Friday, August 18, 2017

We are back from our jaunt to Marquette and busy getting
ready for the next excursion. The next trip will be a real quickie. Tomorrow
morning we are headed to St. Louis, via West Lafayette, to see the solar
eclipse. We’re a bit pressed for time since Lise has to do a workshop right
after we get back and I start teaching at Lansing Community College.

I was on Sand River a couple times and got in a trip to a
nearby bog. Any place with carnivorous plants has to be interesting.
Photographing odonates at both places can be challenging. On the river, I wear
waders and tow a small inflatable raft holding the camera gear. It’s fairly safe
as long as you don’t do anything too stupid. The bog is a bit more challenging.
There isn’t a shoreline. You walk on a bed of sphagnum moss overlaying fairly
deep water. For the record, fairly deep is anything over my head. The sphagnum
shakes and quivers a bit, and you can break through it. In a number of visits I’ve
only ever had one breakthrough though, where suddenly my left leg went through
to the upper thigh. My right leg did a major unexpected stretch but I managed
to get myself out without too much trouble.

Bog

Carnivorous sundew plant.

Pitcher plant

Flying meadowhawk

Lyre-tipped spreadwing.

Male Lyre-tipped spreadwing appendages, the only way to identify the lyre-tipped spreadwing.

Mating ebony jewelwings.

Frosted whitefaces mating.

Violet dancers mating.

All told it was a really good trip. We got Joanna’s canoe
rack set up. We got to visit with Joanna, always a pleasure. We got to see
Marquette through some new eyes when Molly brought Mitchell up for a quick
visit. And mostly we got some time to just enjoy a pleasant place and see some
neat things.

Sunset from Presque Isle Park.

Storm cloud over Superior from
Presque Isle Park.

Indian pipe, a saprophyte on the Tyoga Trail.

Clay-colored sparrow at the Chatham sewage treatment plant.

Tundra swans with young at Seney NWR.

Swan couple feeding
at Seney NWR.

Being mooned by swans
at Seney NWR.

Common loon
at Seney NWR.

Double-crested cormorant
at Seney NWR.

Hummingbird at Joanna’s cabin on Sand River

Ya gotta love a place like Marquette. The downtown area has
a number of lovely circa 1900 red sandstone buildings. This type of building
just isn’t built anymore and it gives the downtown area a classy look. The
courthouse was where the trial that served as the basis for “Anatomy of a
Murder” took place and where the movie was filmed. In the same courthouse
Theodore Roosevelt won a 1913 libel case against an Ishpeming newspaper publisher. T.R.
was awarded six cents, “the cost of a good newspaper”.

County courthouse.

City Hall.

Originally a bank building, now offices.

Carved sandstone on the bank building.

Where else will you find
great hiking with mountains and waterfalls essentially right in town, a small
university, public parks right on Lake Superior, multiple brew pubs, fresh lake fish
caught by a third-generation fishing family, great pasties, a coffeeshop that
roasts its own beans, and a jewelry store with a 100’ long replica gold mine.
As a bonus, there are no Confederate statues either. All this in a town of less
than 25,000 people.

The obvious amenities are great but it’s the intangibles
that make the place. There’s a kind of energy that’s hard to describe. Marquette
and the surrounding environs are a place that seems to like itself. There’s an
air of fun about the area. No surprise that Marquette is on the retirement
short list, even with the long winters and near legendary mosquito and black
fly onslaughts.