This, That and the Other

We've had some beautiful warm weather for a week and now it's cooled down again. Last night it got down to 42 and today the high is only going to be 48!  Brrrr! At least the humidity is gone for a minute! 

My little lilac bush that I thought may have been damaged due to a late frost is blooming like crazy and smells heavenly! Apparently it's a different kind of lilac that blooms later than the purple flowered ones. It has lighter, different shaped blooms but still very pretty! 

My azalea is blooming like crazy, too! This is my third attempt at growing an azalea bush, one at each house we lived in.  I guess third times the charm because it's doing really well.

Last week when it was still Spring and not Fall it was warm enough to break out the pool for the boys when they came over. The water was a little too cold to actually go all in but chairs and feet in the water was good enough! 

We don't have any plans for this holiday weekend. Shauna is going to be potty-training Levi so I'm not sure how much we'll see them. 

Maxwell has started playing T-ball. They have a bunch of practices and then one game in the middle of June. He's so shy though and will only participate if his dad is with him! So Brad became an assistant coach! 

If you happen to have a Trader Joe's by you I highly recommend these frozen meatballs. They are the best I have ever had! 

As a side note: It's so nice to be able to go into stores without a mask! 

Well, that's about it for now. I'm getting pretty antsy and am going to be looking for a job once summer vacations are over. Everyone is hiring right now so it shouldn't be too hard. 

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends, 

  

Part 5: Waterfalls

Anyone who knows me knows that waterfalls are my happy place!

The upper peninsula is loaded with waterfalls and we went to three of them on this trip. The first one is literally 10 feet off the road and it's called Alger Falls. 

It's a small waterfall and it's two levels. 

The next one we visited is called Horseshoe Falls. 

It was bigger than the first one and had a pretty stream that ran down a hill. The bad thing was it's on private property and we had to pay to go back and look at it! 

The only other falls we visited and the biggest one is called Wagner Falls.

There is a trail about 1/4 of a mile through the woods to get to it. What I love about that is you can hear the waterfall before you see it! The sound of that rushing water seriously soothes my soul.  I could just sit there and listen all day! 

We wanted to visit Tahquamenon Falls too which is a pretty good sized waterfall and a series of smaller falls but we missed the turn and by the time we realized it we were too far to turn back. 

These are really small falls compared to some of the beautiful big ones they have in the UP. We've visited a lot of them but there is still more we haven't seen! I intend to see them all eventually! One of these days I'll repeat posts I've made of other falls we've visited up there! 

That's about it for our little getaway. On Saturday we left in the morning and drove all the way home. 

We made one more stop before we crossed to the lower peninsula. The bugs weren't nearly as bad on this side. 

And I was able to get a much better picture of the Mackinaw Bridge. 

Thanks for coming along with me on our little trip. It was nice to get away. 

In July we are spending a week in a house on a lake in Gaylord, Michigan with Shauna, Brad the boys, Chris and his girlfriend and Brad's mom. I can't wait and of course I'll be telling you all about it!  

I'll be back soon. 

Until then be safe and well my friends. 

Part 4: Fayette Historic State Park and Big Spring

On the last full day of our trip we went to Fayette Historic State Park. It's an old iron smelting town on a harbor surrounded by cliffs. 

It's closed now of course but you can still go inside some of the houses and buildings. This white house surrounded by a picket fence was the supervisors house. He lived in luxury compared to the laborers. 

These are the furnaces they used to melt the iron. It must have been a hot and horrible place to work. A lot of the workers were Irish immigrants and lived in poverty in little cabins that are gone now.  

I took this picture off of the Michigan DNR website because it shows how beautiful the area is. 

After Fayette we went to Palm Book State Park to see the Big Spring or Kitch-iti-kipi as the Native Americans called it. 

I took this aerial view picture from the internet. The water is blue-green and you can see how crystal clear it is!  

You can take a raft across the spring that's manually powered by a rope pully system. Here's Rich manning the ship! There is an open viewing area in the middle of the raft so you can look down to the bottom of the spring, 

The spring is about 40 feet deep and you can see clear to the bottom. Large trout are swimming all over. It's a little hard to see in the bottom picture but the circular areas a little below center are the areas where the water is coming into the spring. You can't tell from this picture but the mound of sand where the water is coming up is about 10 feet high! 

I tried to upload a video for you of the water coming up in the spring but blogger wouldn't let me! Too bad because it's pretty cool looking! 

I could have watched it all day! 

Next time: Waterfalls! 

Until then stay safe and well my friends! 

Part 3 Munising and Pictured Rocks

For the the next part of our little getaway we booked 2 nights at an Airbnb in Downtown Munising. 

It was this 2 bedroom apartment above a brewery! It was pretty cute and comfortable. 

There is not a lot going on right now in these small upper peninsula towns. One reason is a lot of businesses have closed down due to not surviving the COVID close down last summer. These small UP towns depend a lot on the summer tourists! I really hope things pick up for all of them this summer! 

Also a lot of activities don't start until after Memorial Weekend. 

We came to Munising to visit the Pictured Rocks. 

The Pictures Rocks are a very popular tourist destination in the Upper Peninsula. Once again here is Wikipedia.

Pictured Rocks derives its name from the 15 miles (24 km) of colorful sandstone cliffs northeast of Munising. The cliffs reach up to 200 feet (60 m) above lake level. They have been naturally sculptured into a variety of shallow caves, arches, and formations resembling castle turrets and human profiles. 

They are pretty impressive and the best way to see them is by boat tour. We did this several years ago. Here and here are a couple posts I did when we visited in 2008. Of course they weren't running the tours yet so we didn't get to go on one but we were able to hang around a couple places on the top of the cliffs. 

This formation is called Miners Castle. This view is from the upper observation platform. 

This is a closer look at Miners Castle from the other side lower observation platform. You can see from the footprints in the sand that people actually go off the platform right up to the formation. Not me! There is cliffs on both sides!!

We walked a beautiful trail along the top of the cliffs. The weather was beautiful and Lake Superior was smooth as glass most of the time we were there! 

We also went to a beach which is right in the middle of  Pictured Rocks called Miners Beach. My brother took another selfie of us!  

Next time I'll talk about Fayette Historic State Park and Big Spring. 

Until then stay safe and well my friends. 

 '

Part 2 Whitefish Point and the Edmund Fitgerald

On the second day of our trip we left Sault St. Marie and headed West towards Munising.   

The roads along the Great Lakes are dotted with roadside parks and scenic turnouts, all of them with a beautiful view of whatever lake they run along. I feel so fortunate to live in a state that is surrounded by these magnificent lakes!

We stopped at one of these scenic turnouts along Lake Superior. We took selfies at every place we went and my brother and I took some goofy ones. 

Our next stop was Whitefish Point.  

Whitefish Point is at the beginning of Whitefish Bay. You may or may not recognize the name from the song by Gordon Lightfoot "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".  That freighter was only 15 miles from Whitefish Bay when it sank in Lake Superior during a storm in November, 1975. I took this from Wikipedia:

SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, and she remains the largest to have sunk there. She was located in deep water on November 14, 1975, by a U.S. Navy aircraft detecting magnetic anomalies, and found soon afterwards to be in two large pieces.

This is the memorial to the crew members who lost their lives. The waves during that storm were up to 35 feet high! Can you imagine? None of the bodies were ever recovered.

In 1995 they recovered this bell from the wreck and it's on display in the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point. There are other artifacts from the ship but I didn't take any pictures of them.  

There is an estimated 10,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes and about 350 in Lake Superior. At least 50% of them are undiscovered! 

It was a interesting place to visit and kind of sad, too!

Next time I'll tell you about Munising and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Until then stay safe and well my friends! 

Quick Getaway Part 1 Sault St. Marie and the Soo Locks

Last Wednesday Rich and I, along with my brother Don and sister-in-law Linda,  took a quick, 4-day trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 

We started at our house in Plymouth. My brother drove so he picked us up a about 9:00 am.  We went all the way to Sault St. Marie (pronounced Soo) on the first day, about a 4-5.5  hour drive. It's about 4 hours to the Mackinaw Bridge and another hour or so to Sault St Marie after that. 

We took our time and got to the Mackinaw Bridge at about 1:30 or so. We had lunch at a restaurant in Mackinaw City called Dixie Saloon. 

Here is Linda and I in front of one of the ferry docks to Mackinaw Island. We did not go to the island this trip. 

After lunch we drove to a park that has a good view of the Mackinaw Bridge so we could take some pictures before crossing it. This just happens to be the season for midge flies up there and they were swarming so bad in the park and by the water that we could hardly stand to be outside of the car more or less get a good picture of the bridge! Yuck!

This was the best I could do really quick before I was covered with bugs! Luckily they are not biting bugs!

We crossed the bridge and arrived in Sault St. Marie about around 4:00. The first thing we did after we checked into our hotel was go to the Soo Locks. These are locks built between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. 

Just a brief history: Before the locks were built there was a rapids between Lake Superior and Lake Huron that dropped 21 feet in less than a mile. Therefore, ships could not pass between the lakes.  The Soo Locks opened in 1885. 

Can you see the difference in water levels here? That is Lake Superior on the other side of the gate, so much higher than Lake Huron on the inside of the canal or lock chamber as they are called. It looks like it's going to spill over! 

The bridge in the background is the Sault St. Marie International Bridge between Sault St. Marie, Michigan and Sault St. Marie Ontario Canada. 

We were lucky enough to be there when a freighter needed to go through the locks. The picture at the top is the gates opening on the other side and the bottom picture is a freighter entering into the lock chamber from Lake Huron. 

Once the freighter is all the way into the lock chamber, the gates close and the filling valves are opened. There is complicated machinery involved but the locks rely on gravity to fill and empty the chambers. 

These two pictures are of the freighter from the same area. The top picture is of the deck when it first entered the lock chamber and the second picture is the same area after it has been raised 29 feet! 

The freighter is now at the height of Lake Superior. 

The gates open and the freighter can continue on it's merry way! 

The whole thing took about a half an hour from the time the freighter entered the lock chamber to when it left the other side. Those things move slow! 

Although I've been to the Soo Locks many times in my life, it's always fun to watch. Rich and I even took a boat tour through the locks several years ago and it's even more exciting to be on a boat in the chamber going up and down!  Unfortunately, they hadn't started running them until after we left! 

Next time I'll tell you about Whitefish Point. 

Until then stay safe and well my friends! 

Mother's Day

 I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day. 

We had Shauna, Brad, the boys and Brads parents over for a Mother's Day Brunch. 

I did this in 2019 to make things easier on Shauna and Brad so they wouldn't have to haul the kids to both places. It worked out well but unfortunately due to COVID I didn't have them over in 2020. 

This year I've decided to continue the tradition. We've been getting together with them for holidays and birthdays for the past year anyway so why not Mother's Day too! 

I only put a pink plastic tablecloth on the table with some flowers. 

I have this serving plate that I bought at a garage sale a long time ago. I like it because I can decorate it for different occasions. 

I had this pink ribbon with lace so I used to to decorate the plate I used to put little brownie bites on. 

I didn't take a picture with the brownies on them but didn't last for long anyway! 

Speaking of decorations, here is my latest dollar store holiday sign. 

Since I'm pro USA every day of the year I figured this will be good to stay here until at least Halloween when I replace it with a Fall decoration! 

Instead of leaving you with a picture of my grandsons, I will leave you with a picture of a cat on a hot tin roof! 

Well, I don't think the roof is tin or hot either but hey, it's a cat on a roof!

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends!