Travel Nursing Jobs in Michigan

A Tale of Two Peninsulas

Where Lakes Michigan and Huron meet at the Straits of Mackinac, Michigan is severed in two, creating the mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula and the often overlooked Upper Peninsula. Despite their connection via the Mackinac Bridge, the Upper and Lower peninsulas remain distinct regions. In order to accommodate the differences, Michigan holds two state fairs.

Some Lower Peninsula residents view the Upper Peninsula as a remote backwater compared to the more populated part of the state. Residents of the Upper Peninsula – or Yoopers, as they call themselves – launch occasional drives to declare independence from the rest of Michigan and create the state of Superior.

Land Between the Lakes

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula extends north and east from Wisconsin in a wedge that separates Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.

Along part of the northern coast of the Upper Peninsula the waves of Lake Superior slowly chisel the sandstone into the cliffs known as Pictured Rocks. A dense forest of beech, maple, pine, and spruce marches to the edge. Bears and bobcats share these woods with beavers and white-tailed deer.

The mitten shape of the Lower Peninsula separates Lake Michigan on the west from Lake Huron on the northeast. Along the northwest shore, nature continues to add real estate to the Sleeping Bear sand dunes, some of which reach as high as 450 feet (137 meters).

To the east, Saginaw Bay extends from Lake Huron, separating the thumb of the mitten from the rest of the hand. As you move south, forests give way to agriculture and industry. However, there is still one more Great Lake connected to this state – Lake Erie – which laps against the extreme southeast corner.