Just north of Clare (MI) on US-127, the road goes up a hill, or what’s a hill in these parts. I think it’s a glacial something, moraine perhaps. Anyway, this is it. If you were riding a bicycle, you would certainly notice this hill. North of it the country is rolling and the soils are different, and thus so is the vegetation. My mother always called this the North Country Hill, and her voice had such seriousness, that I always imagined it to be capitalized.
This set us up to get to The Bridge, and the local drive-in, Clyde’s, where we got a late lunch/early dinner of bison burgers. Mmmm.
Did the most urgent cleaning and unpacking, and walked down to the lake to catch the last of the sun on the trees on the point. Our point. It’s far less of a point than it used to be, a victim of much higher water levels and scrounging of the rocks that made it by neighbors. The rocks were below the water line, so there was nothing we could do.
Despite irregular setting of the apple blossoms and the negative effects of an earlier infestation of leaf-eating Lymantria dispar (used to be called gy- -psy moths), we do have some apples. I don’t think they’re on the “best” trees, but they will do. Great color.
18 September 2021 at 8:48 am
kayakwoman says:
For many years there was a pine tree on that hill north of Clare. That marked the beginning of the north country for us.