{"id":4164,"date":"2016-07-12T09:01:40","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T13:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4164"},"modified":"2016-07-12T09:01:40","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T13:01:40","slug":"in-the-upper-peninsula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4164","title":{"rendered":"In the Upper Peninsula"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As long-time readers are aware, I grew up in Detroit and attended a high school in the downtown area.  Since we then lived in a western suburb, I rode a bus from the outskirts to the city&#8217;s center every day for years, and I could see that the city was dying.  When I left Detroit to go to college, I left for keeps.<\/p>\n<p>I attended Michigan Tech, a mining and engineering about as far north as it is possible to go and remain in the United States.<\/p>\n<p><center><img src=\"http:\/\/www.BobFelton.com\/images\/HoughtonMichigan.JPG\" width=500><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve wondered through the years if the root of the affection I&#8217;ve always felt for the U.P. lies in its contrast with Detroit, which is noisy, dirty, crowded, and crime-ridden.  It&#8217;s not as if I&#8217;m a knotty-pine kind of guy, and personally shot that moose, though it wouldn&#8217;t be a huge scandal if I had; everybody hunts in the U.P.<\/p>\n<p><center><img src=\"http:\/\/www.BobFelton.com\/images\/me_and_moose.jpg\" width=500><\/center><\/p>\n<p>The only two counties in the Upper Peninsula which haven&#8217;t lost population over the last two decades are Houghton and Marquette &#8212; the homes, respectively, of Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan University.  The big industries were timber and mining, and both of those have been in decline for a long time; the winters are too harsh to support a lot of tourism or agriculture.<\/p>\n<p>The theater where I saw <i>Jaws<\/i> has closed.<\/p>\n<p><center><img src=\"http:\/\/www.BobFelton.com\/images\/lode.jpg\" width=500><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Lake Superior is the world&#8217;s largest freshwater lake.  Carved by glaciers, it ranges up to more than 1300-feet deep and it&#8217;s coastline is more than 1700-miles long.  Its rocky shoreline once hosted several places of aboriginal worship, and it isn&#8217;t difficult to understand why.  Imagine standing at night on the peak on the left of the next picture, billions of stars overhead, when the northern lights come up.<\/p>\n<p><center><img src=\"http:\/\/www.BobFelton.com\/images\/miners_castle.jpg\" width=500><\/center><\/p>\n<p>OK, back to work.<\/p>\n<p><center><img src=\"http:\/\/www.BobFelton.com\/images\/at_the_porkies.jpg\" width=500><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As long-time readers are aware, I grew up in Detroit and attended a high school in the downtown area. Since we then lived in a western suburb, I rode a bus from the outskirts to the city&#8217;s center every day &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=4164\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4164"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4168,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4164\/revisions\/4168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}