The Adventure Continues

Friday morning greeted me cold, but beautiful!  Lake Michigamme:

I was very pleased with the campground at Van Riper State Park and especially so when I got ready to leave and found these!  It's been a long time coming at many parks.

Then it was off to explore and to find the camp at which I would be staying and meeting my son, Joe. It's back in the woods of Ishpeming along the Dead River Storage Basin.  Owned by Erik, a friend of Paul and Shawn, who are Joe's close friends (second family), Joe now does some maintenance work there occasionally.  Joe arrived late Friday, and we got the well pump up and running and the sauna too.  Saturday, Sunday, and Monday we played... not that getting the pump and sauna fixed and running were not play... it is definitely our kind of play!

Paul and Shawn came with tie-dying materials.  We had a blast!

My first time ever doing a tie-dyed T-shirt!

Paul is a long time artist at this...

Socks, scarves, onezies, tank tops, and t-shirts!  We went crazy!

Joe and I took the canoe down the basin.  The water was about 3-4 feet higher than normal so we got to see areas that normally would only be wetland, not river.  The sunset was gorgeous! And the moon was full one of the nights and bright every one of them.

Joe and I played and explored away from the camp too.  Warner Falls in Palmer.

And the old mine areas of Negaunee and Ishpeming, though we were wise enough (I was scared enough) to not go where things were fenced off.

I learned that there is an entire neighborhood in Negaunee that was closed off and all the houses were moved to another section of town when the ground started to cave in from old mine shafts.  That area has now settled and is used for recreation, but the old roads, curbs, concrete stairs are still there.  Odd and eerie.  Near the entrance to an old tunnel where the tram cars ran, we found a good deal of snow. There was quite a cold updraft.

The rock formations and landscape feel so typically UP to me.

Home for some part of me having spent a total of 14 to 15 years there at various times, completing college there, having made a family with both children born there, my parents' cabin there for many years, and built a house in Marquette in 1977.  I stopped by on my way out of town on Monday evening.  The owners invited me in to see what had changed since we built it and ask me some questions about the house.  Here's how it looks today:

And here's 33 years ago!