Michigan – The ExhaustNotes Blog

By Joe Berk

Last year, Susie and I took a trip to Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan. It was fun. We met with my former battery commander (with whom I served in Korea), we went to the Harley Museum in Milwaukee, we visited Green Bay and their fabulous Auto Museum, we stopped in at the Green Bay Rail Museum, we rode up to the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, we toured the Miller Brewery, and we hit a few other places (I’ll provide links for all these at the end of this blog). We do trips like this to have fun and as ExNotes and Motorcycle Classics content safaris. It’s fun. I like to travel, I like to write, and I like taking pictures. Yep, life is good, and what we do sure beats working for a living.

Susie is super good at finding places (usually ones I’d never heard of) wherever we wander, and one of them was the Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee. This is an interesting story. You probably know from the Miller Brewery blog we wrote last year that Milwaukee is America’s beer capital. One of the early beer companies in America was Pabst. The story goes like this: Frederick Pabst came to this country from Germany as a 12-year-old boy (with his family) in 1848. He started his working life as a cabin boy on the ships plying Lake Michigan and eventually worked his way up to captain. He married Maria Best in 1857, which brought him into the beer business. Maria’s father owned Best and Company, which at the time was the largest beer company in the country. The Captain (as Frederick Pabst was known by that time) joined the beer biz in 1864, and through hard work (and an obviously smart choice in the matrimonial department) he soon became the top dog. The Captain changed the company’s name to the Pabst Brewing Company in 1874.

The Captain commissioned construction of the Pabst Mansion in 1890. It took a couple of years to build, but I think the wait was worth it. This place is as grand as anything I’ve seen anywhere in the world. Apparently, I’m not the only who felt that way; in 1908 the Catholic church’s Archdiocese of Milwaukee purchased the place. Over the next seven decades, five Archbishops and more than a few priests and nuns lived there, too. By 1975, the Archdiocese wanted out, and sold the property to Wisconsin Heritage, and outfit that offers tours and sells tickets. That’s a good thing; the Pabst Mansion (prior to the sale) was going to be demolished and turned into a parking lot. Just prior to the sale to Wisconsin Heritage, the Pabst Mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Once inside the mansion, we were blown away by its ornateness, the beautiful wood paneling, and the sheer luxuriousness of it. As we went through the different rooms, I wondered what it must have been like for the Captain, and then all those archbishops, priests, and nuns to live here. It must have been grand.

Living there must have been grand. We had a fun time at the Pabst Mansion. If you ever find yourself in Milwaukee, the Pabst Mansion is worth a stop.

The other blogs and magazine articles I mentioned that resulted from our visits to Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan? Here they are:

Omer McCants (my battery commander in Korea)
The Harley Museum
The Harley Museum article
Green Bay and the Automobile Gallery article
Green Bay National Rail Museum
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
Miller Brewery

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By Joe Berk

The destination on this fine day was Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, part of the National Park Service network. It’s situated in the Hiawatha National Forest along the shores of Lake Superior, which is the large body of water you see in the above photograph. Pictured Rocks lived up to its name; the drive to get there was even better. It’s part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and once we left the freeway on our ride out of Green Bay, Wisconsin, the roads were majestic. We hit it at just the right time, too, which was in mid-October when the leaves were turning colors. You might think I turned up the saturation in the photo below. I did not. You’re seeing it the way it came out of the camera (my Nikon D810, a 24-120 lens, and a Hoya polarizer).

The Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore area includes sandstone cliffs, beaches, waterfalls, and sand dunes. There are many lakes in this area as well. The roads are lined with forests. It’s a nice area, and my thoughts were that it would be well suited for exploring on nearly any kind of motorcycle in the summer months (it’s cold in the fall, and from what I understand, really cold in the winter). Speed limits were low (I think the highest we saw was 55mph, many areas were 40 or 45mph, so a small bike would do well here). All the roads were fairly straight with few curves; a big touring bike like a Harley or a Gold Wing would be fine, too.

The temperatures are brisk this time of year. We had frost on the windshield in the morning. This is a good time of year to take in the changing colors, though. The leaves and the ride were incredibly scenic.

Once we entered Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, we found that it’s not like the Jersey shore or the Grand Canyon’s South Rim; we couldn’t just ride along the edge of Lake Superior and take in the entire shoreline. Nope, the way to see this National Park is by riding to a series of points along the lakefront from the interior. Getting to each involves taking different roads to their ends where they meet Lake Superior. That’s okay, because doing this in the fall with the leaves turning colors makes for a beautiful ride.

The town where we stayed the night is Munising (pronounced just like it’s spelled: Muni Sing). There is at least one glass bottom boat tour in the area, although we didn’t do that.

We couldn’t get anyone to recommend a restaurant in Munising, and after trying one, we understood why. But that’s all right. There are several shops in town that sell pasties, and the pasties are great. Muldoon’s Pasties is the one we tried. (Pasties are not what you might be thinking. They are actually pastries.) We had the chicken pasty and then a cherry one for dessert, and they were awesome. That one chicken pasty you see below was more than a meal for both of us.

For this trip, we flew from Atlanta (where we stopped to visit with an Army friend and mentor) to Milwaukee, where we rented a Mazda CX30. It’s an all-wheel-drive automobile that was okay, but not okay enough for me to ever consider buying one.

The CX30’s fuel economy was good, ride comfort (while better than a motorcycle) and road noise were not. It would probably be an okay car for the area (they get a lot of snow up here in the winter). We put about a thousand miles on the Mazda and had no issues, other than the tire pressure indicator nearly constantly flashing. That seems to be a common occurrence with Enterprise Rental; the car we rented in Atlanta had the same problem.

We’ve got more good stuff coming your way: The Harley-Davidson Museum, World War II military motorcycles, the Green Bay Auto Gallery, the National Rail Museum, the Miller Beer tour, the Pabst Mansion, and a few other stops. Hang in there, click on the pop-up ads to keep the lights on and the content flowing, and as always, stay tuned.

There must be a lot of potheads in Michigan. I believe I saw more marijuana stores in Michigan than any place else I’ve ever been (and coming from the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia, that’s saying something). There was one cannabis store after another, especially in the Upper Peninsula.

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