Musings

Quite a combo: the quartzite outcrops in the (almost) tallgrass prairie. This is at Pipestone National Monument.

The pipestone is a band beneath a quartzite layer. Both settled out of a long-gone sea. The coarser sands formed into the quartzite, while the finer clays became the pipestone. If I have it right….

Anyway, they still sell the little turtle figurines you may remember from when you visited aeons ago (as I did), but the modeling style has switched to angular. I assume the rounding took too much time, so the artists now just saw out the figure and sand the sharp edges a bit, then move on to the next stone bit.

The fresh snow that came through this morning was mostly melted by the time we walked the Pipestone trail, but the remaining bits of white and the heightened color of the well-watered lichens (both greys and not-greys) made it spectacular, even under pewter skies. The picture makes it look nicer than it was.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Wandering (ex)tallgrass prairie

Whatta treat! Today we returned to the Hurricane River mouth and Au Sable Point Lighthouse area, this time walking down to the light. Eastbound, we went along the beach for a ways, until the waves chased us back to high ground. We also checked out the shipwrecks. Fun!

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Pretty pretty coastline

We took a purposeful touristy wander down the Garden Peninsula, to explore the Fayette Ghost Town, which was abandoned by 1900. Or at least, the iron processing the company town was established to do left in the late 1890s, and few people could have stayed in the dwindling community very long after that. This town was so tony they had a race track! We were fascinated by the limestone cliff on the north side of the harbor mouth and by the silvering piers that held up the docks, as much as anything.

We made a dash north from Fayette to Kitch-iti-kipi, and made it into the park before it closed, and rode the second to the last raft trip of the day. F. counted thirty-five lake trout languidly enjoying the cold waters. I thought there was more algae/plantlife in the spring than I’d seen before, but maybe it was the slightly overcast light. A very special place; its charms are difficult to describe.

We were sustained for these excursion by lunch at the Three Seasons Restaurant, on the east side of Manistique. I had whitefish (don’t know if it was from Lake Michigan or Superior), and we shared a pasty as an appetizer. Very yum.

We played footsie with rain all day, and our timing turned out to be impeccable. We had hoped to make this a Lake Superior day, but our decision to head south instead turned out to be per-fect!

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

So, the big photo is from Monday, when I was downtown and basking in civic duty. There’s quite some historic controversy, apparently, about the statue of the female on top of the capitol dome.

The statue stands between 15 and 20 feet high, depending on how she is measured, weighs about 1,800 pounds, and is made of copper.

The little picture to the right is the 3-D version of Georgia’s capitol as rendered in Google Earth. I haven’t yet explored the collection in the gallery “Historic Places 3D Tour,” but it may be included. Oddly, there is no “National Registry of Historic Places,” the way it’s noted by Google. Instead it’s the National RegistER of Historic Places.

Or perhaps I’m nit-picking.

Sidenote: Finding a Notary Public (in today’s modern, digital world)—not so easy, especially if your bank is closed.

Posted at 5:39 PM | 1 Comment »

We’ve been purging over the last two days. Purging the cottage, that is. I won’t go into details about what has been removed, but it’s almost all junk, and The Guru managed to stack the back of the Explorer full, and we drove it to the “Transfer Station.” They weigh you, your vehicle, and the junque before and after you dump, and that’s how they charge you. We dumped 200 lbs—which cost $14 and change—and we are so happy to be rid of it!

This exercise once again reveals some of the contours of the back, or utility, porch (not yet swept in this photo). The blue cabinet was always called the canning cabinet by Mom, but we never did canning up here, so we only had empty jars and the like in it. When she and Dad lived here year-round, I’m sure it was then stacked carefully with multicolored full Mason jars—food for the long winter, you know.

Posted at 2:42 PM | 2 Comments »

Of the many things we did near the Fox River, Kingston Plains, and Grand Marais, the headliner had to be walking out to Au Sable Point Lighthouse under a glorious cloudless sky. Very few skeeters, too!

On Gitchee Gumee, readmore here.

Posted at 10:22 PM | 2 Comments »

PDC here stands for Piedmont Driving Club*. Apparently it was founded in 1887, for driving about the grounds, particularly the racetrack that is now Piedmont Park’s Active Oval (foreground). This year there’s been lots of construction going on there to upgrade the social and athletic facilities, especially along the Park margins, where I could keep tabs on it as I walk—well, on the exterior walls.

Perhaps more pertinent in this photo is the swirling grey sky. Soon after I took this, the drizzle began, which was fine until it became rain—that’s a personal perspective, though, because the plants and water table are probably in better shape because of the precip.

* PDC also stands for, variously, primary domain controller, Portland Development Commission, Professional Developers Conference, Public Disclosure Commission, and Pacific Disaster Center—and that’s just from the first few Google search finds.

Posted at 11:29 AM | Comments Off on PDC upgrade

There’s a lively interest in certain circles in car stuff down here in the Deep South, although it’s not as pervasive as I’ve encountered in the Midwest. Remember, after all, that stock car racing is an outgrowth of prohibition-era moonshine deliveries to, among other places, Atlanta’s thirsty, from stills in the southern Appalachians….

This aging, bug-like British body has just had the paint removed by a process that sounded like sand-blasting, although with baking soda, not sand. It’s more delicate than sand, I hear.

This car’s driver is now known as “Matte Silver”—at least by those who know him well….

UPDATE: followup footnote with tomorrow’s post….

Posted at 5:13 PM | 2 Comments »

Okay, here’s a standard view of the same architecture as I posted yesterday. Today we prepared for tomorrow’s changes, so looking backward is not inappropriate. Or I could show one of a bazillion pictures we’ve taken of the dog fetching a stick thrown out in the lake….

Posted at 10:22 PM | 3 Comments »

Ah, ya gotta love industrial archaeological sites—at minimum, they can be so compelling to photograph. Somewhat dicey morning weather turned into a windy and brilliant afternoon, and we happily floated across Kitch-iti-kipi, then walked around the ghost town of Fayette, down on the verdant Garden Peninsula.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Touristing, eastern UP style