The park is comprised of 24 sites that I recall and we visited all of them. We spent seven days in the area and used Fort Wilkins State Park as our base camp. Once we settled into our camp site we were of and logged a ton of miles on the old Titan. Fort Wilkins is located at almost the very tip of the Keweenaw Peninsular the sites we visited are located all along the this area. So it required a bit of doing but we saw all the sites and then some.
The area is known for it's copper mining, while many of the mines are now gone, some of them you can still visit. These include: The Adventure Mine (you can do rappelling down mine shafts here and we are going back to try our hand at this soon), Quincy Mine, here you can take a major tour of the mine and the museum on the site, Delaware Copper Mine-make sure you ask to see their pet skunks and the Central Mine- not much at this site, one building with some information. We enjoyed each of these mines, had some bats flying around us at the Adventure Mine and some cool pictures of them. We did some copper hunting in the tailings at the Delaware Mine and found some pretty pieces.
One of the highlights of the area was the A.E. Seaman's Museum on the Michigan Tech. campus. If you are a rock hound your visit to this area is NOT complete unless you visit this site. I think we spent five hours looking at cool rocks. I got a bit bored after the first hour, but Sandee was in heaven so I was happen just watching her reaction to all the cool stuff.
We spent some time in the area looking for Lake Superior Agates as well. Just north of Fort Wilkins is Horseshoe Harbor. It is almost the most northern point if the area. We could have gone further to some very remote areas but we were advised that unless we had additional tires it might not be a good idea. The local rocks in that part of the country does tear the tires to the point they become flat and there is not cell phone service to call for help. Given the cost of the tires on the Titan I choose not to venture to those areas, although Sandee did try her best to convince me otherwise. We were the first to arrive at Horseshoe Harbor, very isolated, remote and god agate hunting. We also saw a bear print in the sand, looked pretty darn fresh to me. We spent a few hours here until a group of school children involved with a summer geology class showed up. By then we had been there for four hours or so, so we decided to leave and find some other places to investigate
All in all our adventure to this area left us wanting more, but time was getting away from us so we moved on down the road to more adventures knowing that there is still plenty more for us on a return visit.
One of many bats in the Adventure Mine
Sandee and large Float Copper in Calumet, MI
Pictogliphs near Horseshoe Harbor. Mostly know by locals only. A local we befriended told us about this and just had too see them. Little effort has been made to preserve them.
Bear print at Horseshoe Harbor
Copper at A.E. Seaman's Museum
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