much [to drink], I don’t think it’s any secret that sex trafficking is a real thing, and those activities often occur in parking lots when businesses are open,” said Johnson. “Also, panhandling continues to be an issue in our downtown.”

Johnson added that management at this Kwik Trip location has always been proactive with calls for service; and that Kwik Trip’s conditional use permit (CUP) would not prohibit them from reversing this decision in the future.

kwik Trip’s new hours will be daily from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. However, overnight unattended fueling will remain available, which means canopy lights and dispensers will stay on.

SEEKING ENTERTAINMENT? GO ANYWHERE ELSE

So, during your family trip to the Upper Peninsula, you are hoping to find entertainment to keep the kids from whining and your in-laws from discussing your faults. Don’t even consider coming up here looking for fun. Instead, attend the annual stamp collectors’ convention in Peoria or audition for a reality television show featuring competitive eating. But, since you may already be here, let’s review what dire options await you.

There are, at last counting, 33 museums in the U.P.—if you include the two that display the names and photographs of visitors who were eaten by bears, disappeared in the woods, or thought they could eat two pasties in one sitting. All the museums are located in abandoned mine shafts, rickety old ore boats or decrepit buildings formerly used to house CCC men in the 1930s. The elderly men and women who staff the museums have had to agree that they, too, would be on display as living history.

Although I would strongly advise against it, you could attend one of our quaint local festivals:

— The annual winter outhouse race.
Teams of slightly demented, tipsy participants push decorated outdoor potties down through the icy streets of a small town. After the race, visit the Outhouse Hall of Fame.
— The annual haircut watching fair.
Teams of slightly disturbed, sleepy participants spend an entire day watching patrons receive haircuts in overheated barbershops. Don’t miss the U.P. Barbers and Cosmetologists Hall of Fame.
— The annual pasty throwing con­test. Teams of slightly unstable,
overfed participants gather at Lake Independence and compete to see who can chuck a pasty the furthest. Coming soon, the newest theme park: Pasty World.

The more active tourist may be looking forward to such opportunities as:

Water sports.
One of the tricks which entices people to the visit the U.P. is the promotion of water sports-swimming, kayaking, canoeing, fishing, and boating. And it does look like great family fun. Not mentioned is that for most of the year the lakes and rivers are covered with ice and snow. Truth in advertising compels me to add that the survival time for immersion in any water up here is measured in seconds. And all year round our waters are home to dangerous crea­tures like polar bears, elephant seals, packs of wolves and, some say, sea monsters in the deepest waters.
— Hiking.
No one hikes in the U.P.. Take your cue from the locals-they don’t hike just for the sake of hiking, even through beautiful woods and by rocky shorelines. They scurry from spot to spot to get out of the cold, avoid the bugs and escape other Yoopers hiding out in those woods, playing banjos and pretending to re-enact scary movies.
— Camping.
Come on now, let’s be honest. The people who live up here know that simply living in the Upper Peninsula is camping. Why would they want to go further into the woods?

There are some seedy taverns you might visit. In most every case, the bars up here are overheated, dimly-lit and smell of stale beer and other odors wafting from the back room. The bartender will be a tall, thin character named Leon with long, grimy hair and a tattoo on his right bicep proclaiming “Death before Dishonor.” On the wall behind the bar is a large mural depicting Custer’s Last Stand and a bumper sticker proclaiming "To take away my deer rifle, you will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands."

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Don’t you think it would be better for you to have a chicken dinner in Frankenmuth or a slice of cherry pie in Traverse City?