At breakfast we asked the waitress the meaning of Escanaba. Was it a Spanish word, or French? And did she know how many people lived in Manistique, our days destination? She smiled and laughed, and said we asked too hard of questions, then brought us a menu. She said the menu told the story, it was an Indian word, although she said she had never read the menu. Escanaba was an Ojibway word that described a prime deer hunting area. Indians would come from hundreds of miles to hunt red deer here. The title of the movie Escanaba In Da Moonlight suddenly made a little more sense. I asked our waitress if she’d seen that movie. She said no, and laughed again. The ride today was following the shoreline of Lake Michigan, it was a very nice day and lots of people were swimming. We met another bicyclist from Eugene Oregon, named Paul Nelson. He’s been riding for over 4 months and is circling the United States, starting and finishing in Eugene. We went downtown Manistique for food and found the streets blocked off and vendors setting up for a downtown festival tonight. Later I went down to the festival, it’s very much a small town annual event. There was a stage with 3 guys playing music, a beer garden, and about 3 blocks with no traffic allowed, a few food vendors and 2 or 3 hundred people.
Greg