The Upper Peninsula seemed to be everywhere online at the beginning of the New Year, with winter photos going viral and local places getting national attention.
Surfer Dan gets (more) famous
Lake Superior surfer Dan Schetter was the subject of some widely-circulated Christmas Day photos, while the U.P., along with the rest of the Midwest, was in the middle of a cold snap.
From an MLive article to social media sites like Reddit and Facebook, "Surfer Dan" was all over the Internet for a week or so, with his signature icy beard, as a symbol of the extreme winter weather.
Munising restaurant reviewed highly
The new restaurant Tracey's, located at the Roam Inn in Munising, got an unexpected spotlight in a Buzzfeed article that picked out new restaurants to try in each state based on Yelp reviews.
Tracey's had such good Yelp reviews that it was selected as Michigan's representative on the list, with comments like this: "To be blown away by this lil' surprise of a gem in the middle of the UP is an understatement — I cannot wait to go back and enjoy more on their menu," from Lyndi P. on Yelp. The newly-opened gourmet restaurant thanked its reviewers and customers with a post on Facebook.
Fat tire biking draws attention in new film
Gear Junkie, a site that follows biking in all its many forms, gave a nod to a new film, "Whack Jobs," that features fat tire biking in the Marquette area. Produced by Aaron Peterson, the film features the people and technologies that make an intense singletrack fat-tire mountain biking trail network possible each winter here.
"Fat tread on fresh snow has a cult following around the world. But on Michigan’s U.P., in and around the Lake Superior town of Marquette, the obsession is strong," writes Gear Junkie about the film. With the amount of snow on the ground in the area right now, the publicity is well-timed to draw more 2018 winter visitors to the area in search of that perfect fat bike trail.
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