Livin' the Sunbird Life: Sunrises, Shipwrecks and Sunsets

September 10, 2011

Munising, MI

Yesterday was a travel day, and an easy one at that. The pups were up early, watching the sun rise over the St. Mary's River. We finished travel preparations and said "So long" to our neighbors at the Elks Lodge and were on the road around 9:30. Looping around Sault Ste. Marie to I-75, we were soon exiting onto M-28, which we followed west to the little burg of Munising. We'd stopped here during the caravan, and wanted to visit again for a couple of days on our own.

Once set up, we were relaxing when another coach pulled into the site next to us. We were surprised to see Henry and Marcia, another couple from the caravan. They stopped back like we did, to see some additional sights.

I got the grill out and we had a great dinner of Pork Tenderloin, Mushroom Risotto (left over from the Labor Day get-together) and Corn-on-the-Cob. It was good to sit outside with our wine then get back in the swing of our normal meal preparation.

Today, we were up early (at least the pups were). After a walk around the Park in a pretty dense fog, we headed for town just as the sun started to burn through. Our destination was the Glass-bottomed Boat Shipwreck Tour. This is the "companion" tour to the Pictured Rocks sail that we did on the caravan. It turned out to be a beautiful day for a short cruise along Grand Island, and the stories about the shipwrecks were interesting. As it turns out, Geri got better pictures with her phone from the side of the boat than I did through the viewing ports in the bottom and the whole thing was probably not worth the price, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

OK, there's a bald eagle right in the center of this picture. Can you see it? Me, neither. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to switch to a telephoto lens...

Another look at this lighthouse, which we saw on the Pictured Rocks tour several weeks ago.

Through the viewing port in the bottom of the tour boat, here's the anchor (one of the few recognizable pieces) of one shipwreck.

These formations are called "pestles", formed as hard stones wear away the sandstone as the lake currents move them around. Can you guess this one's nickname?

Here, you can see the stone in the bottom of the pestle, still grinding away after who knows how many years/centuries.

Back on dry land, we did a little grocery shopping and headed home for lunch and a relaxing afternoon. I managed to (I hope) fix up all the errors in my address books, syncing everything a few times between Outlook on the C, the new iPad, and the Android phone. I finished entering all our "loyalty cards" into the Keyring app so I don't have to carry a fistful of key chain dongles around, and installed Gmail plus a couple of apps on the iPad. I'm about ready to tackle the project of consolidating all my various email addresses into one; I'd set up multiple addresses when I started using Gmail thinking I'd better control spam and prevent hijacking and identity theft. It's probably not needed and too complicated, so simplification is the order of the day.

After walking the pups around the Park, we once again sat out with our glass of wine. This Park is right on Lake Superior, and we're about 3 campsites and 200' away from the water. I took advantage of the outdoor grill being deployed to reheat some sauce and cook up some Angel Hair Pasta for dinner. Everyone, pups included, enjoyed that. We all walked down to the water's edge at sunset, as did half the people in the park; tomorrow, we'll remember to bring folding chairs! Geri and I finished off the evening with a nice Chianti.