Puddle Jumping: Where's Peara: To the UP Michigan Marquette Forests and Water Falls

Where's Peara now? Three guesses... She is somewhere in the UP and has not yet turned Canadian. She discovered water falls and miles and miles of green, and some sadly burnt, forests along the way.

For those of you new to Peara's adventures, let me introduce you.

Peara is a stuffed, plush, yellow pear with googly eyes. We received her from my sister-in-law years ago, even before we had children, I believe. See, she was going through her kids' toys and Peara was about to take a visit to Goodwill. Before this happened, my sister-in-law asked if we would by any chance be interested in finding a home for Peara. And, the rest is history.

As we began traveling with our children, we sort of adopted this plump yellow pear as our travel with kids mascot. And, thus began our journey of "Where's Peara?"

We always love this part of Michigan. It is between Marinette, WI and Menominee, MI. Though, most people think of Wisconsin and Michigan as being separated by Lake Michigan, there are two spots where the two meet. One of them is near Mackinaw, the other is right here. It is almost directly across the Green Bay portion of Lake Michigan from Sturgeon Bay, in Door County.

For a ways, we drove alongside the water. It's Green Bay waters of Lake Michigan along this section.

And, we drove, and we drove.

Once we were settled in Marquette, we took a day to explore water falls. There are apparently many, many, many water falls in the area. Though, we made the mistake of using a tourist map to find them and ended up driving around in circles for a couple hours, asking a state patrol man, and still getting lost until we finally stumbled upon a water fall on the side of the road.

Before we saw the first water fall, however, we discovered this... It's one of the largest iron ore mines in the world.

And, of course, the UP wouldn't be complete without a picture of a ski lift area.... The day we visited was unseasonably warm, and obviously - No snow!