Toonerville Trolly

Yesterday we went to Soo Junction in Luce County, Michigan to have the Toonerville Trolly experience. It was a beautiful, cool day – perfect for something like this. The train, which for some reason I seem to not have a photo of, took us 5.5 miles through bogs, fens, boreal and upland forests to the Tahquamenon River where we took the Hiawatha ferry some 21 miles to the backside of the Upper Tahquamenon Falls. The whole experience started at 10:30am and ended at 5:45pm.

Traveling through the bogs and fens you just wanted to hop out and walk – which was not an option.

Some of the wetlands were filled with water, which is good.

When we got to the river our ride was waiting for us. We even had lunch on the boat.

Tickets were necessary to get on the boat. We found that the captain’s narration of facts, trivia and folklore along the river to be quite interesting.

We had views of the river that you couldn’t get any other way.

It seemed like every twist and turn in the river was prettier than the previous.

And it was stunningly obvious that it is autumn. The maples are turning red, beeches and ashes were turning yellow and oaks brown.

But finally, we hit a dead end, where the boat would let us off.

So we disembarked and walked the 3/4 of a mile to the Upper Falls.

Seeing the falls from a totally different perspective was nice. We’ve always been on the other sidewhere you see people.

Then it was time to get back to the boat and on the train, head back through the bogs to get to our cars. On the way back, we saw a lot of recognizable wildflowers (actually we saw more on the way out), but this included some larger ladies-tresses orchids.

After we were done we went to Newberry for dinner. Much to our surprise a young couple paid for our dinner and tried to sneak our before we could thank them.

As we were leaving Newberry heading back to the cabin Susan spotted a Barred Owl tucked into a line. The perfect way to end a wonderful day.

We’re not sure how much longer the operation will be running, the owners of the trolly want to retire, but we both highly recommend doing this if you can.