On a quest for solitude and sweet, smog-free air, thousands of tourists journey north to the Upper Peninsula each summer, while some adventuresome Yoopers travel the world in search of an adrenaline fix using boats, kayaks, boots, cars, airplanes and bicycles.
Climbing near Mount Everest in Nepal, peddling behind the Tour de France leaders, diving shipwrecks across Lake Superior, kayaking around Isle Royale or Lake Superior, conquering the North Pole, or helping their community are just a few of the examples of modern-day explorers who call the U.P. home. Rattlesnakes and deadly drop-offs are just a couple of the hazards faced by the adrenaline-challenged travelers.

Of course professional football and opera have a lot in common
After reeling in an eighteen-inch Marquette County walleye in late July, professional football player Keith Miller, twenty-seven, and his wife, Vicki, trolled across a motionless lake near Ishpeming while critiquing his opera performance of the night before. He played one of the lead roles in a Pine Mountain Music Festival production in Marquette.
The Fargo (North Dakota) couple are adventure seekers. He spent this summer performing opera in many U.P. cities. Only weeks before, Miller, a former XFL fullback, tried out for the Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders, Seattle Seahawks and Cleveland Browns. Miller played one season for the XFL's Los Angeles Extreme. He also has co-hosted radio programs and taught and coached at a Mississippi high school.
Miller's wife joined him in the U.P. for his final performance in Marquette. The couple share common interests as she performs with the Colorado Lyric Opera company and teaches voice lessons at Concordia College in Moorhead (Minnesota).
Miller said opera can be as demanding mentally as football; he borrows the psychological determination that he uses as a tough football player to perfect his baritone skills. Opera requires focused learning and performance perfection.
The Colorado native attended the University of Colorado on a football scholarship and played in the dramatic 1994 game against the University of Michigan, which ended in a last-second Hail Mary pass—a defeat from which many Michigan fans never have recovered and a win that still brings tears to the eyes of Colorado fans. Miller, who was in the backfield, said the excitement of that game is the only thing that compares to being on-stage singing opera.
"It's an emotional connection," Miller said. "It's the same as when people swell up when they see a last-second shot in a basketball game. It's the same whether it's sports or music."
Miller worked out at NMU's PEIF building between Marquette performances and rehearsal. In fact, he has trained other opera singers to improve their voices by working out.
For six weeks, Miller portrayed a peasant named Masetto in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. On his wedding day, Masetto spots his bride being seduced by the philanderer Giovanåni.
"Keith has a very resonant, bass baritone voice," said Russell Miller (no relation), the Pine Mountain Music Festival opera coach. "What a quandary to decide whether to play professional football or to sing professional opera. Keith is one of the most important vocal talents we have ever had here. It's a voice that is very important."
Getting Frenched: Yoopers feel the rush at the Tour de France
Three Marquette couples spent the final days of July following the Tour de France bikers across the mountains. Just returning home July 29 were former Marquette mayor Robert "Buzz" Berube and his wife, Becky, Barb and Pete Kelly and Barb and Charles Weinrick of Harvey. Their three-week summer adventure took them to France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Luxembourg.
Before taking charter buses to follow the bikers through the mountains, the six visited World War II sites in and around Normandy. Barb Kelly's uncle died in the Battle of the Bulge.
They were thrilled to talk and eat breakfast with some of the bikers including Tour de France champion and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong. They watched the start and finish of many of the mountain stages.
"We followed Lance Armstrong, who is known for his speed in the mountains," Robert Berube said. "He has marvelous biking strength. Imagine surviving cancer and going on to win three Tours [de France]."

A "shore" way to see Lake Superior;
Marquette woman circles Gitchie Gumee
Marquette physical therapist Nancy Uschold, thirty-seven, is spending this summer getting therapeutically physical. By late July, Uschold had reached Duluth (Minnesota) while kayaking around the Lake Superior shoreline. She left eastbound on June 1, paddled the Canadian north shore and is on the homestretch expecting to arrive in Marquette by August 15, if her trip is not cut short by "over-use" injuries sustained during the trip.
Her most exciting but scary moment has been matching wits with a persistent one-year-old black bear near Crane Island along Superior's northeastern shoreline. No mama bear was in sight that morning as the small bear kept returning to her campsite after being chased off by Uschold waving a paddle.
"She chased it and the bear would be right back," said Marquette resident Sam Crowley, a massage therapist, co-worker and friend who spent ten days paddling with Uschold.
It usually takes Uschold about forty minutes to pack her gear into the kayak, but because of the bear "it was the fastest she's ever packed."
Uschold works with special needs children at numerous U.P. schools and the Bay Cliff Health Camp, but she's depending on others for special needs during her voyage.
"A couple of people have met her and paddled with her," friend Jonathon Harbin said. "She gets restocked with supplies every two weeks."
"Friends from Marquette with a camp in the Soo made her first food drop," Crowley said.
Uschold has been dreaming about the trip for eight years and began mapping and planning her eleven-week trip last fall, Crowley said. She even sought advice from others who have undertaken the same venture.
"We made three attempts crossing the Thunder Bay [Ontario] shipping lanes because the fog closed in," said Crowley, who joined Uschold in Rossport (Ontario) for ten days of paddling.
Her seventeen-and-a-half-foot kayak is twenty-one inches wide but can carry enough supplies to fill half of a compact car, Crowley said. That means packing perfection is critical. A tent, sleeping bag and four changes of clothes are among the vital supplies.
After drying her own fruit for the trip, Uschold appreciates food drops that include fresh apples, a clove of garlic and other perishables. Her first month was marked by persistent rain, unseasonable cold and bugs, bugs, bugs.
Despite nature's curve balls, Uschold has been lucky because she has faced fewer days of headwinds and big waves than expected, Crowley said.
"She's doing very well," he said. "She's having a very good time."
Uschold averages about four miles per hour and paddles up to twenty-five miles per day. Rugged lakeshore and beach camping sites are usually her nighttime resting place, but sometimes Uschold is invited into homes or camps to enjoy creature comforts like a hot shower or sauna.
Rattlesnakes and bears don't scare U.P.'s Appalachian Trail hikers
August is the final full month for three Marquette hikers MM has been following on the Appalachian Trail. Two of the three expect to reach the Maine finish line in mid-September after putting nearly 2,200 miles behind them.
Church secretary Jennifer "Church Lady" Zabkiewicz, twenty-nine; NMU student Mike "Spiderman" Reynolds, nineteen; and retired National Weather Service meteorologist Jack Pellet, fifty-eight, began separate journeys this spring. Reynolds is about a month behind the others and expects to finish in mid-October.
Reynolds found out that he's still growing, despite being nineteen. In anguish from "horrible blisters" on his feet, Reynolds left the trail in Virginia and hitchhiked 300 miles to find an outfitter. His swollen, growing feet were a size and a half larger, so new boots were needed.
Reynolds was glad to reach Pennsylvania, a psychological milestone because it's considered a northern state. All the hikers have been taking side journeys with family and friends, and Reynolds spent the Fourth of July in Washington, D.C.
By late July, Reynolds had just passed the halfway point on the trail in the Pine Grove Furnace State Park. That's where all three took part (at different times) in the "Half Gallon Challenge." Appalachian Trail hikers are greeted by former hikers who insist they eat a half gallon of ice cream before continuing their quest.
"I did not succeed in the Half Gallon Challenge. I had some Boy Scouts help me finish mine," said Zabkiewicz, who ordered peanut butter twist ice cream for breakfast.
Nosey, hungry black bears and several rattle snakes have energized Zabkiewicz since the halfway point in late June.
In fact, she was first fooled by fellow hikers who placed a fake snake on the trail resulting in a scream "that made me feel like a moron."
But by mid-July she'd stepped over or near three rattlesnakes. A venom antidote is nowhere close, so hikers are advised to walk around the snakes that like to sun themselves on the trail. Zabkiewicz was in New York state in late July.
For more information on Reynolds's journey, see his daily updated Web site: www.reynoldsindiana/mikehike.htm

Need directions kayaking Isle Royale? just ask a moose; Nepal is next
Outdoor adventurer extraordinaire Bill Thompson returned July 28 from a five-day trip to Isle Royale. Thompson, an owner of outdoor store Downwind Sports in Marquette, took his wife and son kayaking around the big island located in western Lake Superior.
Thompson loves just about every kind of outdoor adventure including ice climbing in the winter. In October, Thompson and a couple of friends will be treking to he Mount Everest area for some climbing.

On the top of the world you will find some Marquette climbers each summer
NMU professor Phil Watts and his family love Alpine mountaineering. That's when you not only seek the peak, but cross boulders and negotiate other dangers in the process.
The family usually spends its summer vacation away from the U.P. in search of peaks to master. This summer, the family took a "low-key" trip to West Virginia for a week-long session of music classes, similar to the annual Hiawatha Music Festival in Marquette
Two years ago, Watts, his wife Annette and his daughter, Salem, who was twelve at the time, climbed some of the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming. The climb included an 11,000-foot peak.
Watts began climbing about twenty-four years ago and has scaled numerous mountains in Washington state and British Columbia, the northern range of the Cascade Mountains that includes "extensive glaciers, snow ice and rock even in the summer."
This summer, a book Watts wrote on mountain climbing was translated into Korean, because of demand from future climbers in that country. He wrote the 200-page book in 1996, and it has sold about 10,000 copies.

Another vast, usually unseen world is discovered by U.P. divers each summer
Avid climber and diver Don Fassbender of Marquette will go scuba diving in a shipwreck preserve at the Straits of Mackinaw underneath the Mackinaw Bridge. Fassbender and his girlfriend, Kamila Hreskova of Slovakia, enjoy diving on different Lake Superior shipwrecks in the summer including off Munising in the Alger County underwater preserve.
Two summers ago the couple climbed the Alps in Austria.

A breath of fresh air–Marquette man peddles for American Lung Association
Reformed smoker Bob Swanson of Marquette is turning tragedy into a summer adventure. Swanson watched his parents die from cancer, the result of a lifetime of smoking. From September 6 through 8, he will bike in the American Lung Association of Michigan's annual Lakeshore Loop near Traverse City.
"I am a one-man crusade," said Swanson, fifty-three, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (and possibly asthma) from decades of smoking.
Swanson once quit cigarettes for almost six years, resumed smoking for eight years and hasn't smoked for the past fourteen years. Swanson, who plans to bike 150 miles, hopes to raise $5,000 for the Lung Association.
Swanson has been biking for only four years, a habit he began to improve his health damaged by the deadly habit.
"I am carrying a message of hope," said Swanson, who knows how tough it is to kick smoking. "If I can do it, anybody can (kick the smoking habit). Even two years after quitting smoking, in certain situations, I would reach for my shirt pocket for that pack of cigarettes."
When the urge hits, Swanson said he remembers what he would be giving up—good health.
"I just make that commitment, sometimes minute by minute, whenever I have an urge to smoke," he said.
Swanson will be peddling on a circular route near the town of Lake Ann in the northern Lower Peninsula. There are several circle routes, some around lakes, that bikers can take depending on their capability, he said. Bikers peddle from ten to one hundred miles per day.
To donate on Swanson's behalf, send a check payable to the American Lung Association of Michigan to his home at 316 W. Hewitt Ave. in Marquette, or to your lung association local office.

Harvey videographer visits North Pole in a trip to the top of the world
When you think of interesting adventures, few can compare to that of Frida Waara, a Harvey videographer. In April 2001, she documented the quest of eleven women who braved unbearable cold to reach the North Pole.
Waara's detailed adventure (called "Women's Quest") was made into an award-winning article in the December 2001 issue of the Marquette Monthly. The Michigan Outdoor Writers Association honored Waara's article. She videotaped the entire journey and has turned the footage into a television program.
This summer, Waara, her husband and daughter will bike in their fourth "Tour Da U.P." event.
Traveling fifty to sixty miles per day, the bikers enjoy the scenery of Ontonagon and Gogebic counties in the western U.P. The tour begins August 4.

Helping his community, a teen's summer project provides a place to reflect
Cody Hanson, seventeen, of Michigamme should become an Eagle Scout this fall but already is receiving community and church accolades after a summer of hard work in the hot sun. Hanson coordinated blazing a one-quarter mile nature trail through a wooded area in Ishpeming. The nature trail begins and ends at the United Evangelical Covenant Church on Second Street in Ishpeming.
Hanson, who belongs to Boy Scout Troop 321 of Ishpeming, began planning the project in February and spent July helping volunteers do the work. While the project fulfills a major requirement of becoming an Eagle Scout, it also helped out Hanson's church.
Several thousand dollars in lumber and equipment (including use of a bulldozer) was donated by local merchants and residents. Two bridges were built over creeks and fallen branches and other wood scraps were chipped and used to cover the path. Benches were built for people to sit and reflect. The nature path is named "The Beatitude Walk."

Adventure can be found just out the back door; put on your shoes and go!
So, where do Yoopers go when the rest of the country seems to vacation in our back yard? That question can be answered many different ways. A vacation can be as simple as donating time to make improvements in your hometown, or by spreading the U.P.'s northern hospitality to far reaches of the globe.
Even couch potatoes are invigorated by the rare summer sun, knowing they have the entire eight months of the U.P.'s famous winter to "veg" out at home. There still is time left before the snow flies.
Get out and appreciate your world.
—Greg Peterson

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