Sunday, June 21

June 21, the summer solstice. It’s all downhill from here. Headed towards the cold side of another trip around the sun.

As befitting the solstice it’s a warm muggy day. I’m celebrating with a gin and tonic on the deck. While Lise is mowing the lawn. I’d get around to it, we just have different standards in regards to grass length. She’s more in the camp of the Lawn Nazis on the township board that recently shortened the allowable length of your lawn. Our marginally paved roads are reverting to gravel, we can’t keep the schools funded, but at least we’ll all have uniform sized grass.

Anyway, we’re back from our little UP trip. Things didn’t go quite as expected but the UP is always an interesting place. The weather could have been better. For starters, last week was still pretty much springtime in the UP. It was very cool and there was a threat of frost on Thursday night.

Heading to the UP in the rain.

I thought it was some kind of UP specialty pie. Took me a bit to figure out it says, Home Made Soup and Pie.

We still had ample outdoor recreation opportunities. We did some hiking and birding. I’m now at 273 bird species for the year and Lise is at 233 species. Got to spend time on Sand River, in boats and waders. Can’t get much better than that. Walked around a sphagnum bog that had pitcher plants and sundew. Always interesting to see meat eating plants. Odonating was slow but I got a few pictures in. It’s always good to spend time with friends and we had ample time with Joanna.

Sand River, a nice place to be.

Sunset along Lake Superior.

Sun dew, a meat eating plant.

Pitcher plant, a meat eating plant.

Bluet damselfly in the bog. Haven’t keyed out yet but probably familiar bluet.

Four-spotted skimmer along Sand River.

One of the things we did with Joanna was to eat at a new Marquette establishment called The Marq. This was a new experience for me. They work on a philosophy called farm to table. They use Michigan products as much as possible and even make their own syrups for mixed drinks. The menu is very simple and changes every day depending on ingredient availability. The menu is only posted about an hour before they open. When we were there they had one steak dish (beef from a local farm), one fish dish (lake trout from Thill’s, third generation Lake Superior fishermen), a couple pasta dishes using local greens and vegetables, some interesting salads, and three kick-butt desserts. No scrapple though. I had the steak dish and the cayenne-chocolate dessert, both of which were god-awful good. And coffee from Dead River Coffee, which is roasted right next door. I love eating, I love good food, but I’m not a total foodie. I have real problems with people spending major money for some ephemeral taste sensation while others go hungry. That just ain’t right. But this was OK. The food was great, you’re supporting local agriculture, and it was priced at what typical restaurant fare would be. Four stars by Ed. I’d give them five if they served scrapple.

Another reason our vacation didn’t quite go as expected is because I threw in some work time. In a few weeks I’m doing some bat monitoring on the Hiawatha National Forest. I took advantage of our presence in the UP to check out potential sites with the National Forest biologists. It wasn’t total work. I got to see some interesting places and Lise got a ruffed grouse at one of the sites (I didn’t). Since we left the cabin and Sand River early we played our way home. We hit Tahquamenon Falls State Park and Wilderness State park. Places we usually blow by going to or from the cabin.

The Pictured Rocks and Tahquamenon Falls area is the setting for Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha. Hiawatha built his canoe “by the rushing Tahquamenaw,” a variation of Tahquamenon. The falls are impressive, once you get past the obnoxious tourists that shouldn’t be allowed there. There is an upper and lower falls separated by about four miles. The upper falls has a 48 foot drop. In the late spring upwards of 50,000 gallons a second goes over the falls. That’s a lot of water. It’s kind of a sensory sensation. You can hear the falls from a distance away. As you get closer you feel it before you can see it. It’s a sensation in your chest like the bass at a good head-banger rock concert. The lower falls spread the water over a number of falls going around an island so it doesn’t have the same sensory impact. More subtle, but still quite impressive.

Upper falls, unfortunately in the shadow.

Some of the lower falls.

Wilderness State Park is quite different than Tahquamenon Falls. Tahquamenon has paved trails so obese tourists can waddle up to the falls. Wilderness is this huge area with a road that dead ends at a trail. To get anywhere you have to walk through a wide expanse that is best described as krummholz. It’s arctic like, mostly stunted trees, undergrowth, and wetlands. And it weeds out all the tourists that are large enough to warp space-time. There is also a nice dune and swale system along the Lake Michigan coastline that has lots of dragonflies. I plan to spend more time in Wilderness.