Saturday, October 3, 2020
Not much to share today. We slept late, and made a leisurely drive across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Munising, MI just west of the Pictured Rocks National Seashore which we will tour by boat tomorrow. A Gloomy Gus we ran into at the campground we stayed at night before last, was complaining about the rainy weather, and remarking that the autumn colors were pretty much finished for the year. You couldn’t prove it by me. The oaks are indeed nearly bare, but the maples and sumac are in full red color, and the birches are just coming on. The colors are magnificent. I forgot to mention yesterday that we saw a gray wolf schnupfing along the side of the road as we made our way across northeast Wisconsin. It’s the first wolf I’ve ever seen in the wild. Today we saw a large flock of grouse just before they slipped back into the woods alongside one of the back roads we were traveling. At first I thought they were turkeys of which we’ve seen many, but there was something not quite right about the shape of their necks, and when we got closer, we could see they were grouse. I had also never seen grouse before either in the wild or in captivity, although I’ve seen stuffed ones in various “rustic” eating establishments over the years.
Interesting Lake Superior Facts –
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/superior/superiorfacts.html
- Lake Superior is the world’s largest freshwater lake in surface area (second to Lake Baikal in volume).
- The lake’s surface area is larger than all the New England states combined except Maine.
- The Lake Superior shoreline would stretch from Duluth, MN to the Bahamas in length.
- The bottom of the lake at its deepest point is about 700 feet below sea level although the surface is about 600 feet above sea level.
- The tallest underwater formation in the lake rises to just 20 feet below the surface.