Midwest Guest

Photo Friday

We photograph a lot of lighthouses when we travel during the summer and early autumn, but we rarely have the opportunity to take wintertime photos of the light towers. A summertime visit often means you get great shots of the towers set against a clear blue sky, and many lighthouses offer tours or the opportunity to climb the tower to see the view from the top of the light during warmer months.

Wintertime at a lighthouse usually results in a very different experience with dreary weather, steel-grey skies and a site where even the outhouses close for the season. But the quiet isolation and beauty of some of these deserted beaches probably give visitors a much clearer picture of the lonely lives led by lighthouse keepers.

Here are a few more photos from our recent hike out to Big Sable Point Lighthouse in Ludington State Park.

Check out the story links below for more about our visit to this beautiful lighthouse, plus more photos of the lighthouse and park.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

Related Stories

Hike to Big Sable Point Light

Michigan State Parks turn 90

© Dominique King 2009

Paradise at Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History

 

Who killed the girl?

It was a question posed by the characters in “Murder in Harlem”, a 1935 mystery flick from pioneering African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, which held my rapt attention one recent afternoon in a Detroit theater.

Watching a vintage movie in the recreated Paradise Theater is just one stop along a comprehensive journey through African and American history, struggle and accomplishments—a journey spanning time and space from prehistoric Africa through present-day America at Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

The idea for a museum celebrating African American experience and struggles first took root with Detroit’s Dr. Charles H. Wright when he visited a memorial to Danish World War II heroes in Denmark. He began thinking how a similar memorial and educational resource center could help African Americans preserve their history, life and culture while sharing their story with others.

Wright’s dream began as a small museum in 1965, with items like African masks and information about figures like inventor Elijah McCoy, growing through several moves and expansions into what is today the largest African American historical museum in the world.

At 120,000 square feet, the current museum in Detroit’s University Cultural Center near Wayne State University, houses galleries, a 317-seat theater, a research library and a museum store. A glass dome, which at 100 feet in diameter exceeds the diameter of Michigan’s State Capitol dome, and a terrazzo floor by Hubert Massey create an impressive reception area for visitors first entering the museum.

Small galleries host visiting and temporary exhibits spotlighting different aspects of art, history and culture. Past exhibitions include a collection of historical artifacts from the NBA’s Chris Webber that featured a first edition book from poet Phillis Wheatley and a showing of 126 exact replicas of treasures found in the Egyptian tomb of King Tutankhamen.

The museum’s core exhibit, And Still We Rise, is the permanent showcase encompassing 22,000 square feet and 20 galleries recreating many stops along the path through African and American history.

Visit an ancient African marketplace and hear vendors hawking their wares are you stroll past booths stocked with produce, textiles, baskets and other products of the day.

Walk through the Door of No Return where African captives left their homeland, bound for lives of grinding slavery if they managed to survive the frightening, claustrophobic and dangerous Middle Passage.

Hear Martin Luther King Jr. deliver the original version of his inspirational “I have a dream” speech at the Great March on Detroit.

And Still We Rise shows the sights and sounds of these places and events through a series of recreated vignettes that transport visitors back in time to experience history in a more intimate way.

Detroit figures prominently at the museum. My favorite area of the core exhibit took us through Detroit’s legendary Paradise Valley, a vibrant community where many of the city's 350 African-American-owned businesses flourished by the 1920s.

We stopped into the recreated 606 Horse Shoe club to check out the entertainment bill, visited a local record shop with racks of discs from Motown greats, and spent time watching movies in the Paradise Theater.

We didn’t get to see the end of “Murder in Harlem” as the hour was late and the museum’s closing time approached, so we didn’t find out who killed the girl. I suppose that gives us a good excuse to visit the museum again to see if we can catch the end of the flick at another showing, but there’s really no excuse not to visit this excellent museum if you’re in the Detroit area.

 

Check out these stories for more about Detroit’s rich musical heritage

Motown marks major milestone

Motown magic comes out of the shadows one summer night

Visit the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio

Are you waiting?

© Dominique King 2009

Art and ice collide at Michigan’s Dennos Museum Center

It’s not often that two interests as seemingly divergent as art and hockey collide, but when I strolled into the store at Traverse City Michigan’s Dennos Museum Center several years ago and spotted a small print of a jubilant Inuit hockey player celebrating his success on an outdoor rink, this huge hockey fan had to have it.

The colorful print hangs in my family room and reminds me of the fabulous Inuit art collection housed at Dennos. We recently revisited the museum, finding the Inuit Art Gallery and rest of the museum collection as beautiful and interesting as ever.

Dennos Museum Center opened in 1991 on the campus of Northwestern Michigan College and received the Governor’s Award for Arts and Culture from ArtServe Michigan in 2000.

Dennos has three changing exhibit galleries, a sculpture court, and a hands-on kid-friendly Discovery Gallery that features an interactive Weiss Wall where touching various panels produces different musical notes and tones. The museum also treats the grounds as a public gallery, by showing several large installations in the outdoor area surrounding the building.

We’ve enjoyed visiting the museum’s changing collections over the years, including some interesting photography shows like a recent showing of Andy Warhol photos, but my favorite gallery remains the showroom dedicated to the museum’s well-regarded collection of Inuit art.

The Inuit Art Gallery started as a rare collection of Inuit carvings owned by Wilbur Munnecke and donated to the Osterlin Library on NMC’s campus. Munnecke, a Chicago publishing executive who summered in nearby Leland, donated the collection in 1960.

The library organized an exhibition and sale of the carvings to finance a permanent exhibition of the remaining carvings, as well as newly purchased Inuit stone-cut and stencil prints.

By 1964, the Canadian government designated the museum as an official Inuit art outlet in the United States.

The collection remained at the library for 30 years before moving to the then-new Dennos Museum Center.

Today, the collection holds 1,000 objects that include: original stone-cut, stencil and lithograph prints; drawings; sculptures of whalebone and stone; textiles and other artifacts. Dennos, regarded as the most historically complete collection of Contemporary Inuit Art in the United States, showcases selected items from the large collection on a rotating basis.

Indigenous people in the Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska, as well as other locations like Greenland and Russia, produce much of the Inuit art.

Much of the Inuit art in the Dennos collection comes from Cape Dorset, the self-billed Capital of Inuit Art. Cape Dorset is a small community of 1,200 residents (as of 2006) near the southern tip of Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada that became a hub for Inuit drawing, carving and printmaking in the 1950s. Printmaking and carving still drive Cape Dorset’s economy today, with the largest percentage (22 percent) of the community’s labor force employed in the arts.

Yukon-based batik artist Lynn Blaikie created my “Hockey Night” print. Blaikie grew up in southern Ontario, moving to the Yukon Territory at age 18. She discovered batik while living in a small, now-vacated, mining community called Elsa. Blaikie fell in love with the vibrant colors of batik that brightened some very dark days for her when the town endured a nine-month mining strike.

The museum store has a small collection of Inuit art, including some large prints, on sale. They also offer some Inuit pieces, primarily small carvings, for sale online.

Dennos Museum Center visitors should also search out the museum’s excellent Inuit Art Collection brochure, with information about Inuit life and culture, as well as details of collection’s history and an overview of Inuit Art from the Prehistoric period 4,000 to 5,000 years ago through the contemporary era.

© Dominique King 2009

Photo Friday

President’s Day may be past, but I remember the traditional observance of George Washington’s birthday as being February 22 when I was a kid.

And with the attention surrounding the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth earlier this month, I thought it might be nice to give a little extra acknowledgement of our first president’s birthday before the traditional date passes.

So, here are a few more shots from our trip to South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore, including an alternate view of Washington taken from Mount Rushmore’s Presidential Trail and a couple of shots from the site’s amphitheater where Tim is seen taking a break from his photo taking.

Missed my earlier story about our visit to Mount Rushmore? Check it out at Mount Rushmore memorializes larger-than-life presidents.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2009

Hike to Big Sable Point Light

We often take the very long way home from a trip to Michigan’s northwestern Lower Peninsula by driving down the west coast of the state before heading east towards the Detroit area. Stopping for a few minutes to admire the breakwater light at Ludington, or for a short walk along the beach at the easily accessible Little Sable Point near the town of Pentwater, makes for a nice break in our trip home. But we never had time to hike out to the Big Sable Point Lighthouse before our most recent stop at Ludington.

We knew we needed to allow a couple of hours to go out to Big Sable Point and take photographs because the visit entailed parking near the entrance to Ludington State Park and walking along the campground road to reach the 1-1/2 mile trail out to the lighthouse.

Picturesque lighthouses like Big Sable Point typically draw a lot of visitors during warmer weather, but temperatures hovering just above the freezing mark, light snow cover and a slightly overcast, yet windless, day still made for an easy walk along the flat trail out to the beach.

We admired frozen Lake Michigan and snow-kissed beaches along the way as we occasionally met other hikers, people walking their dogs and one hardy guy riding his bicycle out to the lighthouse and back along the trail.

Big Sable Point soon appeared in view behind the low dunes. We were delighted to see that we had the beach to ourselves, giving us plenty of time to take our photographs without worrying about people walking into our shots.

The historical marker at Big Sable Point tells that a dozen shipwrecks in 1855 and the importance of safe transportation through area to Michigan’s then-booming lumber industry led to an 1866 Congressional appropriation of $35,000 to build the lighthouse.

The marker also says that Big Sable Point Lighthouse is one of few Michigan light towers exceeding 100 feet (30 meters), with the tower’s full height reaching 112 feet (34 meters).

Over the years, Big Sable Point’s crumbling cream brick tower received steel cladding and the keeper’s original single-family dwelling became a three-family home to accommodate additional light keepers. A plastic lens eventually replaced the lighthouse’s original third-order Fresnel lens, but the beacon still helps guide area mariners to safety today.

The Sable Points Lighthouse Keepers Association helps maintain Big Sable Point Light, along with Little Sable Point Light and the Ludington North Breakwater Light. Visit the SPLKA Web site for schedule and fee information for seasonal tours and opportunities to climb the lighthouse towers during spring, summer and autumn.

Visiting Big Sable Point on a dreary winter day meant that climbing the light tower would have to wait until another day for us, but the quiet isolation and beauty of the deserted beach probably gave us a much truer picture of the lives keepers experienced throughout the light’s history.

We waited a long time to make the trek out to Big Sable Point Lighthouse. I’m thinking we won’t wait so long for a return trip out to the point.

© Dominique King 2009

Michigan State Parks turn 90

This year may call for extra vigilance from Smokey Bear as Michigan’s nearly 100 state parks prepare to celebrate their 90^th anniversary with banners, giveaways and ice cream with birthday cake.

I first realized this was a milestone year for our beautiful park system as we bought our 2009 annual park permit from a friendly ranger at Ludington State Park. I noticed the decal’s anniversary design and “90 years of excellence” slogan.

Anniversary festivities officially kick off this summer in June with a party in 77 state parks and an expected combined one-day attendance of more than 100,000 guests.

Michigan’s State Parks and Recreation Areas offer a wide variety of natural experiences and resources for visitors throughout the state—from Detroit’s Tri-Centennial State Park, a 31-acre urban oasis offering shoreline fishing, 52 boat slips and a replica lighthouse to the 360-plus-acre Lake Gogebic Park offering activities like camping, hiking, cross country skiing and boating in Michigan’s remote western Upper Peninsula in Ottawa National Forest, near several scenic waterfalls and the Porcupine Mountains.

Among our favorite Michigan park memories over the years include: camping at the Metamora-Hadley Recreation Area, when a nighttime rainstorm washed one of the flip flops sitting by our tent across a road and into the lake (we found it while we canoed the next day!); launching our canoes into the Huron River from the Proud Lake Recreation Area; hiking the shore and canoeing the Pinnebog River in Michigan’s “thumb” at Port Crescent State Park; picnicking in Wilderness State Park in northern Michigan; visiting the waterfalls at Tahquamenon Falls State Park; and visiting some of Michigan’s numerous lighthouses in Grand Haven, Leelanau, Mears and Ludington State Parks.

While Michigan’s Mackinac Island became a national park in 1875 and a state park 20 years later, Interlochen State Park lays official claim as Michigan’s oldest state park. The state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) launched the official state system of parks and recreation areas in 1917 with the approved purchase of 200 acres of land for $60,000 near Interlochen that included the last remaining stand of virgin pines spared from logging in the Lower Peninsula. Today, Interlochen State Park includes a nature trail leading through these special pines.

The state’s Public Domain Commission administered the park at Interlochen until 1919, when the state created the Michigan Park Commission. Park officials began estimating park attendance by 1922, when approximately 220,000 visited the state’s parks. Today the system under the auspices of the DNR includes 284,154 acres, more than 13,000 campsites and draws more than 20 million visitors each year.

While summer marks the official anniversary celebration, our parks and recreation areas offer plenty of four-season fun. Be sure to check back with Midwest Guest later this week to read about our recent visit to the lighthouse at Ludington State Park and check back throughout the year as we visit as many of Michigan’s parks as possible.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping that DNR and park officials opt for battery-operated or electric birthday cake candles for the June parties so Smokey Bear can relax, celebrate the continuing beauty of nature and mark this great milestone with park visitors!

© Dominique King 2009

Photo Friday

The Needles Highway is a particularly scenic part of South Dakota State Highway 87 running through Custer State Park.

Check out Threading the Needles Highway for more of my photos and a story about this beautiful byway.

Meanwhile, here are a few more photos from the beautiful Needles Highway in South Dakota that didn’t make it into my original blog post.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

Related Stories

Begging for attention – wildlife at South Dakota’s Custer State Park

Threading the Needles Highway – driving this beautiful South Dakota byway

© Dominique King 2009

Mount Rushmore memorializes larger-than-life presidents

Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt always seemed a little larger than life to me when I read my American history books as a child. Staring up into their stone faces at Mount Rushmore certainly reinforced that feeling for me.

Tributes abound for some of our best-loved presidents, especially with celebration of the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. But one of the most impressive presidential tributes still has to Mount Rushmore, where the massive visages of Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and Roosevelt stand impassively immortalized high on a South Dakota mountain face.

I generally seek out some of the more obscure attractions when I visit an area, but Mount Rushmore is one of those typically touristy sites that seem to command your attention.

The four 60-foot high faces, carved 500 feet up into the mountain present a solemn presence seen for miles around, as drivers approach the site along roads winding through South Dakota’s beautiful Black Hills region.

Peter Norbeck, who as the state’s governor spearheaded blasting the Needles Highway through Custer State Park in 1919, became the moving force behind the monumental task of creating Mount Rushmore. Serving as a U.S. Senator from South Dakota during the 1920s, Norbeck helped raise nearly one million dollars for the Mount Rushmore project.

Organizers selected artist Gutzon Borglum to create the project. Borglum’s work carving the likeness of Robert E. Lee with a row of Confederate soldiers into Stone Mountain in Georgia gave him some valuable expertise with mountainside carving as he began work on Mount Rushmore.

Cost overruns, Native American belief in the sacredness of the Black Hills, and Borglum’s eccentricities and temperamental personality led to conflicts as the project dragged into the Great Depression years of the 1930s.

Borglum did play an active part in suggesting subjects for Mount Rushmore, which historian Doane Robinson conceived as an especially impressive tourist attraction to retain the interest of visitors once they’d seen the Black Hills. Borglum suggested focusing on some of the nation’s most popular presidents in order to generate national interest in the project.

Selection of the four presidents to include in the carving gave it the overlaying storyline of the country’s expansion. Washington as the first president, Lincoln and preservation of the Union, Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase and Roosevelt’s acquisition of the Panama Canal.

In spite of it all, the project started in 1927 saw its completion in 1941. A Web site for the Public Broadcasting Service documentary about the project contains a few fascinating film clips of Borglum and some of his hundreds of workers working on the carving.

Today, entering the majestic site along the Avenue of Flags honoring 56 states and territories gives no hint of the difficult road traveled to create Rushmore.

The best photo taking opportunities may be along the half-mile Presidential Trail, which takes visitors closer to the mountain and many great vantage points looking up into the larger-than-life panel of presidents.

© Dominique King 2009

Threading the Needles Highway

Looking at the stately image of an Egyptian royal—or at least what looked like a very tall King Tut stationed along South Dakota’s Needles Highway—drove home the value of talking with locals and taking their advice when it comes to finding the best things to do, see and experience on their home turf.

“What are you doing today?”

The question, posed to us over a beyond bountiful morning meal by one of the fellows working at the fabulous French Creek Ranch bed & breakfast didn’t have an exact answer.

We’d stopped in Custer, South Dakota for a couple of days at the end of a trip out to Wyoming and Montana. We didn’t have any concrete plans for that time beyond checking out the area as a possible destination for a longer stay in the future.

Our tentative answer?

“Oh, we’ll probably go on out to Mount Rushmore and over to Custer State Park to take a few pictures.”

Our ranch host quickly insisted that we needed to drive the Needles Highway to take photographs. He assured us that we needed to drive this stretch of road, and that we’d find plenty of use for our cameras during the drive.

We’re always open to a good suggestion, so driving the Needles Highway hopped to the top of our day’s agenda.

The Needles Highway is a particularly scenic part of South Dakota State Highway 87 running through Custer State Park.

During the early 1900s, South Dakota’s then-governor Peter Norbeck envisioned passage through seemingly impassable terrain and saw to the provision of 150,000 pounds of dynamite and unlimited drive to create the Needles Highway in 1919.

The 14-mile stretch of winding road snakes through rock tunnels and past impressive granite pinnacles (or “needles”) like the kingly Tut-like formation. The forces of erosion sculpting the granite peaks of the Harney Range into the needle-like spires and the pine forests create beautiful scenes around every hairpin curve of this road. The highway, a seasonal road open during warmer months, has a suggested speed limit of 20 miles per hour—or less. Especially hardy explorers can take to their cross-country skis during the winter months to visit the Needles.

Norbeck himself, a noted conservationist, U.S. Senator and moving force behind Mount Rushmore in addition to his tenure as governor, suggested that getting out and exploring the area on foot was an even better way to see his beloved Black Hills of South Dakota. Norbeck stressed preserving nature, while endeavoring to share his beautiful country by making it more easily accessible for others to enjoy.

The Needles Highway is part of the larger Peter Norbeck Scene Byway, which includes 68 miles of roads passing by other highlights like Mount Rushmore and great hiking and horseback riding trails. The National Scenic Byways program is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration, aiming aims to draw attention and allot funds to preserve roads with unique archeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational or scenic features.

At the end of the day, we’d done well by taking our host’s advice about making time for slowly threading our way through the Needles, with frequent stops to take photos. Our only regret was that we didn’t have more time to spend in the area.

Related Stories

Begging for attention – wildlife at South Dakota’s Custer State Park

© Dominique King 2009

Photo Friday

We always knew about the giant Alexander Calder sculpture dominating downtown Grand Rapids in Michigan, but hunting for a nearby geocache caused us to take a closer look at this impressive structure.

We found the micro-sized cache and the small-scale model of the larger sculpture, Calder’s 1969 creation, the 43-foot tall La Grande Vitesse. We visited on an extremely hot and humid Sunday morning, so we had time to take a few photos of Calder’s work on the deserted plaza before retreating to a nearby coffee shop to enjoy some ice tea and cool off in air-conditioned comfort!

People may best know the Pennsylvania-born Calder for inventing the mobile. You can read about this fascinating artist at the Calder Foundation site dedicated to his life and innovative work.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2009