You pass through iron country if you follow HW-2 into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Many of the towns boast iron in the name, the rest stops are advertised with a metal sign in the shape of a miner, and you can take tours of an old iron mine along the way.
Main Street Cafe in Iron River is a nice place to stop.
There are still plenty of Lutheran churches in this part of the country.
The furniture store has ghosts and plenty of American spirit.
And the jewelry store owner has a sense of humor.
Across from the mostly unimpressive WPA-era post office is the old village hall. It sits for sale.
After the mining towns, you make it to the shores of Lake Michigan and the iron ore port of Escanaba.
Replete with lighthouse.
And a single rudder from a wooden bulk freighter that was destroyed by fire in 1897; two crew members burned to death. The rudder sat in the bottom of the harbor until 1985, when it was raised by local divers.
Escanaba has a decent downtown stretch,
but it’s mostly still a working port town. The tourists generally swarm along the northern shore of the U.P.
There is a hotel, but if you get there on a weekend you had better already have a reservation.
Gladstone, farther east along the coast, seems mostly able to support bars.
And a hardware store.
And its denizens choose religious vandalism.
Maybe they ran out of money for letters.