Sunday, 25 July 2021
In the interest of doing things differently once in a while, I took my walk this evening and enjoyed the protection of long shadows from the westing sun. I also scared up three groups of deer. This group—two does, two large fawns—crossed the road at a fast pace, digging into the moist sandy deposits along this stretch of road. The deer weren’t that large, and the depth is an indication of their speed.
Saturday, 24 July 2021
Rain rain rain…overnight and into the morning. Not a deluge, but enough that the ditches filled in the swamp, and water backed up onto the road in this low spot.
I think this is a trapper bridge, but maybe it’s a fisherperson bridge. In either case, it crosses the opposite ditch at another spot and it’s now almost submerged.
No rain predicted overnight; it’s a good thing. And to think, just the other day I was planning to save the dish water for outdoor plants unless it rained.
Monday, 19 July 2021
Last evening, and all yesterday, we had persistent haziness. Seems unlikely it was smog, and I detected no smoke smell, so if it was that, it was from far, far away. So, does that mean it was…suspended moisture?
This morning, the haze remained, but the sun did burn through, although tinted orange by whatever it is in the atmosphere. A persistent semi-cloudiness held on, although it was plenty sunny if you abandoned shadiness.
Too hot today, although we’re expecting a cool-off over the next three days. Fingers crossed the meteorologists and their models are correct.
Sunday, 18 July 2021
We headed to the Refuge today, anticipating clouds of biting insects, leaving us with the pleasure of remaining in the vehicle during the entire driving loop (7 miles), and thus protected from their damage. Ehem, air-conditioned vehicle—high today in the mid-80s (hence the pleasure). Which is darned hot here. And it’s humid.
A visit to the Refuge is often about pattern recognition. The first photo has white dots. In the foreground they are water lilies. In the background, they are swans. It seems to be water lily season right now, as we saw rafts of them in some areas, as in the second photo. White dot recognition lesson over.
We also saw other waterfowl: loons, Canada geese, ducks…not a lot of variety or head-count, however. We looked and looked for turtles, increasingly populous over the last few years. We had not spotted any in the spring…perhaps too cold? Well, today was not cold. We finally found two, but most of the “turtle logs” previously likely to support turtles were bereft. We don’t know if there was a die-off, or…?
Saturday, 17 July 2021
I had thought this pair had moved on; today the (I assume) fella serenaded me with their rough call. They had moved on when I returned ten minutes later, perhaps flown to a nearby pond.
We boarded the pick-em-up and headed down the road. A couple of the rivers we crossed were the Sturgeon and the Little Smelt. Yay for fish.
This is the mouth of the Escanaba Marina channel; it opens into Little Bay de Noc. I proposed to the Guru that there must be a good Little Bay de Noc Noc joke, but I couldn’t think of one. [puh-dump] And, yes, there is a Big Bay de Noc.
We returned through the woods and got out on the bridge over the West Branch of the Manistique.
Monday, 12 July 2021
I tried to beat the heat and walk in the shadows, and pretty much accomplished that. And found this shorn and rotting tree-stub way in the woods lit by a nomadic, momentary shaft of sunlight, perhaps this stump’s last blaze of glory.
Saturday, 10 July 2021
First data point: green white pine cone. Parsed, this means a new, this-year’s pine cone, essentially ripening.
Second data point: we attended two (!!!) social functions today. Vaxxing makes this possible in these pandemic times.
Thursday, 8 July 2021
The coast in this case is the Mother Lake, that is: Lake Superior. Great view from Crisp Point Lighthouse.
We worked our way east from there. This is Little Lake, which is a little lake, quite round, right next to Superior, with a short connecting waterway that cuts through a dune. Little Lake was and is a safety harbor for small boats that faced bad weather. I was surprised to see the diversity of plants in shallow water from the dock. Two loons noted our arrival from close to shore, working their way farther out as we hung around.
Next stop: mouth of the Two-Hearted River. That’s it in the foreground, with Superior behind the sand and stone.
The Two-Hearted water is tinted by its time in cedar swamps in the upper catchment. It is not dirty.
Wednesday, 7 July 2021
Walking through the swamp, I found many puddles because it rained off and on for the previous dozen hours or so. This was the only puddle a vehicle hadn’t run through and churned up. Clarity!
And this was the hyper-green view toward Mud Lake, although all you can see is the creek, narrow and supporting a substantial population of duckweed with its tiny leaves. That’s not the name of the body of water on the Goo-Maps, but that’s the name I learned. And it is a shallow, filling, hummock-rimmed pond-lake, so it’s an appropriate name. I think the Goo-name is from non-locals…my pet hypothesis.
Tuesday, 6 July 2021
I enjoyed a raven sarenade as I paced the road this morning. I went early enough that I was mostly “in shadow.” Cooler and better for my aging skin.
Later we visited the neighbors and their garden of delights. Today we snagged lettuce, both types. Soooo very tender.