virtual rockhounding

Agate banding

I find agates fascinating. The intricate detail in the banding of these semiprecious Lake Superior gems are amazing. It's been a long time since I actually went looking for agates, but now's the time as the ice mountains recede on the shoreline and reveal a new crop o washed up rocks.
Last weekend I picked up some small polished pieces from the Agate Lady- here's some quick closeups of them with dust, blemishes, etc still in the images. I'm going out there in April to visit her museum and look at more rocks.
The agate I got doesn't have a lot of contrast in the coloring, but when turning it to black and white, the banding is very visible.

ocean jasper
The ocean jasper I guess is just found one place in the world, Madagascar. It's a really wild looking piece of rock.
I think I'll rumage around and see what I have accumulated over the years of my own finds or things I've picked up along the way and see what they look like closeup. When I get these closeup images, I have the ability to enlarge to, oh, 40x60" or so, it's really amazing when you can see the detail like that thru enlargement.

The calendar says Spring

As I write this, Dr. Tim Hunt and his dogs have probably crossed the finish line of the Iditarod, what an accomplishment. Mary's been keeping a great blog of the experience, go check it out.
Past couple days fro some reason wiped me out with the show we did and prep for show coming up, and I couldn't get the wifi to work in the hotel to blog update, so Yooper Daily is prob gonna quickly become Yooper weekly- at this point that seems more of a reasonable thing for me. My hats off to anyone who can keep a blog daily,, I have failed miserably.
Around here, we are a long way from Spring, although I guess it's techincally calendar Spring, you'd never know it by looking out the window with the exception of the ground becoming visible again in very small patches. Some rivers are starting to loose their ice from the snowmelt, but with Lake Superior choked with ice in many rivermouths, ice jams are a high probability this year. I think the snowmelt is going to be more of a gentle one this year; not like a couple years back where it went literally from winter to summer for a few days, with temps in the 80's quickly melting feet of snowpack, causing the bridge on M-553 to get pulverized by the raging river and flooding closing many stretches of road up here. I remember that year, hiking the Forrestville basin in shin high snow wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

In transition- Lake Superior ice n waves
Hard to believe the ice shacks have to be off the ice next week, wow, April is upon us. Good thing is that the sun is getting warm enough that maybe if good ice is still hanging around well into April, we can get some ice fishing in and get a tan at the same time- why go to Florida when you can have sun n fun on a frozen lake in da UP... positive yooper psychology!

keeping up with the Joneses

Holy cow, every so often I come across something that really throws me under the bus regarding the advancements in technology related to photography. This time, it's this site where the University of Wisconsin has geotagged spots along the entire Wisconsin portions of the Great Lakes with 360 panoramic images, among other things, the amount of work here is mind boggling. And then there's the whole Google take on providing a 360 degree view of every street in the country. This is a fascinating tool that I've started to use frequently, but scary as well due to obvious security and privacy concerns, which have already been raised by foreign nations, but not us....? Anyway, great job on this project, UW. Very cool. This will be a site I come back to many times.
So back to technology and photography, there are so many cool things I've been dabbling in recently, including the 360 pano thing. It's not like that Apple commercial where the 4 year old pushes a couple buttons and woila! You have a pano! Well, for certain uses it is, but not for high quality seamless panos. There are many more things to consider, such as figuring out a way to place the optical center of the lens over the center of rotation for panos- to be able to actually stitch the work together. This requires a significant investment in special ballheads and brackets for the shooting phase. There's an artist that does some fabulous 360 pano work out east, Christos Palios. For now, his site shows only a slideshow of a few images, but you get the idea. The Chicago Bean one is actually a piece I might consider buying. Looks like he's got the HDR thing going on as well, but IMHO adds his creative artistic take to the scene.
Here's my first lame attempt at a pano a few years back without elimination of parallax(pretty much the 4yr old kid technique) pretty much why I didn't do much more with this until I gained a better understanding of the process and steps required. And it isn't 360, just a pano, but it was a really cool storm that rolled in over the lake and actually produced a baby waterspout that my neighbor and Brian decided to stay on shore and watch.... they got a good sandblasting out of it to say the least.

lake_superior_storm_pano

When the speed of technological advancement overwhelms me -or- I can't get results that are "as good as film" or am spending waay too much time in front of a monitor, I find myself going back to traditional photographic techniques such as large format film. It's nice to have that option in the bag and understand it's strengths in situations where digital just can't handle the dynamic range or produce good enough resolution, believe me, even a 7K digital body isn't as good as LF film yet, but the advances are significant. BTW I'm not yet a big fan of HDR; I rarely see it done where the image is believable. With LF, how long is film for these cameras going to be available? Let's hope for a long time to come.

Americana

Lately I've been thinking of the past and what America used to be. I always find of interest images that capture the way things were at an identifiable time and place. Images that I find of particular interest are motel signs.

I recently read about Wigwam Motels, I guess it was before my time as I never stayed in one, but was the place to stay in it's time. Photos of these motels can be found on Flickr, here. There are a few still left in existence. I'm going to make it a point to stay in one "down the road". Hopefully we can do the route 66 thing before too many more icons dissapear.
Speaking of, on the road, whenever we are on the road, we make it a point to support family run small business. Nice people, good conversation. BTW, if you ever go to Nipigon Ontario, stay at LaNormandie, run by Guenther. You won't regret it.

In da yoop, you still find "mom and pop" motels abundant. Not the overrun druggie type havens that you read about in large metro areas, but sincere, honest to goodness hard working yoopers running these motels. Driving to the Porcupine Mountains, or Ironwood area, you pass this motel on Hwy 2 I believe. This sign is priceless in so many ways.
Bingos Motel old motel sign

Happy St. Patricks Day (and no storm, lol!)

Ore Dock worker, Marquette Upper Harbor ore dock
Where's the St. Patty's Day snowstorm? Looks like we get a break this year! There's always April 1. Wow, we've had some beeautiful days these past few, with another day of thawing forecast today, YES. You shoulda heard the snowsleds on the trails last Saturday. That can only mean one thing this year, that there isn't much snow left anywhere else. Guess better late than never for all the biz's that depend on the season.

We should have been a couple days into the Great Lakes shipping season today, but this year the freighters don't return until the last day in March, mostly due to the economy. We'll probably need the breaker this year. The lake is losing ice fast, but our bay is still ice packed to the horizon,(equiv to 8 miles?) we'll probably be the last to thaw from the looks of the satellite image.

On kinda the same train of thought as the previous post, I found an image from the ore docks and shipping season. It's a pic of what I call, "the doorkickers". If you know the appropriate title of the jobs these guys did, drop me a line. When going to the docks to watch the freighters load, this was my favorite thing to watch, how those guys would actually kick a lever that would open the chute and send the ore down the chute into the freighter. The last of the door kickers at Marquette Upper Harbor Ore dock was the end of the shipping season '07 I believe. From there, all the chutes were automated. End of an era, for sure.


Marquette is one of those cities that, you really can't miss it when the freighters are in. With two ore docks on both ends of town, the history of Great Lakes shipping is frequently in the subconsious.

Mesabi Miner backing into Upper Harbor, Marquette MI

One of my images that people in these parts relate to the most is the long gone trestle that would welcome drivers on Front Street. Little by little, time relegates these once unique hallmarks to memories and history.
Marquette memories, Front Street Trestle, "Welcome to Marquette, home of NMU!"

magnificent men and their machines

Armstead Snow Motors from Seeking Michigan on Vimeo.(double click to watch vid)
Can you imagine doing a donut on one of these? Well, watch the video, lol. I want one!
A few reactions after watching the video on the 1920's snow machine.
1. I bet the logging scenes were filmed in the U.P., heck, judging from snow heights, the whole thing probably was filmed in da yoop
1a. Bet those monstrous logs planed some timber widths you can't find today
2. PETA would have been in protest over the horse scene...!
3. That snow machine is a TANK!. That's about what we need right now as we're being held hostage by frozen solid snowbanks and drifts feet high!
4. The spirit of invention on these old films is inspiring to this day


They just don't build things nowadays the way they used to. Heck, I just recently had to get an estimate on my Jeep because when I was driving, a mean ice chunk or something fell off the back of a plow and took aim at my PLASTIC bumper and shattered it in the very cold weather we had, probably oh, an $800 repair.

How much steel was required to manufacture this? Looks real similar to the tractor in the video, btw:

Keweenaw Toro Tractor

This Toro Tractor at the Keweenaw Lodge will be still standing tall and proud long after many generations of today's cars are in the "scrap" heap. Heck, come to think about it, how much metal can you actually scrap out of a car these days?

Iditarod from a musher's experience

my 5lb poodle Molly

Here's some pretty good reading. It's a blog from my dog's vet(written by Mary Hunt), who is racing in this year's Iditarod. I'm pretty sure these guys wouldn't recognize me or my dog as we're only in there for the yearly or bi yearly vaccination, but nonetheless it's kinda cool to have an acquaintance that's up in Alaska racing sled dogs right at this very minute.

Here's a pic of Dr. Hunt racing his team at the UP 200 a couple years back. Beautiful day, happy looking dogs. The UP 200 is a rather huge event here in Marquette in February and is a qualifying race for the Iditarod.
UP 200 sled dog race, Dr. Hunt's team

snow,rain,ice and more ice.

snow sticking to the jack pines, upper michigan

Wierd day yesterday. It snowed a couple of wet heavy inches. Then it rained. I went out and shoveled what I could outa the driveway(amounted to not much more than pushing slush around) and felt something like a shaved ice vendor at a state fair trying to scrape up layers of ice below the slush. Probably should have left the messy slush there, because everything froze with the temps near zero last night. All of that freshly shaved ice that proceeded to get rained on turned to skating rink smooth ice this morning, needed ice cleats to make it out to the mailbox and back today!
With this last storm, Grand Marais Mi got wind gusts up to 70 mph, Houghton, 54 mph. We were largely spared of any snow with the west winds, just real windy and cold.

Here's a crazy story downstate. Looks like a few people down there have it worse than us with the weather or weather phenomenon gone mad. The strong winds off Lake Michigan pushed huge ice piles into beachfront homes on Saginaw Bay downstate,story here. Ice actually piled into homes, up to 12 feet, and did a lot of damage. Happened in a matter of minutes. Guess this isn't the first time something like this has happened in that location. Take a look at all the pics. Some are incredible.

look at all the pretty colors

Our very colorful weather map this morning
Gotta love it. Here we go again. At least the winds are in a favorable direction for us so this storm doesn't bring pounding snows. And, after this round of artic chill, looks like a warmup back into the 30's by week end. That's what's so cool this time of year. Nothing sticks around too long. I must say, it really doesn't seem like March. Anyone else feel that way? I mean, we still have a TON of snow, the cold is relentless, although we've gotten a few sunny days lately to offer a glimmer of hope that yes, there will be a Spring. As I look out my window and see it start to snow again, I don't despair as I know in a few days the sun will shine again and melt these piles down a little more. I've been thinking about taking a ride up to the south shore of the Keweenaw to see what open water on Lake Superior looks like. I've kinda forgotten with ice as far as the eye can see. Maybe this weekend, after this next round of fun passes, I'll do exactly that.
I have a feeling the ice shoves are once again going to be big this year. Here is a pic from a few years back of the huge blue Lake Superior ice on Keweenaw bay- these slabs were 2-3ft thick. Will have to keep an eye out for these monsters, hopefully we get some good breakup by the end of the month.
Lake Superior Blue ice slabs, Keweenaw bay

moonscape? or just the U.P

Lake Superior moonscape, lol
Ugggggh. We had such a nice warm up the past couple days. Our snow drifts are now up to the bottom of our windows, instead of the gutters. That's progress! Bummer is it's coolin down again. This is a winter to remember.

Got out yesterday and took a walk around Presque Isle. It became very evident we're gonna have ice on the lake well into spring this year. Saw ice mounds built up higher than I've ever seen them before in parts of the lake.

Seems like EVERYONE was out yesterday. You could almost feel a collective sigh of relief with the warm temps and sunshine. Too bad it's not going to stay with us long. Guess it's a sucker warmup.

Lake Superior pack ice

Almost

Hi res image of Lake Superior Ice cover
Well, it seems official. Lake Superior ALMOST froze over completely this year. There's still some open water north of Munising. With the very welcome upcoming warming trend, looks like these open water spots will get bigger, ending Lake Superior's deep freeze. I can see a patch of open water directly to the north of us, we must have a heck of a current out there as it always opens up after the slightest warmup.

When it snows lemons, make lemonade

Shovel Break- enjoying a snow chilled beverage compliments of nature's cooler

Yesterday was better times. There's nothing like the calm after the storm. I found and unburied the lawn chair, and basked in the warming March sun for a bit. That's about the only harbinger of Spring I've noticed this winter, and it was much appreciated. I love days like this when 15F feels like 65F with the warm sun and calm.
I admit it. Last Friday, 2/27, after the third time having our road closed due to white out, I started to think about moving away from here. I think the only two counties in the whole country it was snowing were lake effect capital of the world, Marquette and Alger. It was Friday morning, 5am. Blizzard conditions, looked out the window, all I saw was a drift up to the gutters. Opened the door, had a four foot drift blocking my way out the door. Things were not looking good. We had to travel today to go to an art show in Kalamazoo, no easy drive in good weather.
So I got to it, shoveled a path out to the art van, with snow blowing sideways EVERY direction. I couldn't escape a face full of snow in below zero temps. When it would hit my face, it would melt, then freeze, eyelashes first. I had to load up the art van, which was a pure nightmare. Trying to keep anything snow free was pointless. When I would shovel a working space behind the van, 30 minutes later it was like I never shoveled at all. Same with anything else I shoveled.
Well, we were supposed to leave at 9am, it took us until 2pm just to clear out the driveway. The whiteout didn't let up until about then. However, the authorities decided to keep our road closed until 6pm. Lovely. We end up having to take backroads dirt roads to get on our way, in a heavy, loaded down 2 wheel rear drive extended van. Talk about white knuckling it. We get down to Kalamzoo after about nine hours, and oh how nice it was to see the ground again. Got a good eyeful of it because the way it's lookin' around here, looks like we have two more months of snow cover!
snowdrifts in our yard, 3 feet over the six foot fence