Ice Curtains on Grand Island, Munising, MI, photo by Carl TerHaar
Seems fitting to stay at Grand Island for another day. With a few exceptions, most of Michigan is above freezing even at this early hour, which means it’s time to say goodbye to winter and icy excursions. What a winter!!
View Carl’s photo background bigilicious and see more in his slideshow.
Haven’t had enough? There’s more winter wallpaper on Michigan in Pictures!
Grand Island Ice Curtains, photo by Neil Weaver Photography
Neil says that seeing these in person was such an awesome experience. View the photo background bigtacular on his Facebook page, purchase a print right here, and check out lots more icy goodness at neilweaverphotography.com.
Except for a tiny sliver, the entirety of this Lake Superior island just off Munising is open for public access as the Grand Island National Recreation Area. You will definitely want to check with locals regarding ice conditions. With a warming week of weather ahead, this is probably something to put on your 2016 agenda.
More winter wallpaper on Michigan in Pictures!
Poe Reef Lighthouse under construction, courtesy National Archives & Lighthouse Friends
Estately has compiled a list of what each state has the most of and for once, Michigan appears to have come off well:
Michigan has the most lighthouses and the most engineers per capita. So if you’re a photographer looking for a romantic getaway weekend with an eligible engineer, then Michigan is your paradise.
Click through for the whole list from Alabama (racist tweets) to Wyoming (people who chew tobacco).
It was easy to find a connection between lighthouses (of which we once had 247, still at least 125) and engineers (60,000) in the person of Orlando Metcalfe Poe, who coincidentally enough, would be celebrating his 183rd birthday today. After reviewing his service in the Civil War, Terry Pepper of Seeing the Light writes in Orlando Metcalfe Poe: The Great Engineer of the Western Great Lakes:
With the end of the Civil War, Poe assumed the position of Engineer Secretary of the Lighthouse Board in 1865, in which capacity he was charged with the supervision of building projects. In 1870, he was promoted to Chief Engineer of the Upper Great Lakes Lighthouse District.
In this capacity, Poe was responsible for all lighthouse construction, and he was largely responsible for the design of a style of lighthouse tower that has become known as the “Poe style” tower. These towers are all tall brick structures, with a gentle taper from bottom to top. All of the Poe designed feature graceful embellishments in the form of masonry gallery support corbels and arch topped windows. Exemplified by the towers at Grosse Pointe and Presque Isle, all together Poe was responsible for the construction of a number of such towers throughout Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron.
…Many consider Poe’s crowning achievement to be the engineering, design and supervision of a new lock to at Sault St. Marie during the 1890’s. This project was instrumental in the development of commerce on the Great Lakes, permitting large ore carrying vessels from mining regions bordering Lake Superior to access the lower Great Lakes and Atlantic seaboard. At a length of eight hundred feet, and with a width of 100 feet wide, the new lock was the largest in the world, and in honor of the designer was named “Poe Lock,” a name that it carries to this day.
Connect the dots to the Poe Reef Lighthouse, about which Lighthouse Friends explains:
From the southeast point of Bois Blanc Island, a spit covered with fifteen feet of water extends a mile into Lake Huron, and five-eighths of a mile beyond this spit lies dangerous Poe Reef, a detached shoal, with a least depth of just twelve feet. In 1892, the Craig Shipbuilding Company of Toledo, Ohio was contracted to build four lightships for use on the Great Lakes. LV 62, a wooden-hulled vessel with a length of just over eighty-seven feet, was placed on Poe Reef on September 29, 1893, while her three sister ships LV 59, LV 60, and LV 61 were stationed, respectively, on Bar Point, Eleven Foot Shoal, and Corsica Shoal. With a red hull and POE REEF stenciled on its sides in white letters, LV 62 displayed a fixed white light from her foremast to mark the north side of the eastern entrance to South Channel.
LV 62 served Poe Reef, which is named after Orlando M. Poe, who served as the chief engineer of the eleventh lighthouse district, through the 1910 season, and then swapped stations with LV 59. In 1915, Poe Reef received a steel-hulled lightship, when LV 96 replaced LV 59. LV 96 marked the reef through the 1920 shipping season, and the following spring LV 99 started its service at Poe Reef.
The Lake Carriers’ Association had requested a permanent lighthouse and fog signal for Poe Reef as early as 1913, but it wasn’t until 1926 that the Commissioner of Lighthouses requested funds for such a project. Besides being less costly to maintain, lighthouses had an additional advantage over lightships: they could remain on station throughout the year rather than having to be withdrawn when ice started to form on the lakes.
Read on for more information and photos of the Poe Reef lightship, the construction of the lighthouse and modern photos. Also tune in the Michpics Facebook for a recent photo of Poe Reef.
More history and lots more lighthouses on Michigan in Pictures – enjoy your weekend everyone!
Office with a View, photo by MDOT Pic of the Day
Discovered the Michigan Department of Transportation’s MDOT Pic of the Day Instagram yesterday. The other day they posted this photo of an unidentified Mackinac Bridge employee out for a stroll:
One thing about working on the #MackinacBridge, your office has a good view. :)
Indeed!
View the photo bigger and follow them on Instagram.
PS: From the Full Circle Department, a couple of days ago Michigan in Pictures regular Rudy Malmquist shared a link to some photos of the Coast Guard Cutter HollyHock breaking the ice under the bridge!! Click that link to see page through them on Facebook.
More of the Mighty Mac on Michigan in Pictures.
Whitefish Point Ice Cave, photo by David Marvin
If you’re collecting Michigan ice caves, you should know that Whitefish Point (up past the Tahquamenon Falls on Lake Superior) has ice caves right now.
View David’s photo background bigtacular and see more in his absolutely stunning Taqhamenon Falls & Whitefish Point – February 28, 2015 slideshow. (seriously, run, don’t walk to see this slideshow!) Lots more from David at his Marvin’s Gardens blog.
More winter wallpaper and more ice caves on Michigan in Pictures.
Hunting on Ice, photo by OnceJakPhoto
The Freep has an article about a new animal that is being seen in Michigan titled Michigan’s mysterious, misunderstood coywolves:
…a unique, still relatively unknown and misunderstood hybrid of coyotes known as eastern coyotes or coywolves. They’re mostly coyote, but contain a small percentage of wolf from an unlikely mating of the two species about a century ago. It may sound like an urban legend, but coywolves exist throughout the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada, and have been confirmed in northeast Lower Michigan through blood-testing and DNA analysis.
Coywolves tend to be a little larger and heavier than their western coyote counterparts, but still well below the size of even the smallest North American wolves. They look like coyotes, though observers often note wolflike characteristics in their faces and fur.
…Coyote expert Stan Gehrt, a professor of wildlife ecology at Ohio State University, rejects the term “coywolf.” He doesn’t even like referring to them as hybrids. It leaves the impression that they are a near 50-50 mix of wolf and coyote, and that just isn’t the case, he said.
“They are eastern coyotes,” Gehrt said. “They aren’t really different from other coyotes, other than they have a little bit of genetic difference. I’ve trapped and tracked hundreds of Midwestern coyotes and a pretty good sample of eastern coyotes in Nova Scotia, and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two.”
But those, including biologists, who encountered coywolves up close in the Lower Peninsula say they had some wolflike features.
Read on for more including a photo of an actual Michigan coywolf. If you think you’ve seen a coywolf, you can report it online through the DNR or by calling the DNR’s Gaylord office at 989-732-3541, ext. 5901.
If you’re interested in learning more, Meet the Coywolf from PBS’s Nature is a cool profile of this animal that you can watch online for free.
Jim caught this photo of a coyote on the ice of Grand Traverse Bay last week. View it bigger on Flickr and jump into his slideshow for more icy goodness.
More Michigan wildlife on Michigan in Pictures.
it’s magic you know, never believe it’s not so, photo by Lake Superior Photo
Shawn says the ice formations of Munising are amazing right now and says she’ll be sharing more soon.
She recommends you check with Munising CVB, the rangers at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore or the Alger County Sheriff to learn if the ice is safe. Ice conditions are constantly shifting, and as you can see, these are massive structures of ice that you want to be pretty darned careful around.
View her photo background bigtacular, visit LakeSuperiorPhoto.com for galleries like Blue Ice and to purchase pictures, and definitely follow Lake Superior Photo on Facebook.
Now about that title, here’s Pilot singing “Magic” … never believe it’s not so.
Standing against the Greatest Lake, photo by Jay
The Grand Rapids Press reports that February 2015 was the coldest recorded for the city:
If you were alive in 1978, perhaps the similarity was striking.
Grand Rapids’ average temperature last month was 13.3 degrees, making it the coldest February in the city’s recorded weather history — a record dating back 37 years, according to the National Weather Service. The previous record was a balmy 14.3 degrees.
Overnight low temperatures dipped below zero eight times throughout the month, with highs not able to warm too much beyond the teens. In fact, the thermometer touched the 30-degree mark only four times when the seasonal average is just around freezing.
The Great Lakes region can thank the frequent blasts of arctic air for these records. Visitors to area beaches, too, should give the colder than normal conditions credit for some spectacular scenes of ice formations and caves along the shore.
Much of the state saw a near record cold as well, which has also pushed Great Lakes ice coverage near 90%.
View Jay’s photo big as the biggest lake and jump into his slideshow for some absolutely stunning shots from the Pictured Rocks shoreline in mid-February.
More winter wallpaper and also more about the Pictured Rocks.
Sunlight Sighting, Frankfort Michigan, photo by Aaron Springer
Today’s photo of the the approach of Frankfort’s North Breakwater was taken a few hundred feet from yesterday’s pic.
View it bigger and see lots more of Aaron’s great Lake Michigan photos on Flickr.
Fence in the sunset, photo by Noah Sorensen
It looks like we have a little bit of warmer weather on the way, and I hope that everyone has a great weekend!
View Noah’s photo from Frankfort Harbor background bigtacular and follow him at mcsorensens on Instagram for lots more!
Sunsets, snow or winter wallpaper? Michigan in Pictures has them all!
Michigan in Pictures 