Spring Break 2012

Posted on by farlane

Michigan in Pictures is taking a Spring Break. See you at the beginning of April!

Dollar Lake Foggy Sunrise

Dollar Lake Foggy Sunrise, photo by Boydsview

Since Florida came to me last week, I don’t feel the need to get away to someplace warm. I do feel the need to have a break, so I and the staff of Absolute Michigan are going to take one (of sorts) for the last week of March. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, here’s hoping you’re getting out there and enjoying what Michigan or the place you are* has to offer.

Andrew took this at Dollar Lake. Check it out on black. He also shot a couple of very respectable morels that you can see in his slideshow.

* but really Michigan. If you’re “stuck” at home for spring break, don’t forget that we have this amazingly incredible state that where unmatched natural beauty and world-class cultural resources are just hours away,

North Windows

Posted on by farlane

North Windows, photo by Tim Trombley

One of my favorite web sites is the Great Lakes Echo, a fantastic news source for Michigan and the Great Lakes. Recently they asked Great Lakes photographers to send their favorite and toughest Great Lakes shots, and UP photographer Tim Trombley responded with this one, explaining:

This cave was only accessible by kayak. I had to land way down the shoreline and got wet feet making my way inside. Once there, the shot required me to crouch and back into the sandstone recesses allowing sand to drop down my collar. Scrunched with wet knees, I panned the camera for three shots that were later merged into this panorama. The clarity of Lake Superior and the reflection of the blue sky give this image a “tropical” look.

Click through for another great shot from Tim of a Lake Superior iceberg.

You have to check this photo out bigger – it’s hard to fully appreciate if you don’t! Be sure to view his photo gallery at GreatLakesPhotography.net for many more works and ordering. You can also call Tim at (906)439-1551 or email.

The Guru Of The Green and our science fiction moment

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Guru Of The Green - Flint, Michigan

Guru Of The Green – Flint, Michigan, photo by J.M.Barclay.

“It’s almost like science fiction at this point.”
~Weather Underground weather historian, Christopher C. Burt

Dr. Jeff Masters flew with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990 and co-founded Ann Arbor-based The Weather Underground in 1995 while working on his Ph.D. He’s Wunderground’s Senior Meteorologist and has been writing some insightful and frankly scary articles about what he calls “Summer in March” which has seen up to a week straight of record high temperatures. Yesterday he wrote:

Since record keeping began in the late 1800s, there have never been so many temperature records broken for spring warmth in a one-week period–and the margins by which some of the records were broken yesterday were truly astonishing. Wunderground’s weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, commented to me yesterday, “it’s almost like science fiction at this point.” A few of the more remarkable records from yesterday:

Pellston, Michigan in the Northern Lower Peninsula is called “Michigan’s Icebox”, since it frequently records the coldest temperatures in the state, and in the entire nation. But the past five days, Pellston has set five consecutive records for hottest March day. Yesterday’s 85° reading broke the previous record for the date (53° in 2007) by a ridiculous 32°, and was an absurd 48°F above average.

The low temperature at Marquette, Michigan was 52° yesterday, which was 3° warmer than the previous record high for the date!

Also don’t miss this article where Jeff looks at how extraordinarily rare for climate locations with 100+ year long periods of records to break records day after day after day.

James snapped this amazing capture of the Guru frozen above some green water left over from St Patrick’s Day at Flint’s Riverbank Park. Check it out bigger and in his free run sun slideshow with some Free Running / Parkour action. He also has a show starting Saturday – details on his Facebook.

Morel Season in Michigan in March??

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

A real pretty White Morel

A real pretty White Morel, photo by rickrjw.

“We are seeing the unusual becoming the norm.”
~Nate Fuller, Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy

Michigan’s strange “Summer Spring” has seen magnolias, cherries, trillium, daffodils and all manner of plants blooming more or less at once under the pressure cooker of a week of 70 and 80 degree days. For some reason the news that morel mushrooms are being found already in Southwest Michigan has been the most shocking to me of all the action of so far. Hunters from further north in Manistee & Traverse City reported finding tiny ones as well at morels.com.

You can usually set your clock to morels in late April to early May, but it appears we have to revise our The general wisdom appears to be that although it is very early and pretty dry out there, forecast rain over the next few days could bring these delicious woodland treasures out.

Rick found this beauty last year around Boyne City. Check it out background bigilicious and see more in his mushroom slideshow.

Much more Michigan morel info on Michigan in Pictures.

South Fox Island Lighthouse

Posted on by farlane

South Fox Island ... tower view, spring panorama

South Fox Island … tower view, spring panorama, photo by Ken Scott

The South Fox Lighthouse Association maintains this light, has lots of great history and photos and is a worthy target for your donations.

Recently, I made the acquaintance of Terry Pepper. Terry’s Seeing the Light is hands-down the best Great Lakes Lighthouse website out there and I’ve used him as a resource for years in dozens of lighthouse features on Michigan in Pictures. Terry told me I could lean on him (even more) for photos and information. It seems a shame to waste that gift, so here goes. On his South Fox Island Lighthouse page he begins:

South Fox Island is located approximately seventeen miles off Cat’s Head Point, at the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula. The story of this Island light began with Congress’s appropriation of $18,000 for the construction of a lighthouse there on March 2, 1867.

Work on the light station began immediately, with the construction of the Cream City brick tower. With walls thirteen inches in thickness, the square tower topped-out at forty-five feet in height, and contained a forty-eight step cast iron spiral staircase leading to the lantern room.

The lantern was outfitted with a flashing red Fourth Order Fresnel lens, and the station’s first keeper Henry J. Roe climbed the tower steps to exhibit the light for the first time on November 1, 1867.

Read on for much more including Keeper Warner’s battle with drifting sands and snow that piled so high as to interfere with access to the station’s buildings and more about that Cream City brick from Milwaukee.

View Ken’s photo bigger and see more in his slideshow from South Fox Island.

Spring Beauties say welcome spring!

Posted on by farlane

tinyflowers_vista

tinyflowers_vista, photo by CreateWithKim

Wikipedia’s entry for the season of Spring says that the  vernal equinox, the point when the earth is straight on its axis and the sun passes directly over the equator. That put the official start of spring at 1:14 AM EST this morning. As the northern hemisphere tilts sunward, temperatures begin to warm and all kinds of good stuff starts growing and popping. A few of my personal favorites are daffodils, crocuses and yes, spring beauties. Yours?

According to the University of Michigan Herbarium, Michigan is home to two native species of Claytonia: Claytonia caroliniana and Claytonia virginica:

The two native species of Claytonia only rarely grow side by side in the same forests in Michigan. When they do, C. virginica reaches the peak of its flowering later by at most a few days than C. caroliniana. The vegetative parts of both turn yellowish after a short flowering and fruiting season in the spring, and soon the plants are no longer seen above ground in forests which may have been carpeted with them a month previously. Both native species are extremely variable in leaf shape and size as well as in other characters, such as the aberrant presence of extra leaves on the stem. The petals are usually pale pink with deeper colored veins, but the ground color ranges from white to very deep pink; the corolla may be as much as 27 mm broad.

The photo above looks like virginica, but Kim shot this on the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and the Herbarium doesn’t list Alger as one of the counties it is found in.

Check this photo out bigger and in her Mostly Wildflowers slideshow.

March is the new May

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Beach

Beach, photo by Second Glance Photos Kevin Ryan.

What a crazy weekend, with sunny & 70s recorded all over Michigan on St Patrick’s Day weekend and record temps set in many places yesterday including 82 degrees in my home of Traverse City.

82. In March. Add to that mosquitos biting, forsythia blooming and even spring peepers peeping and it’s clear that March IS the new May!!

Kevin shot this on Saturday in 75 degree weather at the beach in Grand Haven. Check this out bigger and in his pier/sunset slideshow.

Corktown, the Irish and St. Patrick’s Day in Michigan

Posted on by Michigan in Pictures

Saint Patrick's Day Parade

Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, photo by *Alysa*.

May your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you wherever you go.
~Irish Blessing

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! Detroit had their parade last weekend but there are events on tap today and tomorrow in Bay City, Clare, Flint, Kalamazoo, Grand Ledge,  Saugatuck, Traverse City and Muskegon.

Ground zero for the Irish in Michigan is Corktown. Wikipedia notes that it is Detroit’s oldest neighborhood explaining:

The roots of Corktown lie in the Great Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. The Irish immigrated to the United States in droves, and by the middle of the 19th century, they were the largest ethnic group settling in Detroit. Many of these newcomers settled on the west side of the city; they were primarily from County Cork, and thus the neighborhood came to be known as Corktown. By the early 1850’s, half of the population of the 8th Ward (which contained Corktown) were of Irish descent

The Corktown Historical Society has a cool slideshow of historic photos and brochure images and you might want to check out the Corktown Explorer blog.

The Irish in Michigan from Seeking Michigan has some information about Corktown but adds that:

Irish immigrants to Michigan certainly did not limit themselves to settling in the urban hub of Detroit, with many of them making their way up north. In the 1830s, Irish immigrants settled in fishing camps on Mackinac and Beaver Islands. Today, a large portion of Beaver Island’s year-round residents are of Irish descent. Wexford, Clare, Emmet and Antrim counties in the northern Lower Peninsula are all named after counties in Ireland. Irish immigrants were also instrumental to the copper mining boom in the Upper Peninsula. Nearly one-third of the area’s foreign-born population was from Ireland in 1870, though the Irish population would decline by 1920. Many small Irish communities could also be found scattered throughout the Lower Peninsula in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Wherever you are and whoever your ancestors were, here’s hoping you have a fun and safe St. Patrick’s Day holiday!

Check this out bigger and in Ann Lysa’s slideshow.

Ontonagon Lighthouse: Gateway to Copper Country

Posted on by farlane

Ontonagon Lighthouse

Ontonagon Lighthouse, photo by siskokid

The Ontonagon Lighthouse is part of the Ontonagon Museum. Their page on the lighthouse explains that:

America’s first mineral rush began in earnest with the opening of the Copper District in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to the prospectors and mining developers following the Treaty of 1842 with the Ojibwe nation. Suddenly there was a great need for navigational aids. Among the first five lighthouses established on Lake Superior was the one at the mouth of the Ontonagon River, the largest river that flows into Lake Superior from the south shore. In 1851, a wooden lighthouse was constructed on the west side of the river’s mouth to guide ships to the port from which copper was being shipped from the mines upriver. In 1857, the Winslow Lewis light was replaced with a 5th order Fresnel lens, the latest thing in lighting technology.

At that time, there was a sand bar across the river’s mouth, so only smaller craft could enter the bowl-shaped harbor (the name Ontonagon is a corrupted Ojibwe word that infers a bowl or bowl shape). With the opening of the first Soo Lock in 1855, shipping volume increased dramatically. Permanent breakwaters were constructed at Ontonagon, the sandbar was dredged out, and Ontonagon became the busiest port on Lake Superior.

You can get lots more information and photos about the Ontonagon Lighthouse and the copper boom in the region from Terry Pepper’s Seeing the Light.

Jim adds that the light was deactivated in 1963 after an automatic foghorn was installed on the west pier and a battery light was located at the end of the east pier at the  entrance into the Ontonagon harbor and marina. See his photo bigger and see more in his Lake Superior Lighthouses slideshow.

 

 

Michigan’s Hemlock Trees and the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid

Posted on by farlane

Curving Hemlock

Curving Hemlock, photo by Allison | SenecaCreekPhotography.com

Welcome to the latest in our ongoing Michigan Trees in Peril series (see below). Yesterday I came across an article on the Great Lakes Echo about an invasive pest that is making inroads in Ohio. The article notes that it’s in Michigan too, and answers my question of “What the heck is that bug?” from last fall.

The DNR page on the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid page from the Michigan DNR explains:

The hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae Annand) is a small aphid-like insect that feeds on several species of hemlock (Tsuga spp.) in Asia, its homeland, and in North America since 1924. This insect is easily recognized during most of the year by the presence of a dry, white woolly substance on the young twigs. The “wool” is most abundant and conspicuous during spring. An egg mass resembles the tip of a cotton swab, although somewhat smaller. It is particularly noticeable on the underside of the young twigs.

There’s a lot more information on that page about the pest and efforts to combat it – click through for more. Wikipedia’s entry on Tsuga canadensis (Eastern Hemlock) says that:

The eastern hemlock grows well in shade and is very long lived, with the oldest recorded specimen being at least 554 years old. The tree generally reaches heights of about 31 meters (100 feet), but exceptional trees have been recorded up to 53 metres (173 feet).

The diameter of the trunk at breast height is often 1.5 metres (5 feet), but again, outstanding trees have been recorded up to 1.75 meters (6 feet). The trunk is usually straight and monopodial, but very rarely is forked. The crown is broadly conic, while the brownish bark is scaly and deeply fissured, especially with age.

Allison took this at the Twelvemile Beach Campground in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. See it on black or in her Forest and Trees slideshow. You can also purchase through her photography website

A couple other trees in peril…