The advice we got over and over again from the UP locals was, “Get toys.” With thousands of miles of ORV and snowmobile trails and brutally long winters, embracing the outdoors in a fun way is the key, they say, to not only surviving but enjoying all seasons here.
We bought a used side-by-side … an off-road vehicle that can get us down the most primitive of logging roads. Sunday, we packed up the cooler and hit the ORV trail closest to our house with the singular goal of seeing beautiful sights we haven’t seen before.
We took a slight detour to have Bloody Mary’s and fried cheese curds at The Wooden Nickel … a small dive bar with the best hamburgers I have ever eaten. Then drove into Iron River to fill up with gas. Along the way we came across a handful of other sight-seers also on the trail. The adventure took nearly three hours and was about 30 miles total.
Spitting distance from our house is the beautiful Golden Lake, and anytime I am on the side-by-side, I pull into the Ottawa National Forest campground at Golden Lake and stop to admire its beauty. After a long and dusty day of riding the trails, we also wanted to cool off in the water!
When we got back to the vehicle, we saw we had a flat tire! We hobbled the 1/8 mile back to our house and made pouty faces. We were just lucky that didn’t happen on the trail or even worse, on a logging road with no cell service.
Moral is, “Be prepared!” and not just with extra mimosas!