A a lot of the sound and fury that has surrounded the Volt’s launch has tended to obscure a simple truth: This automobile is a game-changer.
~Motor Trend Magazine
Motor Trend magazine has named the Chevrolet Volt its 2011 Car of the Year. The criteria for Car of the Year are design advancement, engineering excellence, intended function, efficiency, safety and value. After reading passages like the one below, you get the sense that when the Motor Trend Editor in Chief Angus MacKenzie says that the Chevy Volt is one of the most groundbreaking vehicles they’ve tested in 60 years, he means it:
The Volt’s unique powertrain not only defies established labels; it also defies established methods of determining fuel economy. After all, this is a vehicle that will complete the standard EPA fuel economy test in full EV mode, making conventional mileage calculations impossible.
If you follow this blog, you know that one of my favorite places in Michigan is the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. I am pretty excited to be heading up there this weekend and am therefore declaring the rest of this week “Pictured Rocks Week” on Michigan in Pictures. ;)
The waterfall page from the Lakeshore says that Sable Falls is located about one mile west of Grand Marais on Alger County Road H-58 and that the fall…
…tumbles 75 feet over several cliffs of Munising and Jacobsville sandstone formations on its way to Lake Superior. The first viewing platform is down a staircase with 169 steps. The hike from the parking area to this staircase steps is short.
The trail continues past the falls and down the canyon. It is about a half-mile to the beach as Sable Creek as it winds its way to Lake Superior.
It’s just one of many waterfalls in the Lakeshore (map of Alger County waterfalls). Why so many?
Most of the waterfalls in this area are the result of water running over a shelf or cliffs of limey sandstone called the Munising Formation. This formation of rock extends from Tahquamenon Falls, some 75 east of the Lakeshore, to Laughing Whitefish Falls, about 30 miles west of the Lakeshore. The Munising formation is also called the Northern Michigan cuesta or escarpment.
Today is the opening day of deer season, and around much of Michigan businesses, schools and streets will be empty as people head to the woods in search of whitetail deer. Deer season, however, is about more than just filling the freezer with venison: it’s about deer camp. And deer camp, as Ronnie writes (and this photo show), is often about beer:
We all know that when men work hard, we tend to develop a mighty thirst. Just ask anyone who loves to go deer hunting, and they will tell you that just thinking about the next day’s hunt, can make your mouth feel dryer than a Georgia cotton plantation, during a scorching heat wave with a 10 year drought already in place. Therefore, its imperative that one must procure plenty of liquid refreshment to prevent dehydration during these primeval events. Such was always the case whenever my Uncle Bob went deer hunting in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Everyone who went hunting with my uncle, chipped in on a beer fund to help offset the total costs. More often than not, someone would have to drive into the nearest town and buy even more by mid-week. Nevertheless, check out these vintage beer boxes from Bosch, Schlitz, and Stroh’s. The former of the three has a very interesting story. You can read more about the colorful and interesting history of the Bosch Brewing Company, once located in Michigan’s Keewenaw Peninsula until its demise in 1973.
The photo was shot Little Shag Lake near Gwen Lake, outside of Negaunee, Michigan on November 15, 1956 and you can see it (and others) bigger in Ronnie’s slideshow.
Wikipedia’s entry for Lake Huron says that Lac Huron was named by early French explorers after the Huron people inhabiting the region. Lake Huron is the second largest of the Great Lakes and the third largest fresh water lake on earth with a surface area of 23,010 sq mi, a volume of 850 cubic miles and a shoreline length of 3,827 mi.
The Great Lakes Information Network page on Lake Huron pegs it as the 5th largest lake in the world and adds:
It has the longest shoreline of the Great Lakes, counting the shorelines of its 30,000 islands.
It contains Manitoulin Island, largest freshwater island in the world.
Georgian Bay and Saginaw Bay are the two largest bays on the Great Lakes.
Huron was the first of the Great Lakes to be discovered by European explorers. Since its French discoverers knew nothing as yet of the other lakes, they called it La Mer Douce, the sweet or fresh-water sea. A Sanson map in 1656 refers to the lake as Karegnondi, simply meaning “lake” in the Petan Indian language.
The list of the tallest buildings in Michigan says that the title of tallest building in Michigan belongs to the Renaissance Center at 77 stories and 722 feet tall. It also has the distinction of being the tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere.
The RenCen is owned by General Motors and Wikipedia says that the Ren Cen was conceived as a catalyst for Detroit’s economy by Henery Ford II and investors, and that it generated in excess of $1 billion in economic growth for downtown Detroit in its first year of operation.
John Portman was the principal architect for the original design. The first phase constructed a five tower rosette rising from a common base. Four 39-story office towers surround the 73-story hotel rising from a square-shaped podium which includes a shopping center, restaurants, brokerage firms, banks, a four-screen movie theatre, private clubs.The first phase officially opened in March 1977. Portman’s design renewed attention to city architecture, constructing the world’s tallest hotel at the time. Two additional 21-story office towers (known as Tower 500 and Tower 600) opened in 1981. This type of complex has been termed a city within a city.
…The architects’ initial design for the Renaissance Center focused on creating secure interior spaces, while its design later expanded and improved to connect with the exterior spaces and waterfront through a reconfigured interior, open glass entryways, and a Wintergarden.
While it might be a little over-photographed, it’s an amazing space for photographers to explore, inside and out.
Mark says he can see the whole world from here – can you? Check it out background boomtacular and see some other shots from high up in the RenCen in his detroit top slideshow.
What I suspect that a lot of people forget (because I know I do) is that the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was just one of many ships plying the Great Lakes. About the photo above, Bill writes:
My father-in-law took this shot. He told my wife that he wasn’t taking a picture of the Big Fitz; he just wanted a photo of the locks, and this happened to be in the photo. Unfortunately, the negative is long gone and this photo was printed on some sort of rough-coated matte paper so that it could be mailed as a postcard.
My father-in-law didn’t realize until months after the sinking that he had a picture of this vessel.
The photo was taken in August 1975; the Edmund Fitzgerald sank November 10th of that year. It was, ironically, the sinking that made this ship famous. After it was built in 1958, until 1971, it was the largest ship on the Great Lakes, but other than that, it was just another anonymous working vessel plying the waters between Wisconsin and Michigan.
In some new pics of the Edmund Fitzgerald on the floor of Lake Superior that someone sent my way yesterday you can see some of the taconite that was its last cargo. According to SSEdmundFitzgerald.com, the Fitz was carrying about 26,116 long tons of National Taconite Pellets to Zug Island in Detroit in her 860,950-cubic-foot cargo hold.
Wikipedia’s entry on Taconite says that taconite is an iron-bearing sedimentary rock in which the iron minerals are interlayered with quartz, chert, or carbonate.
The term was coined by Minnesota State Geologist Newton Horace Winchell during his pioneering investigations of the Precambrian Biwabik Iron Formation of northeastern Minnesota due to its superficial resemblance to iron-bearing rocks he was familiar with in the Taconic Mountains of New York. The iron content of taconite, commonly present as finely dispersed magnetite, is generally 25 to 30%. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, available iron ore was of such high quality that taconite was considered an uneconomic waste product. After World War II, much of the high grade iron ore in the United States had been mined, and taconite became a new source of iron.
“No lake master can recall in all his experience a storm of such unprecedented violence with such rapid changes in the direction of the wind and its gusts of such fearful speed! Storms ordinarily of that velocity do not last over four or five hours, but this storm raged for sixteen hours continuously at an average velocity of sixty miles per hour, with frequent spurts of seventy and over.
Obviously, with a wind of such long duration, the seas that were made were such that the lakes are not ordinarily acquainted with. The testimony of masters is that the waves were at least 35 feet high and followed each other in quick succession, three waves ordinarily coming one right after the other.
~Report from the Lake Carriers Association in the wake of the Great Lakes “White Hurricane”
97 years ago the Great Lakes region reeled under the deadliest storm in its history. Known as the “Big Blow” and the “Freshwater Fury”, was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that devastated the Great Lakes Basin in the Midwestern United States and the Canadian province of Ontario from November 7 through November 10, 1913. Read on for more!
Dear wife and Children. We were left up here in Lake Michigan by McKinnon, captain James H. Martin tug, at anchor. He went away and never said goodbye or anything to us. Lost one man yesterday. We have been out in storm forty hours. Goodbye dear ones, I might see you in Heaven. Pray for me. / Chris K. / P.S. I felt so bad I had another man write for me. Goodbye forever.
~A message found in a bottle 11 days after Plymouth disappeared, dictated by Chris Keenan, federal marshal in charge of the barge.
Wikipedia says that the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, also known as the “Freshwater Fury“or the “White Hurricane”, was a blizzard with hurricane-force winds that ravaged the Great Lakes November 7-10, 1913. With the sinking of 19 ships, the stranding of another 19 and a death toll of at least 250, it remains the deadliest and most destructive natural disaster in Great Lakes history.
Major shipwrecks occurred on all but Lake Ontario, with most happening on southern and western Lake Huron. Lake masters recounted that waves reached at least 35 feet (11 m) in height. Being shorter in length than waves ordinarily formed by gales, they occurred in rapid succession, with three waves frequently striking in succession. Masters also stated that the wind often blew in directions opposite to the waves below. This was the result of the storm’s cyclonic motion*, a phenomenon rarely seen on the Great Lakes.
In the late afternoon of November 10, an unknown vessel was spotted floating upside-down in about 60 feet (18 m) of water on the eastern coast of Michigan, within sight of Huronia Beach and the mouth of the St. Clair River. Determining the identity of this “mystery ship” became of regional interest, resulting in daily front-page newspaper articles. The ship eventually sank, and it was not until early Saturday morning, November 15, that it was finally identified as the Charles S. Price. The front page of that day’s Port Huron Times-Herald extra edition read, “BOAT IS PRICE” DIVER IS BAKER “SECRET KNOWN”. Milton Smith, the assistant engineer who decided at the last moment not to join his crew on premonition of disaster, aided in identifying any bodies that were found.
Michigan in Pictures 