Waterfalls of the Keweenaw

Conditions:

Warm, partly cloudy, humid, buggy, some recent rain

Companions:

Logan

Vehicle:

Ford Taurus

Logan and I were on our way back up north from visiting Katie in Appleton, and since we planned on taking US-45 up and pass several waterfalls, we also planned on stopping at a few southern waterfalls. Though we left Wisconsin early, the drive took much longer then I hoped it would, and we arrived at our first waterfall in the mid-afternoon.

Bond Falls is one of the trademark waterfalls of the Upper Peninsula. It doesn't have a lot of water flow, but the shape and location of the waterfall makes for a great roadside stop. Also, there is a large retaining basin behind a dam at the top of waterfall with plenty of recreational uses. Logan and I didn't spend much time here though, as there was far too many tourists for either one of us to really enjoy the falls.

The next stop was Onion Falls. I had tried to visit these falls earlier in the summer after attempting to find Vista Falls, but ended up too far upstream to even be hope for a waterfall. We parked a bit further down the road near a large grassy plain and headed down the slope toward the forest below, passing by several old, rotting wooden foundations. After entering the woods, we soon found ourselves in a famaliar location - thick wooden underbrush, sluggish water, and scattered beaver dams. We headed downstream, and soon entered a more wooded area with actual water flow. Some of the canyon walls were quite impressive along the way, but most of the creek had only small sandstone rapids along it's flow.

The steepness of the riverbanks soon had Logan and I walking in the creek itself, only walking through the thick brush on the sides at the deeper pools. After a long and windy distance, we finally saw a decent sloping drop near an impressive rock wall, and hoping that these were the falls, headed back by cutting up the hill towards our car. We found ourselves in a large, grassy plain that looked famaliar and headed uphill, only to find a large cabin at the top instead of my car. Completely confused, I decided to just follow the driveway and hopes that it would led to my car. Fortunately, after spending a total of five hours wandering through woods and clearings, we returned to the car thirsty but unharmed.

As this trip took much longer then I had hoped, I decided not to tempt fate and head north on NF-16 towards Vista Falls. I drove back south and west through Bruce Crossing, taking a short detour to Sparrow Rapids (a huge disappointment) before stopping at the US-45 bridge over the Ontonagon River near Mass City and Greenland. I hoped to find Plover Falls on one of the small creeks that flowed into the river near here, so we followed the overgrown two-track on the south side of the bridge until we hit a small, dried-up creek. Taking it upstream over fallen trees and muddy patches we found a surprisingly jagged, if dry, sandstone creekbed that would make an amazing waterfall during heavy runoff. We were also surprised but less amused that our creek led right back to the highway, which proved both that this wasn't Plover Falls (it was actually Sandstone Creek Falls) and that we had just wasted about an hour walking along a difficult creekbed.

After disappointments at each of our stops I decided to head back to Houghton. There was still several hours of daylight and a few nearby possible falls, but the dry conditions and run of bad luck did not sound tempting.