Along a lake shore there are sometimes unique rock formations that stand out and where given names centuries ago. Miners Castle is one of the named points of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior but there are other interesting rocks which get ignored as people walk the trail to view the ‘named’ rock formation. But this ‘little’ rock, which is taller than I am, caught my eye and should get a name too!
Little Rock
On the weekend, I saw a lot of big equipment harvesting corn and it seems like the machinery gets bigger and bigger each year. But here and there, you can see some corn harvesting methods like what my mom would have done when she was young. By taking bundle of cornstalks, and stacking in a teepee-style pile, the corn shocks allow the ears of corn to dry more until it can be stored without spoiling.
Rows of Corn Shocks
A lot of work is happening outside on one of the last warm autumn days; from yard work, crop harvesting and even bees gathering the last offering of pollen to store as honey for the long winter.
Busy as a Bee
Halfway between Roberts and River Falls, Wisconsin, sits a white church built in 1868. The church was originally shared by a Methodist and a Congregationalist congregation for services on alternate Sundays. It was reported that the bell was given by a Mississippi steamboat captain and the Methodist design included pews with a divider down the middle keeping men and women on opposite sides.
When Methodist numbers declined, Congregationalists bought the building in 1895 and used it until 1951. A group of people formed the Kinnickinnic Historical Association to purchase the vacant church so that it wouldn’t be converted to a house. The church, which contains a historic pump organ, is currently used for social events in the community including fund raisers for the upkeep of the church. On October 6, 2000, the church was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Kinnickinnic Church
With the warmer nights, until recently, my early turning maple trees didn’t have as brilliant colors as they normally do in the autumn. But now that the nights are colder, the oaks are displaying some bright red colors which catch your eyes in the woods.
Displaying Red
I think it is time to haul out the wool sweaters if the predicted high for today is in the low 40s and dropping to 24 tonight. Hopefully autumn can hang on a little longer before the cold of winter arrives.
Wheelbarrow Ride
The Sand Point Lighthouse (also referred to as the Escanaba/Sand Point, Little Bay de Noc Light or the Escanaba Light as there is another Sand Point Lighthouse in Baraga) is a story-and-a-half rectangular building with an attached brick tower which faces land instead of the water and it is unknown if it was intentional or a blunder. The tower is topped with a cast iron lantern room which houses a fourth order Fresnel lens, emitting a fixed red light with a radiating power of 11.5 miles.
The light was lit for the first time on May 13, 1868, but not by John Terry, the appointed first keeper, but by Mary, his wife as John died a month before the lighthouse was ready. Mary Terry, who was one of the first women lighthouse keepers on the Great Lakes, continued to be the keeper for 18 years until March, 1886 when a suspicious fire severely damaged the building and killed the keeper Mary Terry. There is a certain amount of mystery about this fire as there were several unusual circumstances surrounding it. Many people thought that Mary Terry had been murdered, robbed, and the lighthouse set on fire. The south lighthouse door was open and the lock was found with the bolt shot forward as if the door had been forced open, not unlocked, and the fact that Mary was found in the oil room and not in her bedroom, led people to believe there was foul play although Mary’s gold coins were still in the building. A coroner’s jury ruling “that Mrs. Terry came to her death from causes and by means unknown, was the only one that could be rendered”.
But the death of Mary wasn’t the only incident at the Sand Point Lighthouse. On July 6, 1906, eighteen-year-old Edith Rose was up in the lantern room polishing the lens when a lightning bolt hit the tower. The strike reportedly blew out all the windows in the lighthouse, demolished an organ, turned all the silverware in the lighthouse a deep brown, and ejected nails from the walls that burned holes in the carpets. Surprisingly, none of the three occupants of the lighthouse at the time were injured.
When Keeper Lewis Rose retired in 1913, Peter J. Peterson took charge at Escanaba, but just two months later he collapsed at the kitchen table and died while his wife was lighting the lamp. Mrs. Peterson was appointed temporary keeper, but not following Mary’s footsteps, Mrs. Peterson resigned shortly thereafter.
The lighthouse ceased operation in 1939 when the Coast Guard constructed an automated crib light several hundred feet offshore, which replaced the function and duties of the Sand Point Lighthouse and the building was used as housing for Coast Guard seaman who were assigned to duty in Escanaba, Michigan. In 1986, the Delta County Historical Society obtained a lease and went about the task re-furnished all the rooms in the lighthouse to appear as they would have at the turn of the twentieth century, including replacing part of the tower and lantern room which had been removed when the lighthouse was remodeled for living quarters, and opened the lighthouse to the public in July of 1990.
Sand Point Lighthouse
The only time I see a big body of water is on vacation, so I don’t get to see seagulls that often but I have noticed that if you want to see a lot of them at one time, you need to go to a harbor where fishing boats are as they wait for scraps. They ride the waves when floating on the water, perch on objects on land and even pick up a piece of 2×4 board to drop on my head as they fly over.
Feathers are very important to a bird so they spend lots of time caring for their feathers. Seagulls use their beaks and feet to clean and arrange their feathers as the preen. They have an uropygial gland (or preen gland) which produces an oil that waterproofs as well as conditions and improves flexibility of the feathers.
Seagull Preening
The video shows the seagull preening itself as the waves crash on the rock below.
Few waterfalls actually fall directly into Lake Superior but instead drop in elevation just before reaching its destination. But there are some which do, like Spray Falls in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, which drops 70 feet directly into Lake Superior. You can’t hike around behind the falls since the cliff hasn’t been cut back into the rock and the lake it too chilly for swimming but the best views of the falls are from the lake.
Spray Falls
Fayette Brown, of the The Jackson Iron Company, chose Lake Michigan’s Garden Peninsula at Snail Shell Harbor to establish a blast furnace close to mining, where the ore could be smelted into pig iron before being shipped to steel manufacturers to reduce the shipping cost by hauling the refined iron instead of the ore. Fayette was once one of the Upper Peninsula’s most productive iron-smelting operations which was in operation from 1867 to 1891 and the two blast furnaces produced 225,000 tons of pig iron during those years.
Fayette’s Blast Furnaces
