Point Betsie Lighthouse holds a special place in my heart, and we've visited this scenic spot along Lake Michigan's shore near Frankfort,
Michigan, many times over the years.
The lighthouse itself is undergoing a multi-year
restoration, and we recently visited to check out the ongoing work there.
The strikingly beautiful Split Rock Lighthouse, perched high on a 130-foot cliff along Lake Superior on Minnesota's scenic North Shore, celebrates the centennial anniversary of its first lighting in 1910 on July 31.
We've visited the lighthouse a couple of times during the
summer, when sunny days with clear skies made it difficult to get a bad photo of Split Rock, and the Minnesota Historical Society acknowledges the fact that Split Rock is favorite with photographers by helpfully posting photos of the lighthouse from several unique vantage points photographers can consider when planning their shots.
I've taken the long trek down the steep stairway (174 steps by one visitor's count) from the lighthouse to the shore to get a few photos from
the foot of the cliff. Of course, what goes down must go back up, so it can be quite a workout just to get those few shots!
Today the lighthouse is one of Minnesota's most popular
attractions, even as it owes its existence to particularly turbulent times along Lake Superior.
The year 1905 saw a savage storm lasting for several days in late November resulting in 29 shipwrecks. The loss of those ships and the lives
of some sailors aboard them spurred demand for a lighthouse in the area.
In 1907, Congress responded to the demands by appropriating $75,000 for the land and construction of the lighthouse with several other
buildings.
The lighthouse's cliff-top location makes its beacon visible as far away as 22 miles on a clear day. The remote location also made construction of the lighthouse particularly challenging.
There were no roads to the site, so workers had to bring all building materials to the site via water. Deep water at the foot of the cliff
made it relatively easy for ships to pull in close to shore, and a timber derrick with a hoisting engine transported the construction materials from the shore to the top of the cliff.
In 1910, workers completed Split Rock Lighthouse. The site included the lighthouse as well as several other buildings like three light
keeper houses and a fog signal building.
Lighthouse engineer Ralph Russell Tinkham designed the
pyramidal octagonal brick tower of Cream City brick with concrete trim on a concrete foundation, topped by a cast iron lantern room to house a second-order Fresnel lens. The project reportedly came in under budget at $72,500, but that included a smaller third-order Fresnel lens for the light tower.
In 1969, the Coast Guard retired the light, even as the
lighthouse earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places that same year.
The State of Minnesota acquired the lighthouse in 1971, and the Minnesota Historical Society took over operation of the lighthouse and
accompanying buildings as a historical site.
Visitors can tour the lighthouse and a light keeper's home, both restored to their 1920s-era appearance, from mid-May through mid-October.
An on-site visitor center is open year round.
Costumed guides, who often include one acting in character as Split Rock's first light keeper, Orrin "Pete" Young, greet visitors at the light keeper's home. I remember the "light keeper" puzzling over my picture taking during one visit, hearing him marvel to his "wife" about my fascination with their washboard, wringer, and wash tub as we left the building!
The lighthouse also welcomes visitors one night during the late autumn, opening each November 10 and lighting the beacon in memory of the
29 men lost during the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975.
Want to learn more? Check out So Terrible a Storm: A Tale of Fury on Lake Superior by Curt Brown. Some observers and researchers question the whether a lighthouse at Split Rock's location would have done much to avert the tragedies in 1905 or if the toll really justified constructing the lighthouse, questions which Minnesota journalist Brown explores in this book.
Sip champagne for a serious cause and support Forgotten
Harvest's effort to drive hunger from metro Detroit at the food rescue group's annual Champagne Cruise on August 20 at Westborn Market along Woodward Avenue in Berkley, Michigan.
I always look forward to this event, held the Friday evening before the official Saturday date of the massive Woodward Dream Cruise, which draws more than 40,000 vintage vehicles and as many as 1 million spectators to metro Detroit for a celebration of classic cars. Cruisers generally hit Woodward with their vintage vehicles on the warm weekends throughout much of the summer leading up to the official cruise date, with the action along the cruising strip reaching a peak as the Friday of the Champagne Cruise approaches. The Champagne Cruise's combination of timing, and its Woodward-side location, makes it one of the primo places to view some great cars while helping fund Forgotten Harvest's food rescue operation.
Forgotten Harvest rescued 19.4 million pounds of food otherwise destined for the trash and delivered it to emergency food providers to feed hungry metro Detroiters during Fiscal Year 2009-2010. Rescued food comes from donors like Champagne Cruise host Westborn Market and other donors like area grocery stores, restaurants, caterers, farmers, and wholesale food distributors.
What makes these numbers even more amazing to me is the fact that they represent a doubling of the numbers I saw last year, meaning that donors are digging even deeper into their pockets to help fellow metro Detroiters in an economy that continues to struggle.
But the Champagne Cruise is an evening of fun and good food for attendees.
Forgotten Harvest sets up a huge tent in the parking lot at Berkley’s Westborn Market. The market puts out an amazing array of cheeses and produce for guests to sample, while a handful of other area restaurants and caterers set up stations for a mini Taste Fest of some great metro Detroit eats.
And, yes, the Forgotten Harvest crew packs up the unused
food at the end of the evening for distribution to area soup kitchens, food pantries, and shelters.
This year, Champagne Cruise attendees will again dance to
the music of The Sun Messengers (the "Official Band of the Detroit Pistons") and hang out in a special viewing area that offers a ringside seat for the car cruising action along Woodward.
I've always admired Forgotten Harvest for its approach to
addressing the dual problems of hunger and waste by rescuing perfectly good food from disposal and getting it into the hands, and stomachs, of those who need it most.
Forgotten Harvest's responsible stewardship of their donated money and goods is also impressive. The charity is justifiably proud of its record of spending 95-plus percent of its funds on food programming and less than 5
percent of its money on administrative or fund raising costs, earning an "exceptional" rating from Charity Navigator.
So, I don't feel badly about plopping down $150 per ticket to support the group and its mission.
For all the seriousness of Forgotten Harvest's mission, the Champagne Cruise definitely puts the "fun" in "fund raiser".
We've visited northern Michigan's Point Betsie Lighthouse many times, taking a special interest in restoration work at the lighthouse as it proceeded over recent years, and regular Midwest Guest readers may recall that I recently wrote about Michigan's Point Betsie Lighthouse receiving a Governor's Award for
Historic Preservation.
We saw a lot of the exterior improvements at the lighthouse during a winter visit last year, and finally saw some of the interior
improvements during our visit to Point Betsie earlier this month.
Flaking paint, empty rooms, and ugly linoleum greeted visitors five years ago when volunteers opened Point Betsie for public tours inside of the lighthouse as they started an ambitious preservation program.
We could see a lot of the exterior improvements the last time we stopped by for a winter visit, but it was a pleasant surprise when we stepped into the lighthouse this month to see the freshly painted walls, period furniture, and beautiful wood floors in many of the rooms. Even the tower's interior and steps wore a fresh coat of paint in marked contrast to the flaking, grey paint we saw when we last climbed the tower during a summer visit.
This time, we climbed the tower to visit the lighthouse's
tiny lantern room. From the tower, we overlooked another more recently completed restoration project, the Point Betsie fog signal building. If you look closely at my photos of the red fog signal building, you can spot part of a Dumpster sitting behind the lighthouse, evidence of the continuing renovation work.
We stopped by the fog signal building later to view the
historical exhibits and watch a video about the work of the lifesaving station crew in the late 1800s.
Work still continues in several of the rooms at the lighthouse and on planned exhibits. I spotted a sign in one of the partially finished and empty rooms announcing a future exhibit about the local ecology planned for that space by The Nature Conservancy, while several other spaces already housed historical exhibits.
I expressed my wish to see the interior and hope that the
changes would continue to honor the site's original character. An unexpected opportunity to travel north granted my wish to see the restoration progress, and I loved seeing the lighthouse looking so refreshed and well cared for.
Check back here Friday for a few more photos from our latest visit to the lighthouse.
Check out my previous stories about Point Betsie's
restoration and its 152-year history:
I've usually been disappointed with concert photos I've
taken at indoor venues in the past, but I had a difficult time narrowing down this year's Concert of Colors photos to the 18 images I posted here and in my recap article.
Southwest Detroit Latin Super Session
The Codgers
The reason for that? I finally broke down and bought the
Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens Tim has been bugging me for quite some time to buy. He thought I'd be far happier with my concert photos and some of the architectural interiors I'm so fond of shooting with this lens, and he finally convinced me to make the investment in it.
Tien-Huicani
Mavis Staples
Dennis Coffey
The lens gave me a decent combination of speed at a relatively light weight that allowed me to capture more of the action onstage during the
various acts. Spending the extra money to buy the IS (Image Stabilizer) version of this lens was also well worth it, allowing me to shoot many of these images at as low as 1/60th of a second at 1600 ISO. I shot nearly all of the photos on these two posts recapping the 2010 Concert of Colors with this lens.
Kim Weston
It certainly performed well under fire as this weekend was the first time I'd used it, and I hope you enjoy the resulting photos.
Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.
The comforting clatter of printing presses was music to my ears as I recently walked into the rambling stone building Gwen Frostic called home for many years in northern Michigan.
Familiar sights and sounds welcomed me back to Gwen's home as the business rumbled back to life after weathering a sudden foreclosure last
October and an uncertain future before reopening its retail business just weeks ago under new ownership.
New owners Kim and Greg Forshee enjoyed a close association with the business over the years. Kim worked several years for Gwen Frostic
Prints as an outside sales and marketing director, while the couple's Frankfort, Michigan, manufacturing company DAMB Mold Base provided many parts for Frostic's lumbering old Heidelberg presses that pumped out so many cards, stationery, placemats, and other products featuring Gwen Frostic's engaging nature images over the years.
The couple plan to preserve Frostic's artistic legacy and
love of northern Michigan nature as they slowly restore the aging building and carefully add features and products that respect the Michigan icon's history and the close attachment many long-time fans feel for Frostic and her work, according to a recent article in the Traverse City Record-Eagle newspaper.
The Forshees told the newspaper that their plans include
slowly repairing and restoring the property, expanding product lines that respectfully reflect Frostic's love of nature, and developing a museum centering on Frostic's career and life.
The scene at Gwen Frostic Prints seemed comfortingly
familiar to me as I walked past the fieldstone walls and trickling fountain at the building's entrance, browsed the rustic racks filled with paper products featuring Frostic's elegant images, and paused for a few moments (as I always like to do when I visit) by the railing overlooking the press room as more of the paper products that were always the foundation of the business and perennial customer favorites rolled out of the machines.
Spots like the Gwen's quiet library with large windows
overlooking the river and nature sanctuary behind the building and the short nature trails behind the parking lot always provided a bit of serenity, even on the busiest summer days, so it was nice to see that that serenity appeared largely unchanged even as the business weathered a rough winter.
I always believed the business would reopen as Frostic's
legacy and importance as a draw for tourists in the region were just too important to lose.
As I reported here in May, as many as 1,000 people might
stop by the store on a busy summer day. The business employed 15 to 20 people, and officials at the Benzie County Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Business Bureau reported that they answered more questions about Gwen Frostic's than any other attraction in the area. Even the bank forced to foreclose on the business and its former owners readily acknowledged the importance of the long-time business to the local economy and hoped to find a way to keep it open.
The Forshees credit their bank and former Frostic employees for helping them quickly reopen the business earlier this spring in time to
welcome Frostic fans back for the busy summer season.
A steady stream of visitors shopped at the store as we
visited the store in early July of this year. The occasional van carrying a tour group pulled into the lot, and I heard many individual customers and long-time Frostic fans tell workers they were so glad to see the business reopened.
The woman who waited on me and bundled up my purchases, one of the former Frostic employees rehired by the Forshees, seemed enthused about things when she told me the business was "getting there" as word spread about the reopening.
The product selection remains a bit thin in some areas as
the business scurries to make up for the lost production time over the winter. I was unable to purchase the Gwen's signature green-and-white wrapping paper this visit, and received my purchases wrapped in plain brown paper instead of Frostic paper. I was able to buy a few of the small-size 2011 wall calendars, but the only large-size calendars they had in stock were for 2010. I also didn't see any of the plastic mugs with Frostic paper inserts for sale during my visit, but they did have some ceramic coffee mugs, and I bought one as a gift.
Some of the most immediate changes at Frostic's include a
few new product lines like woven throw blankets and jewelry, like the little sterling silver pendant featuring one of my favorite Frostic designs (the "happy raccoon") that I couldn't resist buying for myself.
I felt a new sense of hope for Gwen Frostic's during this
visit and thank the Forshees for their effort to insure a bright future for a place I've enjoyed and loved visiting for years.
You can also read The Life and Wisdom of Gwen Frostic by
Sheryl James to learn more about this talented, but often enigmatic, woman. The book is fairly short, being an extension of an article James originally wrote for the Detroit Free Press, and predates Gwen's death by a couple of years, but it's still a fascinating read for those who grew up visiting the store and anyone interested in learning about the woman who overcame many odds to create a multi-million dollar business and artistic legacy.
Detroit's Concert of Colors is always a great celebration of diversity, music from around the globe, and, especially recently, the city's astonishingly varied musical scene.
Grammy-Award winning producer Don Was, who pulled together the weekend festival's signature Detroit All-Star Revue show this past weekend,
told me that this gig is his favorite night of the year during my recent interview with him. If the broad smile I saw on his face much of the time throughout the Saturday show as he introduced each act and backed many of them on bass is any indication, he continues to love the show every bit as much as we do.
Friends we talked to after the show agreed with us in
thinking that the All-Star Revue lived up to its name and Was manages to outdo himself each year as he pulls together yet another stellar show of homegrown talent.
While I looked forward to seeing Jimmy Ruffin perform, he
and Niagara ended up not being able to make the Revue. But Was simply dipped into the deep reservoir of Detroit talent with great late additions Andre Williams, who by many accounts was the first rapper back in the 1950s, and up-and-coming R&B/pop artist Mayaeni rounding out the Revue bill.
Ninety-three-year-old blues queen Alberta Adams pretty much owned the room, amazing the audience with a particularly strong and vibrant
performance. Adams and guitarist Dennis Coffey earned two well-deserved standing ovations for their Revue numbers, while show closer Kim Weston had everyone on their feet dancing and singing along with "Take Me in Your Arms (Rock Me a Little While)".
As fabulous as the Detroit All-Star Revue always is, it is just one evening of the multi-day Concert of Colors festival.
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra kicked off the Concert of
Colors with a pair of standing-room-only performances at the festival's newest partner and presenter, the Detroit Institute of Arts. Conductor Chelsea Tipton II led the DSO through two spirited programs of classical and popular pieces, many of them familiar to the audience from movies, television, or cartoons. Orchestra musicians seemed to enjoy the casual vibe and proximity of the audience, many of them staying after the shows to mingle with concertgoers, and Tipton mentioned that he was particularly pleased to see so many children enjoying the shows with their families.
We also caught Tien-Huicani performing on the DIA's theater stage on Friday. I've never associated the harp with Mexican folk music, but
that changed after this show-especially after several of the group members took turns playing the harp and three of them all played it at the same time at one point in the show!
We enjoyed the Irish folk music of the Codgers, accompanied by Terry Murphy, on Saturday afternoon. I love hearing and seeing more unusual, at least to me, instruments, so I liked watching and listening to this group as
they used several Irish instruments like the bodhran (drum) during their time onstage.
Saturday was certainly a great day for me to see a lot of
the more unusual instruments used in shows by Kenge Kenge, a Kenyan benga group, used a lot of great African percussion instruments. The group expressed a special pride in the fact that they came from the same region and clan as "His Excellency, your President Obama" before closing their show with their tribute to him, their "Obama for change" song that swept You Tube and the rest of the Internet over the past year.
Sunday saw another performance of the DSO with a program
featuring a concerto for the oud, a stringed instrument that is one of the most popular instruments in Arabic music. The concerto, commissioned by the DSO, featured Simon Shaheen, oud virtuoso and the piece's composer.
The cream of the Latin music scene in Detroit took the stage with members of several groups banded together for a program celebrating Latin
song and dance.
We were truly torn between seeing Mavis Staples close out
Sunday evening on the Main Stage, or catching sacred steel guitarist Calvin Cooke on the Diversity Stage. We ended up seeing most of Staples' show, where she previewed a handful of songs from her not-yet-released album (it has a September release date), and catching the last few numbers from Cooke, where high notes included his performance of "Help me make it through" while the audience danced, swayed, and sang along with his uplifting message of unity and good things to come.
As always, the Concert of Colors was over too soon, and the overlapping schedule meant we sometimes had to make hard choices about what acts
we would see, but that just makes me anticipate next July's 2011 Concert of Colors even more.
I'm also hoping they'll resume the Concert of Colors Groupie support program next year. The festival is free, but Groupies supported the
Concert of Colors with a donation, receiving perks like reserved seating at Main Stage shows (giving you more flexibility when it came to attending shows on both stages) and a T-shirt (which I missed out on this year because the shirt's popularity meant vendors ran out the size I wanted before I went to buy one). The program was also simply a nice way for individuals to help the festival continue through some challenging years.
Want to hear some of the great Detroit talent we saw at the Detroit All-Star Revue? Check out The Wasmopolitan Cavalcade of Recorded Music on
My Damn Channel, where Don Was will post clips from this year's revue in coming months. You can also check out clips from the 2008 and 2009 Detroit All-Star Revues at the site.
Come back Friday to check out a few more of my photos from the Concert of Colors.
Note:
"Where I live" posts are part of a series of periodic stories about special events and people in, and around, metro Detroit. "Where I live" posts are stories I'll post in addition to my regular schedule of stories about attractions around the larger Midwestern region. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.
It may be rare to spot a moose, and even rarer to spot the normally reclusive wolf, on Isle Royale, but there is ample chance to see all sorts of wildlife as you visit the isolated national park in Michigan.
Park animals include moose, wolves, elk, snowshoe hares,
foxes, ermine, mink, muskrats, bats, reptiles like garter snakes, loons, beavers, many different birds, and other small mammals. Caribou, lynx, and deer used to call Isle Royale home, but the last of those animals on the island died out between the 1920s and 1950s.
Moose are loners and eat herbs, ferns, shrubs, leaves, and other vegetation. The carnivorous wolves live in packs and developed a taste for the island's moose.
This set up a unique environment with one predator (the
wolf) seeking one primary prey (the moose). Moose provide about 90 percent of the wolves' diet, while beavers and snowshoe hares provide the rest of the wolves' menu.
Researchers began studying the relationship between the
moose and wolf on Isle Royale by the late 1950s. They found that as the moose population increased, so did the wolf population, and the wolf population declined as the moose population declined.
Outside factors can influence the delicate balance. During the 1980s, an island visitor brought their dog to the park (which does not allow domestic pets). The dog passed on a virus to the wolves, and the wolf population sharply declined.
While we failed to see a wolf or moose during our visit to the island, we spotted many other animals as we walked the trails and canoed near Rock Harbor.
One of my favorite finds was a large pileated woodpecker
that perched nicely on a log along the trail as I snapped its photo.
I wasn't as enthused about the garter snake we found
slithering across our path, but we knew he was pretty harmless as we let him quietly slither away into the woods.
You can often spot loons or mergansers in Tobin Harbor.
Loons usually don't stray too close to humans, and park rangers remind visitors to especially keep their distance from the wary birds during nesting season.
I got a few nice photos of this snowshoe hare in his summer brown coat as he led the way through the forest.
And, of course, there are always squirrels, who aren't shy around humans. This little guy joined us for lunch on the deck at Rock Harbor Lodge's
Greenstone Grill, but we weren't giving him any of our burgers or beer!
This snowshoe hare is just one of the residents we
encountered while exploring Michigan's Isle Royale National Park.
This hare is still wearing his thin, brown summer coat in early September, but his fur transforms into a thick, fluffy, white coat as summer
segues into autumn and, finally, into the cold, northern winter.
The hare's brown coat provides the animal with a natural
camouflage that allows it to blend into the earthy colors of twigs and leaves covering the forest floor during the warmer months of the year. The animal's white winter coat makes it more difficult for predators to spot the animal during the snowy season.
The seasonal change in coats happens each spring and fall, with the changes in coat color taking about ten weeks each season. The hare has its distinctive black-tipped ears year round.
We stayed at a cabin in the island's Rock Harbor Lodge,
using it as a base from which to explore some of the 20-plus miles of trails in the eastern end of the park, canoe in the calm water of Tobin Bay, and take plenty of photographs. The Rock Harbor area is admittedly a very small part of Isle Royale, but we never ran out of things to do or places to explore during our week there.
Even though the trails around Rock Harbor are a little
closer to civilization and most of them are fairly level, they still offer a lot of scenic variety and varying terrain.
We hiked the network of short trails in the area that
included the Scoville Point Trail, the Stoll loop, the Tobin Harbor Trail and the path to Suzy's Cave over the course of the week.
Scoville Point offered a sweeping lake view from a narrow
spit of rock jutting out into the water. The Scoville Point trail is 4.2 miles and includes the 1.8-mile Stoll Memorial loop.
The Albert Stoll Jr. Memorial Trail took us from Rock Harbor out to a marker at Scoville Point memorializing the conservation editor who
worked at the Detroit News from 1923 until 1950 and played a large part in a 25-year
effort to preserve Isle Royale as a national park.
Suzy's Cave takes its name from a woman named Suzy Tooker, who summered as a child on the nearby Tooker Island owned by her father. The young Suzy often canoed over to Rock Harbor to play in the cave, formed by waves in an earlier era when Lake Superior levels were higher than they are today. The cave is between the Rock Harbor and Tobin Harbor Trails.
I often travel on my own time and my own dime. Whenever I do receive a complimentary product, service, or accommodations as a result of my blogging activities, I will disclose that at the time I write about it. Midwest Guest is a member of an affiliates program in association with Amazon. If you click through the links to Amazon from here and purchase something at Amazon.com, I receive a small commission on the items.
