Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore

On Tuesday of our trip, we headed north to the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. There is an interesting Native American legend about a mother bear and her two cubs fleeing a fire in Wisconsin by swimming Lake Michigan. However, when she reached the shores of Michigan, she realized that her cubs weren't with her. She waited on the dunes for seasons, called and sang to them. However, they never made it. Instead, they were returned to her in the form of two islands, North and South Manitou Islands, which are visible from the shore.

Lake Michigan is famous for its sand dunes, formed by wind, rain, and ice. Here is one that people were asked not to descend, as it causes erosion. Plus, it was really steep.

You can't even see to the bottom of this dune, as it's so steep. And on the right, you can see people having to get on all fours just to climb up.

Instead, we just enjoyed the scenery for a while. Here you can see one of the Manitou Islands.

Mike had forgotten his hat at home, so he borrowed one from the house where we were staying to protect himself from the sun. It was a beautifully sunny day, but also dangerously sunny for us pale folks.

I thought this was an interesting flower growing in the sand. Bye, bye, crazy-steep dune; we're going to climb a more reasonable one.

Here's the dune we chose to climb. It was strenuous, but not a killer. Here you see the view from the parking lot up and down to the parking lot. It's a pretty popular dune, too.

The view from the dune was pretty nice.

I was pretty pleased to have ascended and then descended the dune.

Mike found a nice tree to rest on after a short hike in another part of the park. This part used to be quite popular with hang gliders.

We even saw a freighter on the Lake.

So, that was our day with the Sleeping Bear. It's a great park, and if you get the chance, you have to see the dunes for yourself!

More Manistee

On our first full day in Manistee, we headed into town to check it out. This is the Manistee River, on the River Walk, with one of the drawbridges in the background.

Like many towns along Lake Michigan, Manistee's heyday was during the timber rush of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Manistee River and its outlet to Lake Michigan were significant for shipping lumber from the timber mills in the area. Fortunes were made here, but when the best timber was used up, the so-called timber barons packed up and left. We heard quite a bit of that history of Manistee, with the years after the 1920s left unmentioned. Now the area relies quite heavily on tourism.

We saw a lot of these life buoys, which unlike most things, can be used as flotation devices.

Quite a bit of work went into making this river walk attractive, as you can tell from the pretty flowers.

We headed out to the public beach and found these cool sand castles.

And whaddya know, it's a lighthouse on Lake Michigan. Who knew?! :-) You'll see more of these, as we saw at least two more during our trip.

Mike was pretty cool as we made the trek to see the lighthouse up close. Oh, it was a treacherous trip, as we braved the water crashing on the side of the walk, splashing very cold water onto us.

I, on the other hand, was more expressive of the beauty of the lake and its gentle wildlife. :-)

Later that evening, after dinner, we headed down to the lake to watch the sunset. It's nice being on the western shore, as Mike and I would rather watch sunsets than get up at the crack of dawn to see a sunrise.

A perfect end to a perfect day!

Manistee Trip 2009

This past week, Mike and I went on vacation to Lake Michigan. We stayed in Manistee, close to the lake. These next couple of days I will post some of the great photos I took. I'm not saying that I'm a great photographer; I just took so many photos that some had to turn out nicely. :-) Manistee is about 2 hours from Grand Rapids, and it's directly on Lake Michigan. We also went to the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, which is about 1.5 hours north of Manistee, and Ludington State Park, south of Manistee. On Saturday, we went to Traverse City and Torch Lake. I thought this map might be helpful for most of these sites.

Here we are, on our first trip down to the lake from the cottage we were staying. The house wasn't directly on the water, and we had to use the public access stairs.

I counted 93 stairs, which gave our evening trips to Lake Michigan some nice after-dinner exercise.
We were mostly lucky with the sunshine during the whole week, but it was a bit cooler than usual -- in the low 70s.

This beach was not particularly busy, which made for some nice sunset watching.

Mike's Garden

At the beginning of July, I spent a week with Mike and worked in the Ohio State University Library on my research. In the evenings, I also helped him with house stuff, including some gardening. His garden really is beautiful, and since his parents haven't seen it in full bloom, I thought I would post some photos here.

He even has tomato plants from the previous owner. Here's what they looked like earlier this month. I'm looking forward to hearing how they are now after our vacation.

He has also inherited dillweed, which has definitely been growing in a weed-like fashion. I cut some back and pulled some out completely. He still has quite a bit, and we're hoping that one of his neighbors comes to take some.

His real estate agent dropped off some small flags for the 4th of July.

I planted some flowers in the already existing flower boxes. Mike helped pick them out.

Earlier in the season, Mike had some grass planted in the back yard, making it a bit greener than that of the fall and winter.

Classic Houses of the Twenties

I found this Cranston plan in a book, Classic Houses of the Twenties, at the public library. Although the first homeowners must have made some changes (i.e., front porch, closet placement, etc.), this plan is pretty close to my house. (The kitchen nook, 1/2 bathroom downstairs, and the den were added later on.) I thought it was pretty cool to find this. I was just thumbing through the book, out of curiosity, and I stumbled upon this one.