Mackinac Island Walkabout, Part 2

Posted on August 15, 2022 by admin

Open up the Fibber McGee’s closet of Mackinac Island, and countless turtles come tumbling out.

By “open up,” I mean Google the term “Mackinac Island turtle” and the references come fast and thick: Lore of the Great Turtle, a book published by Mackinac State Historic Parks; Great Turtle Park; Great Turtle Kayak Tours; Great Turtle Toys of Mackinac Island; the Great Turtle Drop, which happens on New Year’s Eve; the Great Turtle Half Marathon & 5.7 Run/Walk; Great Turtle Brewery & Distillery; Great Turtle Creations of Mackinac Island; Heart of the Great Turtle Island – Gchi Mshiikenh Deh Minising Project; Turtle Fudge; the Great Turtle Sunset Voyage; and Great Turtle Lodge.

The association with turtles goes a long ways back, long before the appearance of Europeans in this part of the world.

“Mackinac Island is a shortened version of the Native American name pronounced Michilimackinac,” says the island’s web site. “The Anishinaabek people named this area and Mackinac Island Michilimackinac, meaning place of the great turtle.

“Why great turtle? They thought that Mackinac Island, with its limestone bluffs, looked like a giant turtle rising out of the water.”

Dig around a little more, and more emerges.

Writing in 1896 in a book called Mackinac, formerly Michilimackinac (isn’t the Internet Archive a fine thing?), one John R. Bailey had this to say:

“Michilimackinac is claimed to be derived from the Indian words Michi, ‘great,’ and Mackinac, ‘turtle,’ from a fancied resemblance to a large mud turtle; also from the Chippewa Mi-chi-ne Mau-ki-nouk, the two meaning ‘the place of giant fairies.’ [Henry] Schoolcraft says there is another meaning besides ‘great turtle.’ It also means ‘spirits,’ or ‘fairy spirits.’ The spirits were want to take the form of a turtle and become ‘turtle spirits.’ ”

All that goes to explain this sight, at the Gate House restaurant on Cadotte Ave. on the island.

While wandering around on the hilly territory of central Mackinac Island, we contacted Gate House by phone for reservations. They offered us a slot for an hour later, or about enough time for us to walk there after a detour through one of the historic cemeteries. Such is scheduling in non-motorized Mackinac.

We wanted to avoid Main Street, so after descending from the highlands, we walked along Market Street instead, just a block inland from Main. A lot of people were on that street, but not as many as the mob on Main.

The street is lined with many fine structures, originating during the great age of private development on the island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Traffic wandered along. Pedestrians and bicyclists, of course, but also no small number of horse-drawn carriages. Including something none of us had ever seen before: a horse-drawn UPS wagon.

As we had our lunch — really an early dinner — al fresco at Gate House, I couldn’t help but notice the difference in aural texture of a busy non-motorized road compared with what we are used to, here in the lingering age of the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine. The intermittent clop-clop-clop was actually pleasant, though of course the horses sometimes leave less pleasant mementos of their passing by.

Late lunch-early dinner was pleasant as well, though at island prices. I had the walleye.

Almost across the street from Gate House is the Little Stone Church. We took a look after our meal was done. It isn’t that big, definitely made of stone, and looks like a church (as it is; Congregational). Unfortunately, it was closed.

Within sight of the church is the much more famous Grand Hotel. We took a stroll in that direction.

Grand indeed.

And trolling for social media mentions.

The porch is said to be the world’s longest, and a special enough place that it charges admission. We would have paid, but as it turned out we’d arrived just as a dress code went into force on the porch, and none of us were dressed for it. So we went for ice cream at the shop under one end of the porch. A good treat, at island prices.

A sign memorializing a lesser-known conference that happened here. It wasn’t Bretton Woods, but the hotel will take what it can get, historically speaking.

The hotel dates from 1887, back when railroads built hotels. In this case, a joint development Grand Rapids and Indiana and the Michigan Central RRs, as well as the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Co., a Great Lakes steamship company of yore. These days, the Grand Hotel is owned by KSL Capital Partners, a private equity investor.

Though the porch was off limits, we hoi polloi could take a walk on the street below. Up close, one notices that the hotel paint is peeling, and in places needed more than a little touch up. Could be that, like the Golden Gate Bridge, the structure is always being painted, at least in the warmer months.

From the hotel, we followed a street lined with fine old houses — the summer “cottages” of the wealthy of 100-plus years ago. Of course, if you owned one now, you’d be wealthy, at least on paper.

Soon the street changes into a bluff-side path, with good views. We followed it a while.

Eventually, wooden stairs led down to the road that circles the island, and we walked back to Main Street via that road to catch the ferry back to the mainland. We made occasional stops on the rocky shore of Lake Huron.

If there’s a next time, maybe I’ll rent a bicycle. But Mackinac Island is a perfectly fine walking destination.

Fort Mackinac

Posted on August 14, 2022 by admin

In 1780, the British commander at Fort Michilimackinac, which had been a French post on the mainland south shore of the Straits of Mackinac until the British had won it in the Seven Years’ War, decided to build a more defensible fort on Mackinac Island (and perhaps, one with a shorter name). He picked a bluff overlooking the lakeshore.

“Fort Mackinac, Michigan” by Seth Eastman (1872)

The fort stands there to this day, though in somewhat different form: a tourist attraction. As a tourist, I was duly attracted.

Note the Boy Scout. Turns out in visiting Mackinac Island, we were visiting a presidential site. It’s a slightly convoluted story, but well relayed by the island’s web site.

These days, a group of Boy and Girl Scouts raises and lowers about two dozen American flags across Mackinac Island each day during the summer. They also act as guides at the fort. The fellow at the entrance wasn’t the only one we saw.

He was the only one I talked to, however. Tried to, that is. I asked him why Boy Scouts were at the fort, and perhaps a career involving public interaction isn’t in his future, because he sputtered a few unintelligible words and looked at me as if I’d tried to talk to the guards at Buckingham Palace.

So I had to learn later that the flag-raising and other duties started “in 1929 when then-Michigan Gov. Fred Green commissioned eight Eagle Scouts from around the state as honor guardsman on Mackinac Island,” the island’s web site says.

The governor’s summer residence, by the way, is on Mackinac Island, very near the fort, though the house didn’t begin that function until 1944. We walked past it on the way to the fort.

Its formal name is the Lawrence A. Young Cottage, dating from 1902. Young was a successful Chicago attorney who had it built as his summer home.

The presidential connection? In 1929, one of the charter group of scouts tapped by Gov. Green was none other than Gerald R. Ford.

The scout barracks aren’t far from the fort, either. We passed those after we left the fort.

Inside the fort.

Besides the scouts, there were a handful of somewhat older folk in costume. I told this fellow he was wearing a capital uniform.

Unlike the scout, he was talkative, and able to tell us in some detail about the uniform, though I think he was a little confused about my use of the term “capital” to mean “fine” or “excellent.” An apt term for a spiffy 19th-century uniform, if you asked me.

There are some terrific views from the fort, as a pre-modern fort would have.

The historic buildings include the post HQ, bathhouse, soldiers barracks, officers quarters, post hospital, a storehouse, guardhouse and more. The rooms were stocked with artifacts and expository signage. More modern spaces included a light-meal restaurant taking advantage of those terrific views, a gift shop and bathrooms (authentic 19th-century Army latrines wouldn’t go down well with the museum-going public, I figure).

The fort is, I’ve read, one of the few surviving more-or-less intact from the Revolution and War of 1812, when it saw action. Later, as British Canada receded as any kind of threat, Mackinac’s usefulness as a military post did as well, but it lingered as U.S. Army property until 1895.

By that time, much of Mackinac Island had been designated as Mackinac National Park. Astute NPS observers might object that no such park exists, and they’d be right. Created in 1875 as the second national park, Congress dissolved it in 1895 and turned it over to the state of Michigan, which created its first state park that same year out of the same territory, including the now-decommissioned fort.

After I saw the fort, I read the story of its U.S. commander in 1812, one Porter Hanks. Lt. Hanks surrendered the fort without a fight, as he was hopelessly outnumbered. He and his men were paroled by the British forces. Wiki, which seems to be reasonably sourced, picks up the story:

“Lieutenant Hanks made his way to Detroit and the American military post there. Upon his arrival, superiors charged him with cowardice in the surrender of Fort Mackinac. Before the court martial of Lieutenant Hanks could begin, British forces attacked Fort Detroit. A British cannonball ripped through the room where Hanks was standing, cutting him in half and killing the officer next to him as well.”

That’s one way to get out of a court martial, but surely not how Lt. Hanks would have wanted.

Mackinac Island Walkabout, Part 1

Posted on August 11, 2022 by admin

Things to know about Mackinac Island, Michigan.

It really is an island, about 4.3 square miles in Lake Huron, and not far from both the Lower and Upper Peninsulas of Michigan.
Most of the island is Mackinac Island State Park, but there is a town, and 470 or so people live there full time.
Mackinac is famed for allowing no motorized vehicles on its streets, except for a handful of emergency vehicles.
Regular passenger ferry services connect the island with the mainland; the ride takes about 20 minutes. The view of the Mackinac Bridge from the ferry is terrific.

The ferries from the mainland dock at the aptly named Main Street. The closer you are to Main Street on Mackinac Island, the more people there are. Even on a weekday. We arrived early in the afternoon of Tuesday, August 2. The day was sunny and warm.

Restaurants, retailers and hotels line Main Street, packing ’em in. No cars, but plenty of bicycles and some horse-drawn wagons ply the street, so best to walk on the sometimes shaded sidewalk.

Mackinac Island is a major tourist draw in our time, but that’s hardly new. People have been visiting for pleasure since the late 19th century. Just another thing Victorians started, among many.

At one end of the commercial strip is an entrance to Mackinac Island State Park. Atop the hill at that point is Fort Mackinac, relic of the moment in the late 18th century when sovereignty over the island wasn’t a settled matter.

Immediately under the fort is a grassy slope.

Popular, but not as crowded as Main Street. The view toward the water.

A bronze Marquette overlooks the slope.

So does Trinity Episcopal Church, built in 1882.

We’d toyed with the idea of renting bicycles to get around the island, but the climb up the hill toward the fort, a fairly steep bit of hoofing, put that idea to rest.

Much later in the day, we came to realize that the thing to do with a bicycle is to ride the eight miles or so of Michigan 185, the only road in the state system without motorized transport, and which runs around the edge of the island. Something to do if I ever come back, and am healthy enough for it.

Or you could walk your bike up to the top of the hill, and ride around up there on some flat paths. By the time you get to this part of Mackinac — not really that far from Main Street — the crowds have thinned out.

We walked a few of the paths, including one that our map said would take us to “historic cemeteries.” Right up my alley. We passed through one of them, St. Ann’s Cemetery. Burials have taken place there since the mid-19th century, as a Catholic cemetery that replaced one closer to the shore.

By this time, we were the only (living) people around. Cemeteries seem to have that effect, even near popular tourist destinations.

Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park

Posted on August 10, 2022 by admin

You know, I said to my friends as we entered the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids on the second day of our trip, this place seems larger than it used to be.

Just an impression I couldn’t quantify on the spot. The place just felt larger.

My instincts were right. Nearly five years ago, The Art Newspaper published an item about the Meijer Garden’s 2010s expansion:

“[Meijer Gardens] is getting a major upgrade thanks to a successful $115m fundraising campaign, which will allow it to show off recent acquisitions and support the 750,000 annual visitors it has welcomed for three consecutive years — nearly four times the number it was designed for when it opened in 1995.

“The four-year building project, which launched in September [2017], includes new education and visitor centres, an expansion of the current indoor exhibition space and a transportation centre on the Meijer Gardens’ 158-acre main campus, designed by the New York-based Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.”

As we wandered through the new visitor center, we passed sweeping high ceilings, sizable sculptures, meeting space, a gift shop, an auditorium and a Chihuly.

When you get a chance to see a Chihuly, take a good look.

That was just our start of gazing at sizable works of art — and sizable plants. The new visitor center leads straight to the Lena Meijer Conservatory.

Outside is just as lush in summer.

A little fauna to go with the flora.

Sculptures rise amid the greenery, or are tucked away in small glades, or have their own plazas. Some I remembered, some I didn’t.

Sean Henry’s “Lying Man” (2003) always watches the zenith, rain or shine.

“Neuron” (2010) by Roxy Paine didn’t exist the last time I came this way. But I recognized the artist right away.

“Male/Female” by Jonathan Borofsky (2004).

Also easy to recognize: the blobbity stylings of a Henry Moore. “Bronze Form,” in fact, a 1985 casting, so only a year before the sculptor died.

I really liked this one: “Iron Tree” by Ai Weiwei (2013). Iron, but also stainless steel.

I remember these figures. They’re a little hard to forget. “Introspective” (1999) by Sophie Ryder.

“Plantoir” (2001) by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Oldenburg died just last month. Also familiar; their work tends to stand out.

“Aria” (1983) by Alexander Liberman.

That’s only a small sample of the small sample of artwork we saw. Much more was in the greenery or entirely out of sight, off in another part of the garden. We spent most of the afternoon at Meijer Gardens and somehow only passed through a corner of the place. Another section, for instance, includes a Japanese garden developed since the last time I was here. We didn’t make it. That just means, of course, I need to go back to Grand Rapids.

Before we left, we made sure we saw “The American Horse” (1999) by Nina Akamu.

” ‘The American Horse’ was created by famed animaliere, or animal sculptor, Nina Akamu,” the Meijer Gardens notes. “The work was inspired, in part, by one created by Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci for the Duke of Milan in the late 15th century.

“This project, championed by Fred Meijer in the late 1990s, resulted in two casts of the 24-foot monument — one for Meijer Gardens and one for the city of Milan, Italy. In addition to inspiration from Leonardo, Akamu was motivated by the history of equine imagery and the study of horses.”

“The American Horse” is 14 years older than the last time I saw it —

— but none the worse for wear, which suggests regular (and costly) maintenance.

St. Francis Sculpture Garden

Posted on August 9, 2022 by admin

The last day of July proved to be warm and clear in Grand Rapids, after a storm had rolled through the night before. Mid-morning breakfast proved to be at a place called Lucy’s, an adaptive re-use of a large neighborhood grocery store made into a restaurant, where I had a delicious meat-vegetable-egg creation. Everyone else enjoyed their breakfast orders as much as I did.

We planned to visit the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park after breakfast. The last time I’d been there was more than 14 years earlier, and I’d strongly suggested we see it.

While looking for the Meijer location on Google Maps, we noticed a different sculpture garden on the way: St. Francis Sculpture Garden. None of us, me included, had heard of it, but we were intrigued enough to add it to the day’s destinations.

In full, Saint Francis of Assisi Sculpture Garden.

The 11-acre site is owned by the Dominican Sisters at Marywood, whose buildings are visible nearby.

A nonprofit created the garden, with sculptures by Mic Carlson, a Grand Rapids artist. Twenty-four bronzes of St. Francis, in fact. Some are life-sized.

That is supposed to a joyous dancing Francis, which I’ve run across before, but he looks more demented than anything else.

Actually, so does that one. Mic might be a talented sculptor, but those faces of his are a little odd.

Other depictions of the saint — most of them — are small enough to be on a tabletop. At at the sculpture garden, they are on various kinds of pedestals, with signs nearby explaining which aspect of Francis is being illustrated.

Such as Francis and Brother Wolf, telling the famed story of Francis persuading a vicious wolf to change his ways.

Francis and Clare, founder of the Poor Clares.

Besides the artwork at the sculpture garden, one can enjoy pathways through lush grounds, at least in the summer.

A grotto.

And a gazebo-like structure.

Must be an ecclesiastical gazebo.

Around Lake Michigan ’22

Posted on August 8, 2022 by admin

A little more than a week ago, I took a pretty good picture of three dear friends, two of whom I’ve known for over 45 years. From left to right, Tom, Catherine and Jae.

We were on the second day of our drive around Lake Michigan, counterclockwise, which took us from metro Chicago through northern Indiana, Grand Rapids and parts of western Michigan, Petoskey and environs, Mackinac Island, both Sault Ste. Maries, parts of the eastern Upper Peninsula, greater Green Bay and other parts of eastern Wisconsin, and back to metro Chicago.

Leaving on July 30 from our starting point at my house, we drove my car on crowded and less crowded Interstates, state and county highways, and a host of smaller roads, including National Forest roads cutting through lush boreal territory. Returning yesterday to my house, my friends flew back to Austin today; they had arrived from Austin two days ahead of the trip.

We’d planned the trip via email and Zoom, beginning back in early spring. I was the informal guide, making suggestions and offering bits of information I knew from previous visits to Michigan, upper and lower. But my friends were hardly passive in the course of our travels, digging up information via cell and making their own suggestions based on their own familiarity with some of the territory. Catherine had overseen arranging our accommodations, and everybody drove at one time or another.

We stayed in five different peer-to-peer rental accommodations along way, all entire houses that could provide us enough bedrooms, bathrooms, food prep and dining areas, and, in most cases, space to sit outdoors, once with a view of the waters of Green Bay.

Enjoying the outdoors was one of the main goals of the trip. For me, certainly, but especially for them, escaping the high heat of central Texas. They often remarked on the cool air and reveled in it, checking periodically to learn the temps at home. Three digits in Austin wasn’t usual. I don’t think got higher than 85 F. where we were. Standard night temps in both Michigans generally came in the 60s F.

Two meals a day was the norm: a mid- to late-morning breakfast and a late afternoon dinner, or a very late breakfast and a late dinner, at least as these things are reckoned in North America. So on many days, our meal schedule was more like that of Mexico City.

Food variety has trickled down to the lakeside and inland burgs of the upper Upper Midwest, though perhaps not quite as much as in large metros. Whitefish, the star of a lot of UP menus, had top billing in some of our meals, but we also enjoyed hamburgers and other meat — including one tasty UP pasty — pizza, pasta, breakfast fare, bar food, Italian and Asian, plus chocolates and fruit, such as Michigan cherries and UP jam. We prepared our own meals sometimes, did takeout a few times.

Coffee by morning, wine by night, though I only participated in the latter. Familiar wines were available in every grocery store we visited, and my friends sought out coffee ground as locally as possible: one bag from Sault Ste. Marie, for instance.

Meals and wine drinking were a source of convivial times, but hardly the only one. We talked and conversed and bantered at the table, as we headed along roads and as we walked trails. Shared personal histories were revisited, stories of our long periods apart were relayed, and opinions shared. Odd facts were floated. There was punnery, especially on the part of Tom, a born punster.

We visited one city of any size, Grand Rapids, and many smaller places, a few museums, a sculpture garden, some riverfronts, shopping streets and resort areas, a grand hotel, an historic fort, churches, a Hindu temple, a wooded cemetery, two lighthouses, forests, clearings and beaches, a massive sand dune, waterfalls, rapids and the clearest pond I’ve ever seen. The three Great Lakes we saw stretched to empty horizons — except when Canada or the opposite shore of Green Bay were visible. We crossed the Mackinac Bridge once and the international bridge between the Sault Ste Maries twice.

We walked near the shores of Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan. The northern woods and the beach ecosystems were fully flush here in late summer. Jae, who knows a good deal about flora, shared some knowledge about the flowers, trees and fungi we saw in profusion.

Though we caught a few showers in daytime, and the last day was mostly rainy, most of the storms rumbled through at night, adding to the restfulness of whatever sleep we each had. None of the storms were lightning-and-thunder dramas, but some were impressive in their downpour. My friends expressed their satisfaction with the cool light winds that often blow in corners of the UP.

There were a number of travel firsts, mostly for my friends. This was the first time any of them had been to the UP, and the first time they had seen Lake Superior, whose aspect I’m so fond of, and their first visit to the northern part of the Lower Peninsula. The trip included Tom’s first known visit to a national park, though later we determined that it was probably his second park. Also, it was the first time two of them had ever been to Canada, since we popped across the border for one night in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

For me, a mix of new and places I saw long enough ago that they were almost like new.

When I dropped off my friends at O’Hare earlier today, we agreed that they trip had met expectations. And more.

Regal Country Inn, 2017

Posted on June 26, 2022 by admin

Rain yesterday morning, cool temps in the afternoon. Cool morning today, pretty warm but not blazing hot in the afternoon. Saw a few fireflies last week. Harbingers of high summer, they are. Always glad to see them.

Has it been five years since our last visit to the UP? Apparently so. I wish I’d taken more detailed pictures of the place we stayed, the Regal Country Inn in Wakefield, Mich., which wasn’t remotely regal, more-or-less country, and certainly an inn.

The motel was located on U.S. 2, which passes along the roof of the United States.

The reason I should have documented the place better is sic transit gloria mundi.

Ah, well. Wonder whether the place fell victim to the pandemic or merely the slings and arrows of commercial fortune.

It was a pleasantly comfortable independent motel, owned by the fellow who greeted us at the front desk.

Bob, I’ll call him, because I don’t remember his name, but Bob fits. Bob gave me a discount for paying in cash. Good old Bob. Maybe our stay was off the books. I didn’t ask.

We stayed in a second-floor room, near an opening over the lower level and among a fair amount of bric-a-brac.

His cutout was there, but as far as I know the place didn’t claim that the Duke ever stayed at the Regal Country Inn.

Wednesday Debris

Posted on July 21, 2021 by admin

Warm days and cicadas at dusk. Back to posting around August 1.

I saw this in my back yard yesterday.

Imagine my surprise. A lawn circle! The suburban version of crop circles. (In the UK, they’re called garden circles.) Clear evidence that space aliens visited.

Spotted in a northwest suburban parking lot the other day.

I ought to look that up, but I don’t want to.

Dear streaming service that I subscribe to: When you send me an email with links in it, the links should not take me to this.

This statue was just east of the commuter rail station in New Buffalo.

“Gakémadzëwen,” which is Potawatomi for “Enduring Spirit,” by Fritz Olsen, dedicated only in 2018. The plaque says it was erected by the city of New Buffalo “in recognition of the generous contributions to the city by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.”

“The 1833 Treaty of Chicago established the conditions for the removal of the Potawatomi from the Great Lakes area,” says the band’s web site. “When Michigan became a state in 1837, more pressure was put on the Potawatomi to move west. The hazardous trip killed one out of every ten people of the approximately 500 Potawatomi involved.

“As news of the terrible trip spread, some bands, consisting of small groups of families, fled to northern Michigan and Canada. Some also tried to hide in the forests and swamps of southwestern Michigan. The U.S. government sent soldiers to round up the Potawatomi they could find and move them at gunpoint to reservations in the west. This forced removal is now called the Potawatomi Trail of Death, similar to the more familiar Cherokee Trail of Tears.

“However, a small group of Neshnabék, with Leopold Pokagon as one of their leaders, earned the right to remain in their homeland, in part because they had demonstrated a strong attachment to Catholicism. It is the descendants of this small group who constitute the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians.”

Even so, it wasn’t until 1994 that Congress reaffirmed the federally recognized status of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. The band now owns some Michigan casinos, including Four Winds New Buffalo, which features 3,000 slot machines, 70 table games, four restaurants, bars, retail venues, and a 415-room hotel.

Got a boring email from Amazon the other day. It said:

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cancel the items you requested and these items will soon be shipped. We apologize for the inconvenience.

You can track your package at any time. If you no longer want these items, you may refuse delivery or return them after they arrive. You can visit Your Orders to start a return.

There’s no style to that. How about:

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to cancel the items you requested and these items will soon be shipped. No force in the universe can stop an Amazon order once it is past the FailSafe Point.®

Not even the mighty Jeff Bezos can stay your package from its appointed delivery, even from his perch in space. You may refuse delivery or return them after they arrive. You can visit Your Orders to start a return.

Also from Amazon: One of our updates involves how disputes are resolved between you and Amazon. Previously, our Conditions of Use set out an arbitration process for those disputes. Our updated Conditions of Use provides for dispute resolution by the courts.

Well, well, well. The Wall Street Journal reported in June: “Companies have spent more than a decade forcing employees and customers to resolve disputes outside the traditional court system, using secretive arbitration proceedings that typically don’t allow plaintiffs to team up and extract big-money payments akin to a class action.

“With no announcement, the company recently changed its terms of service to allow customers to file lawsuits… The retail giant made the change after plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded Amazon with more than 75,000 individual arbitration demands on behalf of Echo users.”

This is the flag of Greater London. The officially approved flag of that political entity, I’ve read. It looks like it was drawn by a ten-year-old.

One more thing: National Geographic now asserts there is a “Southern Ocean,” hugging Antarctica below 60 degrees South. That’s a term that I know Australians have long used — I heard it from Australians in the ’90s, and saw the term on a sign at Cape Leeuwin — though I believe they mean the “waters south of us.”

Speaking of ten-year-olds, I understand that part of Nat’l Geo’s mission is educational, but a headline asking whether I can name all the oceans, as if I were that age?

Galien River County Park

Posted on July 20, 2021 by admin

A waxing gibbous moon this evening for Moon Day. Looked light copper, a bit like a lunar eclipse moon, but not quite. The next lunar eclipse visible in these parts won’t be until November 19.

National and state parks are all very well, but there’s something to be said for more local units, such as Galien River County Park just outside of New Buffalo, Michigan. An 86-acre spot overseen by Barrien County, the park is upstream from the town and offers short walks to view the Galien’s meandering course through a marsh.

After lunch on Sunday, we drove the few miles to the park, which opened only in 2014.

That trail soon leads to a boardwalk.

Which takes you to a platform 60 feet above the marsh.

A sign warned visitors not to do certain stupid things, such as dangle over the edge, but also that the platform sways slightly, even when there is no wind. I felt it. That was a little unsettling, but the views were worth it.

The lower boardwalk crosses over the marsh, which we walked after leaving the platform. The boardwalk provides views of the marsh and the river, up close.

A pleasant way to spend an hour or so. Just as nice as a few hours in town or time spent eating a hamburger in Redamak’s, with one essential difference: almost no one else was at the county park.

New Buffalo

Posted on July 19, 2021 by admin

A Mediterranean pattern has set in, here on the brief plateau of high summer. I’m taking as many meals as possible out on my deck.

Not long ago, we went to Buffalo, so by my idiosyncratic lights, that meant we ought to visit New Buffalo too. So we did on Sunday. Good thing that town is only about two hours away, assuming good traffic, which in no safe assumption. Even so, it isn’t that far, with New Buffalo hugging the eastern shore of Lake Michigan just inside the state of Michigan, only about two miles north of the Indiana line.

New Buffalo has been a nearby vacation destination for metro Chicago for many years. I first visited in 1987, when I spent a short time at the vacation house of a Chicagoan I knew, and went back occasionally after that, though not in about 20 years.

A lot of people go for the public beach, but Waikiki crowded, it isn’t.

We didn’t spend long this time, since it was nearly 90 F, and our idea of a good beach is an almost empty one in the 70s F. It was nice to see the lake, though. And the marina.

A boat belonging to the Berrien County sheriff’s office, docking.

Not far inland from the marina is the town’s commuter rail station.

Not much to look at, but the station and the line facilitated New Buffalo’s growth in the early 20th century, providing easy access from Chicago in the days before the Interstate or major suburbs. Come to think of it, if I were planning to be in New Buffalo and nowhere else for more than a few hours, that would be the way to come, so as to avoid pain-in-the-ass traffic jams south of Lake Michigan.

We parked on a leafy residential street and walked a couple of blocks to the main tourist street. One of New Buffalo’s two main streets is Whittaker, which connects the shore with I-94. About three blocks of Whittaker is lined with retailers, restaurants and new-looking residential properties, such as these.

That told me that, except probably for recessionary downturns of a few years at most, the second home and residential rental business in New Buffalo has expanded over that last few decades, taking advantage of the fondness among well-to-do people for parking themselves close to water. Not an ambition I share, but water does have its allures.

The street wasn’t overly crowded on Sunday, a very warm summer weekend day, but busy enough. We wandered around and looked in some stores, and came away with a t-shirt, refrigerator magnet and some postcards, as one does.

Interesting mural.

I’ve been able to find out that it’s painted on the side of Michigan Mercantile Building, home to a recently opened Starbucks. At the end of a short alley under the mural is the New Buffalo Farmstand by Mick Klug Farm. As for the mural, it looks new as well, but that’s all I know. I didn’t check for a signature.

A detail.

One reason we spent the day in New Buffalo was to have lunch at Redamak’s.

Since 1946 is a telling detail, since the restaurant is on Buffalo Street, the town’s other major thoroughfare. It isn’t a pedestrian-friendly road and the train doesn’t go there, so for Redamak’s to prosper in its early years, it needed car traffic — which was booming about then.

Currently the place is owned only by the second family ever to own it, which makes for continuity. I had a good hamburger there more than 30 years ago, and we had good ones there on Sunday: one with bleu cheese for me, a barbecue burger for Yuriko.

The road out front is also U.S. 12. Ah, where does that go? I wondered as we waited on the porch for a table. My phone wasn’t connected to the Internet at that moment, so I had to wait to find out. Just like in the not-so-old days.

All the way from Detroit to Aberdeen, Washington, running almost 2,500 miles, it turns out. We had a table next to a window. There’s something satisfying about sitting in a storied burger joint that looks out on a 2,500-mile highway. Not a nostalgia-industry highway like the defunct U.S. 66, but a genuine active part of the U.S. highway system in the 21st century.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: Michigan