On the Upper Peninsula of Michigan we stayed with friends Doug and Marjory for two nights. At their place they have created a great network of walking/cross country skiing trails in their fields and woods—great for bird watching. They took us on a hike on a section of the North Country Trail that they maintain in the Ottawa National Forest through a mix of young and old forest. Then we hiked a loop at Silver Mountain, past the base of a sheer basalt cliff popular with local rock climbers and scrambled up onto the ridge top above the cliff, where Doug showed us an impressive set of glacial striations. The mountain was named for a former silver mine at the base of the cliff that is now gated to protect it as a bat hibernaculum.
