Book excerpt: Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is one of America’s hidden treasures. Overlooked and ignored as a place to visit compared, say, to Vermont or coastal Maine. It is decidedly not Yellowstone Park, Disney World, or New Orleans. The UP and the yoopers, as they are called, like it just that way. They enjoy their own character, culture, and history. The land of Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world, is their world along with the fingerlike Keweenaw Peninsula that dares to thrust deep northward into the heart of this beautiful, and sometimes dangerous, magnificent glacial gift. This is the setting for which Longfellow wrote his magical poem The Song of Hiawatha. Come along and enjoy the adventures of a surgeon working and exploring the land around the lake, the Keweenaw, the Copper Country history, the Ojibwa and Chippewa Indians, and more. How did the UP become an unexpected, greatly unappreciated golden gift to Michigan and pay Michigan back a thousand fold for begrudgingly accepting the UP. Come along with me and learn all about the yoopers, the culture, the history, Father Marquette, and Michigan’s connection to the Mississippi River and more. See how the UP transformed itself from a copper-mining industrial area back to a most beautiful and wonderful part of America. I’ll even tell you where to get good meals and where not to get good meals. As a bonus I’ll throw in a lot of useful medical advice with no co-pay! Come along now. Let’s go!