Kitch-iti-kipi near Manistique is Michigan’s largest freshwater spring, and you can glide right over it on a raft you pull yourself
Tucked into the woods near Manistique is a spring so clear and so still that the big trout swimming through it look like they are floating in midair.
It is called Kitch-iti-kipi, the Big Spring, and it is Michigan’s largest natural freshwater spring. If you have never been, it belongs on your U.P. summer list.
The water is a deep, glowing emerald green, and it is so clear you can look 40 feet straight down to the bottom.
Down there you will see ancient tree trunks, branches crusted white with lime, and clouds of sand swirling where the spring pushes up through cracks in the limestone. Fat trout drift across all of it like they are hanging in glass.
More than 10,000 gallons of water gush up every single minute.
And it never really warms up or cools down. The spring holds a steady 45 degrees year-round, which is why it almost never freezes, even when the rest of the U.P. is buried and well below zero.
Here is the best part. You do not just look at it from shore. You ride out over the middle of it.
The park has a big wooden observation raft with an open well in the middle to look through, and it glides across the spring on a cable. There is no motor. You and whoever is aboard turn a hand crank to pull yourselves across, which the kids tend to fight over.
The whole trip takes about 20 minutes, and the raft and the path out to it are both wheelchair and stroller friendly. Leashed dogs are welcome too.
The spring almost stayed a secret. Back in the 1920s it was a hidden, log-choked hole in the woods, until a Manistique five-and-dime owner named John Bellaire stumbled onto it and fell head over heels.
Bellaire decided it was too beautiful to belong to any one person. He talked the local landowners into selling about 90 acres around the spring to the State of Michigan for 10 dollars, with one rule. It had to stay a public park forever.
Here is a fun bit of Yooper trivia. That romantic Native American legend you will sometimes hear about the spring? Bellaire admitted later that he made it up, with a little help from a local poet, to draw in tourists. The Ojibwe name and the area’s history are real. The love-story legend was just good marketing.
It is the kind of place that reminds you the U.P. is full of natural wonders hiding in plain sight, right alongside showstoppers like the painted cliffs of Pictured Rocks.
Between the spring, the Northern Lights over Lake Superior, and everything in between, you could spend a whole summer just chasing the views up here.
If you want to go, the Big Spring sits at the north end of M-149, about 11 miles off US-2 near Manistique. All you need is a Michigan Recreation Passport on your windshield, around 15 dollars for residents at plate renewal, and there is no extra charge to ride the raft. Just remember it is for looking, not swimming, so no diving in and no drones overhead.
Here is what it looks like to glide out over it:
On a sunny morning, with the sand swirling below and a trout hanging in the green light beneath your feet, it is about as close to magic as a 10-dollar piece of the U.P. gets.
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Topics: Kitch-iti-kipi, Big Spring, Palms Book State Park, Manistique, Schoolcraft County, Michigan DNR, things to do, Upper Peninsula, state parks
Sources: Michigan DNR (Palms Book State Park), Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Travel & Recreation Association (uptravel.com), and the Manistique Tourism Council (visitmanistique.com).
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