Don't make yourself look like a white-tailed deer during hunting season. If you are camping, keep your food outside of your tent, as there are black bears. The UP has little to no violent crime, even near its cities. Drunk driving and drunken snowmobiling are huge problems and hazards like in the rest of the rural Upper Midwest. Be careful!
The most dangerous situations you can encounter in the Upper Peninsula are often weather related. During the long winter season, major snow events and subzero temperatures are fairly common. Snowfall totals from large storms are often measured in feet, not inches, especially in the Western UP. While the locals cope very well with all the snow, it is NOT a good idea to attempt to travel if heavy snows are possible. Even with a four wheel drive vehicle, you may get stuck. Pack your car/SUV/truck for such an event if you do head out! Including a cell phone, blankets, food and water, a snowshovel, flares, kitty litter and snowchains for your tires.
talk
"Say ya to da UP, eh?" This is the UP's answer to the state tourism office's slogan "Say Yes to Michigan!"
Yoopers inhabitants of Upper Michigan have an accent with a Canada-meets-the-Midwest flavor. "Ya" and "eh" are the most well-known and often mocked of the colloquial slang. "Eh" ay is often appended to statements to turn them into a question or to ask for agreement, much like in stereotypical Canadian usage.
In the Western U.P., the accent is more attributed to Finnish influence rather than Canadian. After all, Detroit is closer to Canada, ey? In Finnish, the expression of "ey" means "no" in much the same sense as the English appendage "isn't it?" or the general-purpose French "n'est-ce pas?" Also, a lot of Yoopers tend to drop their prepositions; the Finnish language doesn't use them. So, to ask if we are going to Green Bay, for example, it is rendered in the vernacular as "We go Green Bay, ey?"
Many of the town names have a wonderfully distinctive native American lilt to them, such as Escanaba ES kuh NAH bah, Ishpeming ISH peh ming, or Ontonagon ON tuh NAH gun.