Month: July 2023

The Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore preserves 42 miles (67 kilometers) of Lake Superior coastline between Munising and Grand Marais. The wind and waves eroding the sandstone cliffs are truly awesome and beautiful and I can see why National Park Service designated it as the first national lakeshore area. It is like Bryce Canyon or the Grand Canyon meets Lake Superior! We took the boat tour with my uncle and I highly recommend seeing the cliffs and rock formations from the lakeview. I would take it via kayak next time, but to get a full overview of the park, a boat tour is the best introduction, especially if you have limited time and a mixed party. We also saw many birds, including two Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and plenty of seagulls and cormorants.

The geology is fascinating with spring water coming out of the cliffside to create a palette of colors. There is also plenty of evidence of major chunks of the cliffs suddenly collapsing. These take place over many years. The trees on the edge live a precarious existence, and I thought it was a good metaphor for humans. Enjoy life while you can because you never know when the bottom will fall out.

We were last in the area with the kids when they were little probably about 15 years ago. We stayed in some cabins in the nearby town of Christmas, and we had a summer celebration of Christmas. This time we stayed in Munising at the Econo Lodge. After the tour, we stopped at Captain Ron’s Fish Truck and had a delicious Lake Superior whitefish and chips lunch! The truck is on the side of M28 just on the outskirts of the town on the Marquette side. Munising is a picturesque town of 2,500 people, the same size as Iron River. The school is right on Lake Superior. What a place to teach!

We stopped at Star Bucks and I shopped for eyeglasses in Marquette on the way home. My home village of Caspian is quite isolated and services like good restaurants and medical care are limited. We finished the evening with a Riverside Pizza from Iron River. There was a big thunderstorm with hail while we were eating. The sunset was spectacular. The fresh air and skies of the UP are relaxing. It was a great day!

My family ran the 42nd annual Crystal Falls Bass Festival “Run Your Bass Off” this morning. Owen and I ran the 10-kilometer race, Ocean the 5-kilometer race, and Nadia, Oliver, and Uncle Jack completed the 2-mile non-competitive walk. Owen had the best time of all of us, finishing under 54 minutes for the 10.6-kilometer course. I ran exactly 1-hour and didn’t feel good the entire race. I think I need to incorporate more aerobic training, especially running. I had trouble catching my breath and my leg were very sore immediately after the race, telling me I need to train more. I can’t rock up to a race and crank out a decent time anymore. 😦 The important thing was we all did it together and had a great time! The weather was perfect and I ran into my cousin Debbie. It was a good morning.

We then drove to Marquette in the afternoon and stopped at Owen’s house. We took a nap before going for an early dinner at Teriyaki Bowl restaurant. The food was excellent and the waiter was from Thailand so it was authentic Asian cuisine. I recommend it and we will definitely come here again. It is nice to be able to get good Asian dishes in the Upper Peninsula. Only in Marquette!

We watched the fifth and final installment of the Indiana Jones series, “The Dial of Destiny“. We all enjoyed the movie and it brought up a lot of the best scenes from the earlier Indiana Jones movies. The de-aging effects are amazing and I think CGI/AI can make a movie even with dead people. It was interesting to see Clark Gable come back to star in a modern movie. It delivered what people want from the series, Nazis, chase scenes, archeology, etc. I thought it was a little too long, but overall an OK movie and it was good to share the experience with the kids.

After the movie, we drove an hour during the sunset along M28 to Munising and checked into our hotel. My uncle’s observation about the Upper Peninsula is that it has a lot of trees and not much urban development. The trees make driving hypnotic and a bit boring. I remember the first time I visited the American West in Nevada. I was amazed at the open vistas and being able to see miles and miles in the distance. Growing up in the UP, my views were mostly of trees. The eastern half of the UP is much flatter than the western half. The drive along Lake Superior is beautiful, only ruined by the number of cottages along the lake. There are several protected areas for the public to enjoy however and I hope to stop at one of them to admire the lake.

The Fourth of July celebration of America’s independence always gets me thinking of the history of the USA. In honor of the historical day, I took the boys to the Treaty Tree and Mile Post Zero. This site commemorates Captain Thomas Cram placing the first survey marker establishing the Wisconsin-Michigan border in 1841. That is one of the things I like about the USA is the federal system of government. Much of governance is left to the states and every state has its quirks and local customs.When states were being carved out of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, there was a dispute between the states of Ohio and Michigan regarding its borders. Most of the problem was poor surveying. If this happened today, GPS would accurately define borders. Because of mistakes made by surveyors and early map makers, both sides claimed the Toledo Strip, the narrow green area in the picture below. The strip of land had the port city of Toledo, the Maumee River and farmlands to the west. The state militias intimidated each other across the river but never started fighting over the strip of land. (see Toledo War).

The dispute was resolved because then President Andrew Jackson needed Ohio’s electoral votes. He made a compromise, giving Ohio the Toledo Strip (500 square miles) and giving Michigan the western side of the Upper Peninsula (16,000 square miles) and statehood. At the time they were not happy, but as a Michigander, I think it was a good deal. I graduated from Adrian College which is located in the far southeast corner of Michigan, very near to the Toledo Strip. The city of Toledo is not a picturesque city and the huge amount of land (the UP is the size of Switzerland) makes Michigan the largest state in area east of the Mississippi. I see where Wisconsin would complain they lost the UP but they were not powerful enough as a territory to weigh in on the decision.

Today the Michigan border counties (Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson, Menominee) share the Central time zone with Wisconsin and many cultural similarities. We are a mix of Wisconsin and Michigan influences are the Western UP is probably more similar to northern Wisconsin than Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. The city of Green Bay, Wisconsin is the unofficial “capital” of the UP. The most important city in the UP is Marquette.

Getting back to Captain Cram, the US government thought that they could use rivers to separate the Upper Peninsula from Wisconsin. This mostly works with the Menominee and Brule Rivers emptying into Lake Michigan. However, there is a gap from where the Brule River starts at Brule Lake to where the Montreal River empties into Lake Superior. Cram’s job was to draw a straight line between the two spots. The Treaty Tree marks the start of this line at the headwaters of the Brule River. Surveyors often carved into trees to mark special spots and that is exactly what Cram did. The Tamarack tree he chose is dead and preserved at a museum in Marquette. As you can read below, the idea of land ownership and precisely defining state borders was lost on the Ojibwa (Chippewa) indigenous people of the time. I don’t think future surveyors left gifts for them at the site. Cram sent his report to Congress and the border was redefined. Instead of rivers separating the two states, a section would be a land border.

William A. Burt came back in 1847 to make it official and a monument is in place marking “Mile Zero”, which is the start of the land border between the Brule River, going to Lac View Desert and continuing to the Montreal River and eventually Lake Superior. In 1928 a Joint Border Commission put in the plaque below. The site is maintained today near a state campground. We had to clear some vines that were covering the marker.

We finished the day by watching the City of Iron River fireworks show. The fireworks were literally over our heads because we were about 50 meters from where the Iron River Fire Department was shooting from. It was a great way to end the day and to celebrate 247 years of the United States of America.

We were looking for a hike today combined with swimming. I settled on the Lake Mary Plains Pathway after looking at the list of Iron County hikes on the official county website. I used to go on the cross-country ski trails at Lake Mary. I don’t know much about the history of the area. I think the Department of Natural Resources pulled together a combination of private and public lands to form a state forest campground and hiking/biking/skiing area. A sign memorialized a fire in 1983 that was started by an arsonist that burned 119 acres including a 27-year-old plantation of red pines. The campground has 23 sites and there are 9 miles of trails. We completed a 5-kilometer loop on the northwest side of Glidden Lake. The mosquitos, ticks, and bugs were quite fierce so we cut the hike short and headed back to the lake.

The highlight for me was swimming in Glidden Lake. The dark water was so refreshing! There were many cold spots in the lake, especially in the deeper parts. I wonder if it is spring-fed. I swam across the lake and back.

The trail went through the wetlands surrounding the lake. An elevated platform bridge keeps hikers dry. We were able to admire the aquatic plants of the northern Great Lakes region.

We also saw a bit of wildlife. Unfortunately, two of the species were ticks we picked off our shoes. All of us had 3 to 4 ticks on our legs after the hike. The new iPhone 14 has a superior camera and I was able to identify two different species of ticks. The American Dog Tick (Dermacentor variabilis), or Wood Tick, and Black-legged Tick or Deer Tick (Ixodes scapularis) are common in the eastern United States. The deer tick is a vector of Lyme Disease. On a more positive note, on the way home we spotted Sandhill Cranes (Antigone canadensis) alongside highway 424.

It was a relaxing summer afternoon and I thank my brother Jimmer, nephew Beau and son Oliver for going out with me.

I am not an avid golfer, I find the sport too difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. However, when my son asks if I want to go golfing, I am all in! I took my two sons, Owen and Oliver, and two of my nephews, Beau and Tony to the local George Young Golf Resort. It is a beautiful 18-hole course located on the shores of Chicagoan Lake in Iron County. Owen is part of the groundskeeping crew at the course (his first summer job!) and so he is becoming interested in golf.

I had a wonderful day hanging out with my sons and nephews yesterday. We played tennis in the early afternoon at Nelson Field courts in Stambaugh followed by a round of golf in the late afternoon. We finished the day with me cooking them a rigatoni and fish sticks dinner at the house. Spending time with my family is the most rewarding time for me and I realize how precious the time is with our children. They will soon be full adults with careers and families of their own.

The strategy of learning what your children enjoy doing is my chance to spend time with them. I see the appeal of golf. I get a “buzz” when I hit a good shot. The sport is outdoors and you have lots of time for talking and joking with friends while walking around the course. I’ve been really interested in the Saudi takeover of the PGA and the LIV tour. I want to read Alan Shipnuck’s books on Phil Mickelson and the LIV tour. I fear they will be coming for tennis next, which has a similar setup as golf. Tennis professionals are independent contractors and the WTA/ATP lead organizations are not united and well-funded. It is ripe for a takeover.

As I wrote, golf is expensive and time-consuming. We completed 9 holes in 2 hours. An 18-hole round would take around 4 hours. Avid golfers must devote much of their leisure time to the sport, away from family. Sports podcaster and commentator Colin Cowherd advises not to hire people who are avid golfers because they devote too much time to golf and not enough to work. I also read a study that showed that companies underperform when their CEO is a golfer.

I fell in love with the Mediterranean while completing my Master’s degree through the College of New Jersey’s program on the island of Mallorca, Spain in the 1990s. The sunlight, mountains, sea, culture, restaurants, and history of the places around the Mediterranean are incredible. I’ve explored quite a bit of it during my lifetime. I was thinking of all of the places around the Mediterranean I’ve visited which include Malta, Valencia, the Croatian coast (Dubrovnik, Trogir, Split, Rovinj, Novigrad), Haldiki peninsula in Greece, Trieste, Cyprus, and of course, Mallorca.

I can now add the largest (25,000 km – the size of Massachusetts) and most populous island (5 million) in the Mediterranean, Sicily. It is just as beautiful as the other places I’ve visited. The Italians add incredible cuisine to the views. I see why so many tourists come here. I wonder how much HBO’s White Lotus helped tourism this summer from the USA here. I heard a lot of American accents. Being the largest island in a strategic position, Sicily has been populated by many people in its long history. I am reading John Julius Norwich’s Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History. Greeks, Romans, Germans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans and now the Italians have ruled over the island. It would be interesting to see a DNA analysis of Sicilians who lived here for many generations.

We stayed in the south-central part of the island for the first part of the week. The Mandranova Azienda Agricola is located just outside of Monte de Chiaro, which is close to the city of Agrigento. For the second part of the week, we were in Scopello, near the capital of Palermo in the northwest part of the island at an Air BNB.

Some parts of the island are not as picturesque as others and we are noticing some poverty. Sicilians have been emigrating from the island since the 1800s due to poverty and lack of economic opportunities. Today, an estimated 10 million people of Sicilian origin live around the world and 15% of the current residents have lived abroad sometime in their lives. The tourism and hospitality business is doing well here and I bet Sicilian wines and olive oil must do a brisk trade.

The one thing I do not like about the land Mediterranean is the lack of wilderness. Because it has been inhabited for so long, the original trees and animals of the region disappeared a long time ago. The result is a drier climate and in driving around the country, it could be compared to Iowa with agriculture replacing the ecological biomes. I know humans have greatly altered the natural world all over the globe, but here it is more prevalent than in North America. Vineyards and olive groves are romantic, but it would be nice to have more trees and the wild flora and fauna of the region.

A highlight of my trip to Sicily was the Zingaro Riserva Naturale Orientata. This is a protected coastal area located between San Vito lo Capo and Scopello on the Golfo de Castellammare. We hiked 10 kilometers round-trip from the south entrance of the park to the fifth beach from the entrance, Cala Dell’ Uzzo. As you can see from the photos below, the views are spectacular and it was nice to have a Mediterranean landscape not filled with buildings or farms. We took the coastal trail and I wish we would have had time to take the inland, mountain routes. Cala Dell’Uzzo was the most beautiful of the beaches. It was not too crowded in the morning, with people coming from the closer north entrance or boats dropping anchor in the small bay. There is another protected area west of Zingaro, Monte Cofano that would be nice to hike as well. It was quite hot and Nadia had quite the workout. The water was a godsend and refreshed us enough for the 5-kilometer walk back to the parking lot.

Some other nice things about the trip were our stay at the Villa Drago Air BNB. They had a hot tub and outdoor dining area that had spectacular views over the Mediterranean. We also had a delicious dinner in the old part of Golfo de Castellammare.

Another highlight was a visit to the Tenute Camilleri winery. Our good friends Claudiu and Vesna joined Nadia and me for wine tasting. The “Semprevento” white and “Terraranni” rosé were excellent. The owner Pepe showed us around the vineyards and gardens. He also shared photos of his family and I really felt we understood his life’s work. The setting sun, a slight wine buzz, and good company were great way to start the evening.

We met a nice Italian couple at the beach from Lake Como that summed up Sicily. “You cry twice when you visit Sicily. Once when you first arrive because of how beautiful it is and the second time when you leave because you ate too much.”