Pictured Rocks, MI (from the water)

As promised, here is a look at Pictured Rocks from the water. We had originally planned on taking the sunset cruise, which would have been really nice because the shoreline runs from SW to NE and it would have been lit up during the evening. Unfortunately, there were 6 ft breakers the first day (see the pictures form our last post) and all the cruises were cancelled. So, we had to settle for a 10 AM cruise as we were on our way out of the UP, and the sun was right in our faces for most of the cruise. Oh well, we still got some nice pictures.

 Here's our boat, the "Miner's Castle."

Here's a picture of the town of Munising as we were leaving the harbor.   As I said before, if any of you are looking to permanently get away and if you know how to cook seafood, Munising is your place.  You could make a nice living there with a little bit of garlic powder and some red pepper.

This is an old lighthouse that was built just after the Civil war.

Here is a cool little sandbar in the middle of the harbor with an American flag planted on it.

Finally, here are some of the pictured rocks.

I also got a few pictures of Maggie flashing a little attitude:

There's still plenty more to come. Next time, I'll wrap up the upper peninsula phase of our trip with pictures from Taqhuamenon Falls, the Fox River (which some believe to be the inspiration for Ernest Hemmingway's short story, "Big Two-Hearted River")and my first and only Michigan fish.

Pictured Rocks, MI (from the land)

After spending a few days in the lower peninsula, we headed over to the very remote upper peninsula. The towns there are small, few, and far between. Most of the peninsula is covered with bogs and forest. We stayed in Newberry, which is in the eastern central part of the peninsula and took a trip to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior. In contrast to the day we spent on Lake Michigan, the wind was howling out of the north, blowing up huge waves across Lake Superior. In the second picture, you can really see how big the waves are if you compare their size to the people standing on the beach.

Before getting to Pictured Rocks, we stopped at a little town called Grand Marais and took a few pictures of the boats in the harbor.

In the park, there were several waterfalls near where streams dumped into the lake. We took some nice pictures by one of them.

Next, we took a short hike to get pictures of a spot where loggers used to roll logs down the sand dunes to be loaded onto boats docked on the shore.

Finally, we stopped at a place where a small creek (I believe it was called Hurricane Creek) dumped into the lake. At this time of day, the sun was shimmering across the water at the mouth of the creek.

After spending some time on the beach, we went on a 3 mile hike (round trip) to the Au Sable light house. Maggie ran nearly the entire way there and walked most of the way back. She did really good.

As we were leaving the park, we stopped to take some pictures of Miner's Castle, a cool rock formation near the southern end of the Pictured Rocks. As you can see, the colors were indeed spectacular.

After our day of sight seeing, we stopped at the Dog Patch, a seafood restaurant in Munising, MI. The seafood was pretty bad (somebody needs to introduce those people to seasoning), but Munising is a cool little town. I'll post some more pictures of Pictured Rocks (taken from the water) in a few days.

Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan

Sorry for our sporadic blog posting as of late, but I promise the next week will see several updates of our recent vacation with Gran and Papa. We took a two week road trip through several of the Great Lake states and saw large stretches of Michigan and Wisconsin that I had never before visited. Our trip started up the western side of the lower peninsula of Michigan and our first major destination was Sleeping Bear Dunes, a National Lakeshore along the scenic stretch of Lake Michigan coast near Traverse City. We picked a beautiful day to stroll the sandy beaches and crystal clear waters.  There was very little wind and the lake was glassy near the shore.





The water was so unbelievably clear, I snapped a few cool shots of the stones along the shoreline.  This one kind of reminds me of Jackson Pollock's famous painting.

 

We spent quite a bit of time wandering on the beaches, collecting small rocks (which may have been illegal), and enjoying the scenery.  Maggie was  a little apprehensive about the water at first, but she quickly warmed up.

Here are a couple of cool photos that dad took. 

As the afternoon wore on, it got a little hazy. I took some cool pictures at a spot where the sand dunes descend about 500 feet directly down to the water. By eye, it was difficult to see where the water ended and the sky began. I hope these pictures don't give you vertigo.

I'll post pictures from the rest of our trip shortly.  Stay tuned for pictures from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and from northern Wisconsin.