Adventures with Big Blue

[campfire]

More fun. Halfway through I decided to throw my Silver Lake flag on the front just for fun.




















This was a fun stop. I even got a little bit of air under the wheels. You could say we all had a Gay time, but that phrase just doesn't work anymore.

 

[campfire]

While I was horsing around out there, Dave called the gas station about the unpaid gas, and he was directed to give his $32 to the barkeeper at the Gay bar, who would pass it along the next time the station owner headed that way. So we were all legally obligated to go visit Gay's primary tourist attraction.



It may have been mid-day, but happy hour runs all day up here.



And Dave wanted to make sure that we got a shot of him posing.

 

[campfire]

@GWeakland620, this is what Luke was referring to earlier.

When you hear this story, you'll get a lot of insight about things in the Copper Country.

Life up here is pretty laid back, and folks are both kind and trusting. If Dave messed up paying for gas, they had no problem taking the money via a 3rd party and letting him be on his merry way. Trusting both Dave and the bartender to hold up their ends of things.

A few weeks ago I hired out a little bit of work from a local machining shop. I opted to pay for it via CC (because of the tiny bit of cash back), but their CC machine was broken. Rather than asking me to pay cash (which I would have done), the guy wrote down my CC number and said "I'll run it through next week when the machine is fixed." He had no idea who I was or whether the card was good. But that's just the way folks treat each other up here. It's a hard place to live, but there is a community spirit that probably derives from that. Very different from what you see down in your city, but I like it up here.

 

[campfire]

Looking around the rest of the tiny town.





The Mohawk Stamp Mill, which supplied the beach and the town's jobs back in the glory days.




This appears to be cast concrete breeching, something I haven't seen before.






And then we headed for the lift bridge via Lake Linden.



Caught this jem, with Dave photobombing.





And then visited our old friends at the Quincy stamping works.







Getting back to the mainland again.



And lining us all up as mall crawlers.

 

[campfire]

From there we wound our way down to the Sturgeon River Gorge.





I like these blurry forest shots (shutter duration too long). The picture just seems to be moving.








We camped atop the gorge and enjoyed our final campfire as the daylight faded. This path leading to the edge was too narrow for my rig to fit. So we camped back a few yards.

 

[campfire]

Film clip of Big Blue at Gay Beach.

View media item 27016
I think the guys are talking about @Richcz28, but I wasn't there to remember the conversation.

 

[campfire]

Day 4 equivalent road mileage: 100mi. Google Maps estimates it would take 3 hours to drive this route on the roads. Interesting.

Lots of good stops, the RAIN finally let up, and we had a sad feeling because we knew the end of the trip had already arrived.

 

[campfire]

Morning dawned over our sylvan campsite. I don't remember if this was an actual dry night, but it at least wasn't soggy like the rest of the week had been. (But when your equipment starts out soggy, there really isn't so much difference ).







One last campfire.







This view makes for a pretty amazing morning. And one thing that I take for granted (because I'm surrounded by it every day) is the stillness of the woods. We did encounter man-made noises from time to time, but we had a lot of natural silence on this trip. If you find that you have too much busyness in your life, you need to spend more time out in the therapeutic woods.





We wondered how much more erosion Luke's chair could take before the whole thing fell into the gorge.

 

[campfire]

We packed up and trailed back to civilization. Baby likes the forest floor.





Here's where Dave broke off to backtrack to Adventure Mine to pick up his tow rig.



Luke and I rode caravan to Baraga, where he stopped for fuel. I also stopped to fill my one empty tank, as Baraga often has cheaper fuel than the rest of the U.P. Turns out today it would have been cheaper to wait until I got home.




After Baraga we were on our own.





We cut a few miles too far East in order to go see the ELF installation at Republic. Today's fun sign.



East of Republic sits a large tailings pond named "Tailings Pond." Some people have no imagination, eh?



There's lots of water below the ruins, it's just not very visible in the pictures.






Turns out there's nothing to see at the ELF station except this locked gate. I had expected the gates to be open so I could go up to the perimeter fence, but no dice. Inside the small fenced compound sits the former site of one of the world's weirdest radio broadcast stations, connected to 46 miles of antenna cables that were used to generate Extremely Low Frequency (hence the name) radio waves. Obsolete and retired now, the buildings have been given to the town of Humboldt for redevelopment. I haven't heard yet if they have improved the property any, but I guess they put up a sign for the 6 people out there who care.









After winding our way back to the highway, the trip home was uneventful. Another awesome adventure in the books.

 

[Blue85]

Luke and I rode caravan to Baraga, where he stopped for fuel. I also stopped to fill my one empty tank, as Baraga often has cheaper fuel than the rest of the U.P. Turns out today it would have been cheaper to wait until I got home.

This is the place to go for cheap fuel: https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...461d6e23b07276!8m2!3d46.7962255!4d-88.4730801

 

[campfire]

Fuel consumption report. Because I like tracking stuff like that.

I drove 1001 miles and used 51.5 gallons. An average of 19.4 MPG. I'll break that down by fillup:

I started the trip full and ran mostly road miles until I ran out in the Porkies (filled up in Ontonagon). This was 436 miles and 20.0 gallons. 21.8MPG. This is a little low for this truck on a road trip, but it wasn't only highway miles.

The second tank was the real overlanding stuff, from the Porkies through the Keweenaw. I ran out in Houghton and filled up in Baraga (because why not?). 276 miles and 18.0 gallons (it sputtered on the big hill in Houghton). 15.3 MPG.

The third tank was the trip from Houghton to home. The only overlanding here was going up to the gorge. 289 miles and 13.6 gallons. 21.3MPG. Still slightly low, but there's not much I can do about it.

Looking through my route and comparing it to Dave's, I think I drove 430 extra miles (since I didn't trailer), so I'm estimating that he drove 570 miles. He estimates that he burned through 105 gallons, so I figure his average mileage as 5.4MPG

Luke says:

I'm getting like 12MPG in expedition mode

My informal observation is that Luke and I would run out of fuel at similar times, but he carried 32 gallons while I carried 20 (in one tank). Looking at the math, this is really close to what I would expect from our respective mileage numbers.

So...folks interested in joining us, here are 3 real-world fuel consumption data points for you to plan your fueling capacity accordingly (and budget, too). This stuff doesn't hog fuel like serious rock crawling or sand dunes, but you will be visiting the pump periodically!

 

[campfire]

This is the place to go for cheap fuel: https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...461d6e23b07276!8m2!3d46.7962255!4d-88.4730801

Interesting. I have consistently found fuel to be cheaper in L'Anse than Baraga. But on this trip they were both more expensive than places like Sagola and Iron Mountain. For much of last year fuel in Menominee was enough cheaper that folks would line up at the pumps and waste much time in line to save a few bucks.

 

[GWeakland620]

yay

 

[Blue85]

I was trying to use my fuel gauge to estimate Dave's tank at roughly 2:1, but I lost track after skipping 2 fuel stops in a row. And I've never been able to take on 31 gallons - more like 29. It's an aftermarket tank I got from a TBI Blazer. Case in point, the tank was known empty in Munising, they added 3 gallons and a mile or two later I could only take 26 more.

I noticed you taking pictures at some of the pumps, but I wasn't topping off at some of the stations. Another reason why I had trouble estimating Dave's tank - so we just kept stopping. Some of these places are not exactly on GasBuddy, but if you know where to look AND it's daytime AND it's not Sunday, there are some pumps in out of the way villages.

 

[campfire]

I was trying to use my fuel gauge to estimate Dave's tank at roughly 2:1, but I lost track after skipping 2 fuel stops in a row. And I've never been able to take on 31 gallons - more like 29. It's an aftermarket tank I got from a TBI Blazer. Case in point, the tank was known empty in Munising, they added 3 gallons and a mile or two later I could only take 26 more.

I noticed you taking pictures at some of the pumps, but I wasn't topping off at some of the stations. Another reason why I had trouble estimating Dave's tank - so we just kept stopping. Some of these places are not exactly on GasBuddy, but if you know where to look AND it's daytime AND it's not Sunday, there are some pumps in out of the way villages.

Interesting. I assumed you had the same size tank as my (diesel, non-TBI) Suburban. I pumped that one out after a bad batch of contaminated fuel and it was 32 gallons from bottom to top. I guess nobody runs all the way to the bottom when driving unless you have a second tank on standby.

The picture taking was probably passing the time. What else would I do when I'm sitting at a fuel station and don't need fuel? I agree that a fuel gauge would have greatly lengthened the time between stops. At least two of the 6ish stops saw Dave with half a tank left.

I never would have thought to stop in Lac La Belle. It didn't look like a fuel source from the highway. Or a lake. Or a ski slope. Lots of stuff hiding in the trees. I often wonder how much I'm missing out on as I truck past at highway speed.

 

[Blue85]

K5 and Sub tanks are different. K5's have a taper in the back. I think the K5 tanks are 28 and 31 gallons, while Sub is like 32 and 40 (please nobody quote these numbers are real tech). Maybe my tank is the smaller version?

 

[Blue85]

I never would have thought to stop in Lac La Belle. It didn't look like a fuel source from the highway. Or a lake. Or a ski slope. Lots of stuff hiding in the trees. I often wonder how much I'm missing out on as I truck past at highway speed.

There is awesome stuff everywhere up there. The challenge is sorting out the 90% of the stuff you'll blow past to enjoy 10%.

 

[GWeakland620]

So, being that my 6.5 is getting around 17-18 (under my driving conditions) and I have a 34 gallon tank, I should be able to do 550 miles per tank. Not too bad. Now factor in that I will have a pop-up bed camper in it, I would assume a small loss in fuel efficiency.

 

[campfire]

So, being that my 6.5 is getting around 17-18 (under my driving conditions) and I have a 34 gallon tank, I should be able to do 550 miles per tank. Not too bad. Now factor in that I will have a pop-up bed camper in it, I would assume a small loss in fuel efficiency.

What makes you think the loss will be small? Driving patterns have a lot of influence on mileage. The only difference that I can think of between these 21MPG runs and a more typical 23MPG run is that I had my foot down more often (because somehow the non-slow trucks don't like waiting for me to catch up).

If you're getting 18MPG empty on a gentle 35MPH drive to work you will probably see much less than that if you throw a camper on and hit up the 80MPH interstates...

Are you thinking of bringing the CCLB up here next year?

 

[GWeakland620]

I drive like a crazy man, all the time. I am also working on that. I also do an average of 50-60mph to and from work. With a camper in the back, I would be forced to drive a little more responsible. Therefore resulting in a small decrease.

And yes, the CCLB would be the one making any overlanding trips.