barely breaking 50 and drizzling

Have to turn the heat on again, it's so cold. Only in da UP, LOL. This big wound up low kicked our butts this past weekend with winds topping out at 50mph at our show in Mn. Weather is definitely the trump card in outdoor art shows. The booth held,(just barely- the pork chop lady wasn't so lucky) but you couldn't help getting seasick trying to look at the swaying artwork on the walls. Needless to say, our sales suffered as a result. It sure was nice to make it home safely after dodging a couple deer in Wisconsin as well...

Eagle with it's catch

Driving to and from town today, I saw an eagle with a fish in it's talons fly overhead. These birds are amazing, to be able to pluck a fish out of water with greatly reduced visibility on a whitecap filled Lake Superior. Pic shown here is from another time when I was on a kayak, and observed an eagle, again, fishing. They make it look so easy.

heading down the rainbow highway

heading east on M-28, Marquette County Mi

calm days

Deer Lake
This time of year, the winds start to settle down a bit and it becomes a great time to be on the water, if the bugs don't get the best of you.(Right now it's a 1-2 punch with the mosquitos massively populating and the noseeums showing up with south winds). Here's a sunset from Deer Lake in Alger County, water was calm as glass. The sun is setting after 9:30 now, with twilight extending to around 11pm or so. There's a ton of daylight to go make those daytrips, early morning or late evening. First light is around 4am. Can't believe the solstice is right around the corner, we still have the heat on, especially cold, cold mornings! Just like last year, June comes and goes before it starts to feel like summer up here!

Pictured Rocks

Went for a hike in Pictured Rocks yesterday. One thing is for sure. It's skeeter season. Since we live closer to the east side of the park, that's where I get to more frequently. You can see it all here, lighthouses included. It's amazing the diversity of natural features in that park, from the waterfalls and lakes to the huge sandstone cliffs, to the amazing dunes and pristine beaches that stretch for miles. The early spring wildflowers are at their peak and the trilliums are starting to turn pink. Miners beach is a very scenic place. The falls at the east end of the beach have a really neat sandstone texturing at the base of it, in which a lot of new sand has built up this year, covering a lot of this layered sandstone.
Pictured Rocks waterfall- anyone know if this falls has a name?

One of my fav hiking trails in the park also starts at this location and gets to the top of the huge sandstone cliffs relatively quickly. It's a place of solitude to be sure, but the initial hike up the big hill gets your heart pumping.
.hiking trail, pictured rocks national lakeshore

On a clear day...

You can see forever. This is the view from Sugarloaf Mountain on 550 near Marquette a couple days ago. You can see the Huron Mountains I believe, in the top of the pic and the beach of Wetmore Landing in the bottom. This has to be what I have concluded one of the most beautiful vistas in the U.P and Upper Midwest. Thanks to conservation efforts, the view in many directions is still of rolling hills and forests, although more and more development is creeping in on the southeast view, not to mention what seems to be more and more towers every year. I can't remember the facts on the Little Presque Isle area which is the coastline you see in the pic, but I believe this large tract of shoreline is protected from development and is really a gem of solitude along the Lake Superior shoreline.

Spring-the other color season

06/03/09-spring new leaves, upper michigan
Have you ever noticed in the spring, at certain times when the different maples and oaks start to grow their new leaves, theres a time in the Spring season that can match the intensity of color that you see in autumn? It's a different mixture of colors, with the spectrum of greens from dark navy green to lime green mixed in with the reds of the new maple leaves and yellows and limes of new oak leaves, frosted with whites of some other blooms.

a day of nests

I should go out looking for morels more often. 9 times out of 10, I don't find morels, but rather stumble upon something else. Today it was nests. I was walking a two track in Hiawatha National Forest, saw a bird flutter out of a cut out dirt mound on the side of the road which drew my eye to a hole in this mound of dirt, and there I found two baby birds and a blue egg in a nest. I think they are robins. Funny how when babies are first born they have fuzz, not feathers, and their eyes are almost as big as their heads, and not open yet. They open their beaks when they hear their mother's chirps.
A little later, I was walking in a dense patch of trillium, a bird fluttered up and out,- it was a duck which had been sitting on it's nest of at least a half dozen eggs. No morels for me today, but plenty of bird nests!
bird nest with babies

it's good to be home

We're back from one of our longest trips of the year. Just did an art show in Cincinnati, We were lucky to dodge the tornados and hail Saturday night, the heat held off for us and overall it was beautiful weather for the three day show. We did well and it was nice to get a taste of summer on our venture south. We filled up on our share of Montgomery Inn Ribs and Skyline Chili- world famous Cincinnati favorite dishes. It was also nice to get a short but sweet visit in with my family. I grew up in Cincy and wow, after having lived in the U.P. for so long now it sure is a different world in that part of the the midwest, most strikingly climate wise- we returned to freeze warnings this evening in the UP, and I notice we still have only buds on our big oak tree. On our drive home, once we crossed the Mackinaw Bridge, we returned to empty roads and the slower pace of life we moved to the UP for.
To live in the UP means sometimes you are rewarded with sights seldom seen elsewhere in more populated areas. Today Brian got one of those rewards, as he and his friend Gary got to see a MOOSE driving back from L'anse to Negaunee:
it's a MOOSE!

This fella was a big 'un. I've never been so lucky to see a moose up here, only tracks. Maybe I'll get lucky this year.