With a dry week of weather, the farmers are busy harvesting crops during the day and under the harvest moon. But today’s big tractors don’t need the moonlight to harvest at night like this old McCormick-Deering tractor but this old tractor wouldn’t have harvested as many acres either, although it would have seemed like at lot at the time.
Old McCormick-Deering Tractor
A white wall of dolomite rises some hundred and fifty feet on the eastern side of Snail Shell Harbor in the Big Bay de Noc. The dolomite, a very hard form of limestone, is part of the Niagara Escarpment which runs predominantly east/west from New York State, through Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois.
At the harbor, a pig-iron smelting facility operated between 1867 and 1891, where the dolomite was added to the melting ore. The calcium in the dolomite bonded to the silicate impurities in the ore and the slag, the byproduct of this reaction floated to the top of the molten ore and was skimmed off. The wooden pilings are all that remain from the large docks where the pig iron bars were shipped out.
Dolomite Cliff in Snail Shell Harbor
A recent visit to Upper Peninsula of Michigan included stops at some of the lighthouses on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. And at a couple of those lighthouses, a unique view of the area was gained after a climb up the spiral staircase in the lighthouse tower (and of course coming down was easier than going up).
Lighthouse Tower Spiral Stairway
The night sky put on a nice treat, but this time it wasn’t a colorful orange-red sunset as the moon took on the blood color this time and the Blood Moon is the fourth and final eclipse of a lunar tetrad (four straight total eclipses of the moon, spaced at six full moons apart). It is also the Northern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon, or full moon nearest the September equinox. In addition, tonight’s moon is a Supermoon, as it happens to be the moon’s closest encounter with Earth for all of 2015, making it appear 14% larger and 33% brighter than other full moons. The combination of a supermoon with an eclipse is a rare treat, with the last one occurring in 1982 and the next one in 2033.
I wish I was still on vacation to take the lunar eclipse next to a lighthouse, but since I wasn’t nor did I have any unique structure to line up with the moon, I just took close up pictures of the super duper lunar event.
Super Duper Lunar
Some waterfalls may only be a trickle or completely dry in the fall, but others, like Bond Falls on the Ontonagon River in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, continue to have a steady flow of water. There are a series of rapids totaling about 20 feet before the main drop of 50 feet with a width of more than 100 feet as it makes it way to Lake Superior.
Bond Falls
A bee has a different view of a hollyhock blossom than when we view the full blossom or the stem of a lot of blossoms.
A Bee’s View
It seems once the autumn colors begin showing, storms and wind blows the leaves off the tree or it is so gray and dark, that it isn’t fun to be outside, so maybe this autumn will have some nice leaf peeping days.
Cloudy Autumn Day
The calendar says it is the start of astronomical autumn, or the first day of fall. But the trees started changing color a month ago and the autumn color never last as long as what the calendar says since winter is a hog and steals months from autumn.
Astronomical Autumn
The goat is proving that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence!
Grass is Always Greener
On a nice day, the kids probably rather be outside playing than sitting in class and maybe the teacher of a one-room schoolroom would let them have a longer recess to enjoy the warm weather before the snow flies.
Camp Nine School building was built in 1902 to serve the children of logging Camp Nine near Glenwood City, Wisconsin and one of its old outhouses is nearby but I missed getting a picture of the important building.
Camp Nine School
