Welcome to the Great Waters

We welcome you to the Great Waters
We want you to see nature's abundance, to feel her powers, to hear her songs, to touch hr gifts and smell her sweetness.
We want you to stop...if only for a moment and wonder what it must be like to play in the warmth of the sun, dance by the light of the moon or dream in the glow of the stars.
We want you to search and find that feeling of connectedness that comes from knowing Mashkikimikwe (Mother Earth).
We want you to experience this land (and waters) through the eyes of Anishinaabe.

I couldn't say it better than this piece from the brochure we received about places to experience here by the Sea of Superior from Gilly our Irish Host at Bayview, Hiawatha National Forest (more about Gilly later when I write about people we meet on the way.  Gilly reminded Pat of  our friend Carol).

July 4 Quiet Day We walked along the Great Shores of Lake Superior..It was strangely quiet, not a boat in sight.  Later Gilly told Pat that no one "boats" on this part of Lake Superior (open waters of Whitefish Bay) too dangerous due to great waves and storms coming out of no where. The lake is so large that it brews its own storms. Later we learned from the Shipwreck Museum that many sinkings were due to one ship colliding with another.  Fog must have something to do with it.  We saw a film of the Edmund Fitzgerald which was a huge iron ore caring ship sunk by a storm of 100 mile winds and 35 foot waves.

We biked 12 miles total on the 5th, I was feeling a little tired, but knees weren''t too bad.

I hope you are looking up and down for multiple bloggs because I still can't remember how Toby taught me to make a draft and then insert the photos. Somehow the Images I check are not loading onto my blogg when I insert image and when I try to share to the blogg it automatically publishes some of them but not others???  Here are two I selected and saved and I found them in the Google Album, but the others I saved aren't there? It is all magic to me. I will keep working on it. I am not alone in my frustration; others say the same thing.

1853-1962, The Point Iroquois Lighthouse guided freighters and other ships between the open waters of Whitefish Bay-where we are camping-to St. Mary's River and served  to mark the narrow channel between PI and Gros Cap in Canada which had rock reefs.  You can see how large the living quarters were..In the early 1950s, 3 families (head keeper and two assistants with their eight children lived at the lighthouse). They formed their own community and the children even had a teacher. The lighthouse is named for the point which saw a battle in 1662 between the Chippawa (Anishinabeg-"Original  People" and the Iroquois who came 400 miles from upstate NY to try to take over their lands, reason the European fur traders influenced the Iroquois in trying to get them to take over the trade routes. The Iroquois were defeated and their bones were found on the beaches up into the late 1700s thus the name.   People claim to have seen on the land around the lighthouse supposedly apparitions of the victims of the battle.  And also that of a little girl who had been eaten by a bear nearby.  

You can't really tell from the photo how large the birches are here.  Think twice Pat' girth and you have an idea. 

I bought a book called Sweet Water, Storms and Spirits because it reminded me of our friend Carol and stories she use to tell about her mother sailing on ship and the book has many Native American legends in it as well.  One of the stories which tells how the whitefish came into being in Lake Superior and why the crane became the totem for one group came from a collection by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft  who  married the granddaughter of a Chippewa Chef.  Supposedly his stories influenced Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write Hiawatha, but were very dark like the Brothers Grimm.

Here is Pat looking across at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Monument.  It is hard to tell in the photo of the Miner's Castle, but the 400 million Ordovician Au Train Formation sandstone cliffs are very colorful: ochre, tan and brown between layers of white rising up from the emerald blue Superior.  The cliffs look painted because of iron, manganese and copper streaks coming from groundwater oozing from cracks.  I have to wonder what the people who depend on the tourism of this area would do if this great and beautiful cliff's status were changed?

We saw  sandhill cranes yesterday on way to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  I am pretty sure they were the rare greater subspecies, but can't be sure.
We also went to the Upper Tahquamenon Falls which is considered one of the mightiest, largest rivers west of the Mississippi, 50,000 gallons of water flow per second. I took another video, a little longer than the other one.  We will try to get it on you tube. A very different water fall.  So much power in our moving water in this country.