New York Times -- Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula :: August 15, 2007

FOUR hundred feet underground, in a musty, dripping passage into the Quincy Mine, Ed Yarbrough pointed to a dark opening in the wall. “Here’s an old explosives bin,” he said, tracing a flashlight beam along the rock, “hence the no-smoking sign.”

Thus begins my story in last Friday’s New York Times, where I wrote about Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, a remote finger of land that pokes north into Lake Superior.

The Keweenaw Peninsula—75 miles long, 40 miles wide at its base and tapering to a point—is a wilderness of stunted stone mountains, mossy forests and sparse settlements born in a mining boom. Dark bubbling streams cut rocky ravines in the woods. Lake Superior is always close by, lapping the land from the east, west and north.

It’s a wilderness of stunted stone mountains, mossy forests and sparse settlements born in a mining boom. I toured a copper mine and trekked into the piney hills, where the mossy/rocky/boreal theme kept me thinking a gnome just might skitter on by.

Go here for the full tale. . . http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/travel/escapes/10American.html