I just returned from a 30 day cold weather training exercise in Wisconsin.  I had a chance to make a short trip into the UP and I was intrigued by the area.

1. Can anyone share experiences on living year round in the UP?

2. Property prices?

3. Taxes?

4. Winter activities?

5. Hunting and fishing?

6. Local mindset and government regulations?

7. Fuel, food, equipment prices?

8. Et. al,.

Thanks!

You might get better luck in the MI Hometown Forum.

Yup, I can! Lived there for several years, though I'm down state now for work.

1. I lived in the Soo, but I hunt throughout the UP and my sister in law lives out side of Marquette so I'm pretty familiar with the region. It's cold. Where I lived, lots of wind, all the time. Winters are a bear, but living in the soo, they ran plows all day long so it was never a huge deal.

2. If it's a touristy, scenic spot, it's not going to be as cheap as you'd think. If it's an out of the way place, it's going to be a heck of a deal from what I've seen.

3. No idea. I was renting while up there.

4. Hunting, ice fishing, and hockey. And drinking. All of those things in large amounts.

5. Yes, yes, and yes. We run hounds on bear every year. Plenty of good trapping, I hear the deer hunting is ok most years in areas without wolves, and the duck hunting is pretty decent. Fishing is good all over, at least every where I've been up there.

6. As I was living in town, this was skewed. Large amount of liberty minded individuals, but it was evened out by the yuppies in town. Luckily, most of the UP is pretty self sufficient.

7. Everything is more expensive than downstate.

Hope that helps a bit!

I have family that lives outside of iron river.

1. lots of snow in the winter and the bugs are bad in the summer.
2. Location is everything. There are lots of inexpensive backwoods places but they may not have power over even accessible year round.
3. MI taxes, 10c on bottled soda/beer (I think they call it pop there)
4. Snowmobiles, drinking and ice fishing. If you live there winter is a lot of just dealing with winter.
5. Fishing is very good, Hunting is pretty good. With the winter we just had I bet the deer population is way down.
6. They make moonshine
7. Everything costs a little more.
8. The entire area has been hit hard by the economic downturn. The speech is unique. It's beautiful area that is sparsely populated.

Lived in Michigan long ago but not the UP.  Was visiting up there two years ago.  Looks like three Wal-Marts in the entire UP.  Most shopping seems to be mom and pop.  If your family likes the arts or shopping or variety of any type, then it ain't for you.  Don't expect much opportunities for employment.  You would either love it or go crazy.  Easy to be isolated if you want.  Find the songs by a group called the 'Yoopers',  you may find them enlightening.

I live in WI but only 13 miles from the border and I go there often and deal with Yoopers all the time! A great place, great people. If you might like Siberia or upper Canada you will like the UP...great hunting and fishing. We got 15" of snow there today...not unusual to drive 35 miles for a cup of coffee and the pasties are terrific. Helps if you are of Finnish decent...SISU!!!!

Taxes are high

That why brought  out of state. I want to buy some retirement land buuut the taxes are so high..

Born and raised there but afford to live there.  
We brought in iowa.  Very low taxes and great hunting

The UP is awesome if you are retired with a steady pension or are well off. The UP is also a great place to have a vacation home if you can afford it. If you have to work for a living and live up there full time, I imagine it’s not much fun today with the high price of fuel, taxes and the crappy economy.

The UP is beautiful and has an unbelievable network snowmobile/off road trails and an amazing amount of public use land. If you like the outdoors, this place is a meca for snowmobiling, fishing and hunting. Some of the best salmon, muskie/pike fishing in the lower 48 is in the UP.

I was stationed at KI Sawyer AFB, south of Marquette in the early 90s. I worked outside daily on the flight line as a B-52 avionics & E&E tech. The working conditions were very harsh at times. Some days it would take me damn near 15 minutes to get dressed and ready to work in the cold, I was so bundled up, I looked like that little kid on a Christmas Story. We were issued more winter gear and clothing than most folk’s stationed in AK. We had wind chills as low as -30 and complete white out condition and were not unusual. The snow was so bad; I stored my car and used my snowmobile to get around most of the winter. I’ve seen it snow so hard  you could not see 3 ft in front of you. Just to give you an idea of the harsh winter conditions in the UP, we had a rare occasion to have a couple days off during the holidays. We parked our work trucks and the tires froze to the ground. It took about an hour with a big diesel powered heater to thaw the tires loose from the ground and another hour or so to get the diesel engine going. For the most part, our trucks ran nearly 24 hours a day to keep them warm. We had vans and trucks that only had 10-20K miles on the odometer and were on a 2nd or 3rd engine rebuild because they had thousands of hours of run time.

As I mentioned above, the winters are extremely harsh and this is one of the few places in the lower 48 that you can get killed by the weather conditions if you are not prepared and get caught out in a storm while hunting, snowmobiling or if your car breaks down. You have to experience the snow levels to believe it. They don’t have 15ft flags on the fire hydrants and other critical infrastructure for nothing. Experiencing a snow storm in the UP should be on everyone’s bucket list, it’s amazing how much snow can fall in just a few hours. Any time the winds blow out of the N/NW it snows like clockwork.

The very short summers are great and you do not need AC in your house or car for the most part. The mosquitoes are really bad just like Alaska and parts of rural Canada, but it's not as bad as some places I've been in FL and LA

You are so far north, sometimes you get a decent glimpse at the Northern Lights, it’s a beautiful thing to see. There’s not much light pollution in the UP and the stars are amazing to see during the clear winter nights.

When they closed the AFB in the early 90s, that place really went downhill fast, the AFB was the major economic driver for the area around Gwinn. Iron ore mining was also big at one time, but I would imagine that is also slow toady.

The UP is an amazing place, but be forewarned, it’s not for the squeamish. It’s exceptionally rural; the winters are very long, cold and indescribably snowy. The summers are great, but extremely short. It was hard enough to make a living up there when gas was $1 a gallon, I would imagine it would be very hard to make a decent living today, factor in the high MI property and other taxes and it makes it even harder to get by.

PM me and I will tell you everything

Remote.  When Home Depot is 100 miles (ETA OR MORE!) away you get whatever the local hardware store has and plan projects that would require that trip well, or just pay a small premium to buy the local flooring guy's products.  If you are married, your wife might have WalMart and maybe one other clothing store to shop at.

Harsh climate.  I have snowdrifts that are still 4 feet high in my yard that the wind deposited.  It snowed about 4 inches a couple days ago.  Ice fishermen with gas powered augers were maxing out the auger depth and still not punching all the way through ice this year.

There are bear, deer, partridge, turkeys, foxes, coyotes, and occasionally wolves or moose in my backyard.

ETA, Michigan requires you to register your pistols.  We have recently gained the ability to own NFA items.

Harvster's post below is spot on.  I live near a city - large town - that has McDonalds and WalMart.  There are lots of people who drive in every two weeks from 100 miles away that really live in the sticks.

There are pockets of civilization, but there is really nothing there.  I grew up in the U.P.  and it was an hour drive to a movie theater or a McDonald's.  Hunting and fishing is good and houses in some areas can be ridiculously cheap with prices higher toward any of the small cities.  Decent hospitals are few and far between so that may be an issue for some folks.  It's a great place to visit but the time I lived there was enough for me.

I went to LSSU in the 90's and lived there year round for 4 years.  It was COLD a lot of the year and the summers were cooler than further down state.  It was great hunting an fishing and easy access to the bridge to Canada for some snooty hobnobbery by our cousins to the North since it was just across the bridge.   There is some pretty country up there, but as has been said before, the economy sucks.  During my Jr Year we got 6 ft of snow in twenty four hours and the National Guard had to dig us out.  I used snow shoes to get to the party store and buy a 12 pack of beer  I moved south as soon as I graduated....

This is actually a deposit, so you get it back when you return the cans/bottles.  A very good thing, IMHO.  You never see cans or bottles littered in Michigan.  Always surprised by what I see on the side of the road out of state.

For some good pics, check out upoverland.org

I grew up about 40 minutes from Ironwood MI in WI, most all the questions have already been answered but I CONSTANTLY think now how nice Amazon Prime would have been when I lived there.  
That was my only gripe while looking back on it, just that everything was a hassle to get a hold of or super expensive.  



Ah yes partridge hunting, deer hunting, fishing, skiing, riding quads, snowmobiling, drinking.......lots and lots of drinking LOL

Life is just at a slower pace up there which after years of go go go, I'm really thinking its time for that back home feeling

I remember that, I was there.  I went to Lake State for 6 years *cough*.  That storm was legendary, that was Little House on the Prairie levels of snow.  The first floor was completely buried, we opened the windows to store ice cream and beer like it was a glass cooler.

I do remember the wind chill hitting -60 at one point.  Harsh winters, but nice summer, when it finally comes.  Last year at the beginning of May, bays in the Keewenaw were still filled with ice, and we hot a blizzard driving from Marquette all the way to Gaylord.

/csb

The bugs are nasty there in the summer.

Today is opening day of trout season and most seasonal forest service roads in the eastern UP are snowed shut.