Today we were finally on our way to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Our stated objective was the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory to try to pick up some late migrants, but the unstated real objective was the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, which is located at the exact same place.

I don’t think Scrubb has mentioned that any time we travel north toward Lake Superior, he plays Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” just to hear about “the big lake they call Gitchee Gumee.” For some reason, Scrubb doesn’t bring any other music CDs to listen to as we’re driving — except for Gordon Lightfoot — so I’m guessing we’ve heard “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” at least, hmmm, let’s give a conservative estimate of one million times. The other thing Scrubb really wanted was an Edmund Fitzgerald puzzle. And what better place to get an official Edmund Fitzgerald puzzle than the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, whose raison d’etre is pretty much the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Anyway, pretending that we were birders, we stopped at a nature wildlife viewing area just south of Escanaba, where we both saw a MARSH WREN. We spent a frustrating 30 minutes trying to get a better look — it was obviously in the midst of some serious nest building. It would fly up for a second with a piece of straw, then dive back into the reeds for a few minutes, then whizz up, do its old-fashioned sewing machine song, flit away for more nest building materials, hide some more, fly up for a millisecond, drop down again — well, you get the picture. Since it was a lifer for Scrubb, we spent the time trying to make sure we had a good I.D., but Gordon Lightfoot was calling, and we still had hours of driving ahead of us — and what if the museum closed at 4 pm? Or even worse, what if the gift shop were closed and we couldn’t get the puzzle?

We arrived at Whitefish Point a few minutes before 4 o’clock and found that everything, including the all-important museum gift shop, was open til 6 pm. Since we were cool on time, we stopped at the Whitefish Point Bird Observatory first. The observatory is just a two-room shack, half of which is a not very well-stocked birding gift shop, and the other a room with a long white board with detailed bird observations, which, much to our disappointment, stopped at May 31st. The woman behind the counter wasn’t much help telling us what birds were still around, but she said there were some evening grosbeaks at the feeder outside the observatory earlier. Of course, they weren’t there now. And the bugs were supposed to be mighty fierce on the trails, which looked like tick heaven, being narrow and heavily overgrown and obviously not much used this time of year.

So instead of taking the biting black fly and tick-infested nature walk, we decided to visit the museum instead. We saw a sad, 15-minute movie about the Edmund Fitzgerald accompanied by Gordon Lightfoot’s music. Then we visited the museum proper, where we saw scaled-down replicas of some less known Lake Superior shipwrecks, and finally, the holy of holies, the actual bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald that was brought up by divers in the 1990s. Gordon Lightfoot was playing softly in the background here, too. (He’s on the board of directors for the museum.)

I’m not sure if it was all the stormy Lake Superior footage — or the egg and sausage breakfast buffet at the crummy Best Western we stayed at — but poor Scrubb was taken violently ill at the museum. He looked like Val Kilmer as the dying Doc Holliday in Tombstone, all pale-white and sweaty, but not dressed as well.

As I waited for Scrubb to feel better, I went to the gift shop, and successfully identified the official Edmund Fitzgerald puzzle in its optimal habitat. I also walked by the observatory feeders, and saw both a male and female EVENING GROSBEAK. I got great views of both — they were only about 10 feet away — busy eating seeds. This was a bird I’ve been waiting to see a long time, so I was pretty happy — and it’s a pretty spectacular bird — I went to get Scrubb, but he was feeling too lousy to see it. I got my binoculars out of the car and got even better looks, and went to get Scrubb again. When he was finally up to seeing them, of course, they were gone.

But at least he got his official Edmund Fitzgerald puzzle.