May 5, Pictured Rocks and Pasties

I stopped for lunch in Seney, Mich. The UP is known for their pasties (a meat pie in a calzone shape). The first one I ever remember having was at Taquamenon Falls in 2005, and seeing as how this was my first time back in the UP since then, I definitely wanted to have another authentic UP pasty. I went into a restaurant/gift shop/post office which had a sign advertising pasties. I asked for a pasty, but they didn't have any. Jenny, the owner, said a shipment should be coming in at the end of the week, so I ordered the chicken sandwich you can see to the left. I told Jenny that my main reason for coming to Seney was because it's in Hemingway's short story "Big Two-Hearted River." (The last time I came to the UP, I went to see the Two-Hearted River--only to realize later that the river in the story isn't the real Two-Hearted River--it's the Fox River, which runs through Seney.) Jenny told me that there's a 101-year-old woman in town who would remember stories about Hemingway, seeing as how he used to come to Seney. Apparently, this woman still has a youthful spirit: I was told she's dating a younger man--a 90-year-old.

From Seney, I drove north to the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Not many other visitors there: I seem to have beaten the start of the tourist season by a couple of weeks as even the east visitor center wasn't open yet. I tried to drive to the western one, but the road was closed. Not wanting to retrace the thirty miles back to Seney, I took a couple of unpaved roads in the direction I wanted to go--towards Ironwood, Mich. , where I spent the night. I did, though, stop in Marquette for supper--and got a pasty.