October Colors 2011

When Karen and I went up into Michigan in September there were just slight hints of fall color here and there. We decided to try to make another trip up there in October in hopes of catching a little more fall foliage. So Thursday afternoon Oct 6 we headed up State Road 13 in our old grey Pontiac for a fast road trip. We got to Elk Rapids just after sunset.

I thought the shot with the moon shining between the spars was pretty nice.

The next morning, Friday the 7th, we headed out for the day with no particular destination in mind, other than to try to find some colorful tree lined roads.

It didn't take too long to find some.

The green fields of September had by this time given way to warm browns and tans.

Some times there is a tree with brilliant color amongst darker green trees.

Other times the color is uniformly distributed.

These two pictures illustrate how different tree species look under similar conditions. Besides I think the gnarly old trees below are kind of interesting looking.

It seemed that we had hit the leaf color just about right. Everywhere we turned there were spectacular colors.

We found an access point along a river and although the color was not as prominent the element of water added a lot to the view.

I thought the outcropping was an interesting contrast to the fall color.

Here's Karen waiting in our old grey Pontiac while I'm off taking picture of roadside flowers.

We spent the whole day driving from one beautiful view after another.

Eventually we had to head on home, as the sun was beginning to fade into the west. Even so we stopped several times to capture a really nice photo or two.

As the sun was just above the horizon we stopped at a rest area along the highway. There were a couple of really nice specimen trees that seemed to just glow.

With the fading light even a gnarly old dude seemed to glow a bit.

All in all it was a really nice trip we drove the whole thing up and back with the top down and had a ball.

Michigan Trip Sept 2011

Apparently life has gotten way too busy. We are within a few days of Winter and there is snow on the ground today as write this, but here at last is a record of our annual fall trip to Michigan in early September. We normally head up to the Traverse Bay area and stop at many of the same places, but usually go to some new area of see some different scenes as well. The shot below was taken at a city park in the village of Elk Rapids. You can see off on the left the harbor with sail boat masts. There were a couple of hundred really nice sailboats moored at the docks. The town is set up as a resort town and caters to sailors.

The Buildings below are in a little town called Suttons Bay. There are about ten of theses brightly color buildings along the main street.

We had breakfast in Suttons Bay and headed to Leland (Fishtown) and Sleepy Bear Dunes.

Leland has within it and as one of its tourist features an historic fishing village. Most of the original buildings have been converted to shops, but there is still a couple of small commercial fish houses.

The boat above is an example of the typical fishing boats that have been used up there by the locals.

The fish weather vane above is about 10 feet long

I thought the signs with the fish in the fish above and the mirror behind the reflections sign below were pretty clever.

From Leland we traveled to Glen Arbor. Their touristy thing is the Cherry Republic (several shops with all kinds of stuff made for cherries). Amongst the building there were some nice little garden plots with colorful flowers.

Then we headed out to Sleeping Bear Dunes. We have been here several times and always enjoy hike and the overlook.

Just over the edge of the notch in the sand below is a significant dune down to the waters edge. There are signs warning not to go down the dune and that if you get stranded on the way back up its your dime that is going to pay for the rescue. Obviously there were several folks heading down and a few trudging back up. One young guy and his girlfriend said it took them 25 minutes to make the climb. Karen didn't want to go so I didn't go either.

After our hike we head back to Traverse City to see the tall ships that were scheduled to be sailing by that evening.

The sail boat above and below is a C-Scow, 20 footer with a 28' mast cat rigged and a really fast boat. Back in 1971 I bought one like this from one of my college classmates. Ours was older than this one. Ours had wooden spars (mast and boom) was probably a 1946 model and this one was probably a late 50's model. Karen and I spent many happy hours sailing on our boat.

This is Jim taking a picture of me taking a picture of him. We were both waiting for the boats on the far side of the bay to come within a reasonable distance so we could shoot them.

There were about 7 or 8 of these tall ships our in the bay. We had seen several of these a couple of years ago up in Bay City and were able to go on board while they were docked, but we did not see them under sail. We had been up to Traverse City two years ago and saw them, but at more of a distance.

The one above is firing her cannons. That was pretty cool. Below are several pictures of more of the boats as they sailed by.

This is to prove that Karen was there too.

We had made arrangement to do a day trip out to Manitou Island when we had been to Leland earlier. We took the nearly one hour ride out to the Island to spend the day hiking and sit seeing.

Karen and Pam were good little passengers, Jim and I were wandering around the boat taking pictures.

The captain of the boat took us really close to this lighthouse out in the middle of the bay.

There were hundreds of birds that did nasty things to the lighthouse. The odor as we passed by at close range was memorable if not nasty. Having smelled whales breath once I can honestly say Whales breath is better.

In the distance as we approached the island we could see the old lighthouse along the beach.

As we approached the dock we could see some the buidlings that were there for the support staff for the island and the light house.

We docked and then went on a fairly agressive hike to the lighthouse and a ship wreak.

The light house and out buildings were pretty cool. We couldn't go in to take a tour, but it was a picturesque site.

After the lighthouse we headed inland to cross the island and head to a shipwreck site.

The hike through the wooded areas was relative comfortable but still quite warm. Jim and I noticed some local snacks.

I think Jim sampled too many of the colorful tidbits.

We ended up at a relatively high over look.

The ship wreak was a foreign ship that had grounded several years earlier and had continued to weather away.

Karen and Pam weren't sure we could find out way back.

We set off and did finally make it back to the dock and explored some of the building near by. One of which was a boat house.

Back and the dock we spent a few minutes before we had to load up on the boat to walk along the beach.

Once on the boat I was impressed with how clear the water was. It was probably 15' deep and you could see the bottom easily.

On the way back to Leland we went by sections of Sleeping Bear Dunes. This was not the dune we had seen the day before, but it was still in the park.

There was not a lot of other boats out that day, but I did spot this nice sailboat.

This is Leland in the distance and some shots of the shore line.

Approaching the harbor we could see some of the fishing shack that we had seen the day before.

From there we head south and stopped a this lighthouse.Karen and I had fisrt been here about ten years earlier. I was suprised by the amount of beach errosion there was. Back then there was none of the sheet piling visible.

I have always thought this was a pretty nice site.

I saw this young maiden gathering small colorful stones. She hurled a big one at me and turned away as if to say who me?

Below is a gnarrly old pirate that Karen insisted on photographing.

We have always enjoyed our September trips, and sitting here on a cold winter like day, this looks like a lot of fun.