Me, too, until yesterday. I have probably walked past some before, but the UP flora is significantly different from the LP where I live.
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Hm, I’m intrigued. Beautiful; are there some sort of eggs? Thanks .
A bit different, but part of creation, even if we had a hand in it. We visited the Museum of Scotland, and met Dollie.
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Did we?. All we did was put the elements together outside a womb.
No different from planting a seed in a pot instead of the ground outside.
Richard
For my friend and fellow Michigander, @randy, Tahquamenon Falls is on the North Country Trail! My husband and I would like to do the hike between the falls sometime.
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Of course we did, as stewards ordained by God.
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Thanks! The NCT is one of my favorite spots. I took a walk on the section here (about 5 miles east of our house) last night with my boys and our dog. I have never been to Tahquamenon before–it looks beautiful. That would be a nice walk.
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Yeah they are wove sort of eggs. Not sure what though.
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I wouldn’t mind a closer gander at those falls, myself. Nicely curated photos.
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As our old slogan sang, “Come to Michigan.”
I would love to show you every nook and crannie that we have found, and explore new ones. Our family is always ready for an adventure!
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There’s a set of falls near where I attended university that look a lot like that though the geology is slightly different – basalt and andesite, blocky, rather than what looks like shale in your picture. Just downstream there’s a swimming hole, then another set of similar falls followed by another swimming hole followed by a bunch of small scattered falls with little pools just right for sitting in to beat the heat.
Good memories.
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Yes, really good memories.
Yes, its shale at Tahquamenon and also at Sable Falls. There is a long tradition, as you see in the photos, of walking in the shallow parts of the Tahquamenon river, where the floor of the river is hard stairstep stone. Easy to accidentally step into a hole as both my youngest and I have done. We always wear shoes walking in the water there.
I found this nice summary article about Michigan geology, which specifically discusses Tahquamenon and Sable falls. Marquette has many water falls all over, and they are quite different. Sandier riverbeds with roundish boulders in all sizes. And volcanic rock is exposed at Black Rocks, also mentioned in the article.
A Michigan county map is available for reference.
Below are some of my shoreline photos from Lake Superior and Lake Huron. Much (most?) of the shorelines are sandy, but many places are stony - much gravel size material, but also larger stones and some boulders, which are usually farther out. I have about 20 pounds of stone out on the deck from this most recent trip.
Besides the beauty of the colors, textures and sparkle of some stone is the variety.
Grand Marais on Lake Superior
Sturgeon Point on Lake Huron
These stones are nearly all a long way from being the “original” volcanic rock. They have been moved by glaciers, ground down, mixed, pressed, reformed, layered, and crushed and mixed again.
Another nice publication about Michigan rocks and minerals is available here.
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I enjoy geology! Thank you for the reference.
I keep forgetting to bring it up–just an interesting experience. Have you or anyone else had a “muddy rain” this spring, in April? We did–they say it came from dust from New Mexico. I’m still washing stains off some glass.
Michigan just got hit with ‘dirty rain,’ here’s where it came from
Thanks.
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I heard something about this. I have no way of knowing, really. If you have to judge by rain splatter on my car, it would probably look the same as usual.
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There was an incident many yeas ago in the UK when (supposedly) sand from the Sahara Desert was blown in on the wind and rain. I have not known it since or before it, for that matter.
Richard
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That is interesting! As you likely know, I grew up on the southern edge of the Sahara, as a missionary kid. Every winter, the prevailing wind switched to come from the Sahara, dumping tons of dust (harmattan) on everything to the south. It wasn’t till recently that I learned that even the Amazon rainforest depends on organophosphates from ancient lakebeds transported by wind across the Atlantic from the Sahara.
NASA Satellite Reveals How Much Saharan Dust Feeds Amazon’s Plants - NASA
Back when the Sahara was greener, about 5000 years ago (I was able to see some rock carvings up in the desert showing animals typical of a greener time), there were huge lakes, including “megalake Chad.” African humid period - Wikipedia
We washed dust out of out toothbrushes, and even played in piles of dust the wind dropped against the mud walls of our compound, but had no idea what kind of fish dust we were playing in!
I imagine the winds switch around and sometimes bring Saharan dust north; I’ve heard it reaches the US, too.
Thank you for your experience broadening mine.
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We get Sahara dust every spring. Makes for hazy days and pretty sunsets. Also get smoke from crop field burns in Mexico about the same time. growing up in the Texas panhandle, when had a thunderstorm nearby it would stir up dust and dirt from the updraft, then start raining, so you would has a dust storm and rain simultaneously until it rained enough to clear it.
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That is pretty cool. Thanks for expanding that area for me, too. I did not know that.
I wonder what your rain looks like with the smoke added. Ours looked like a light mud slurry. It left drop like dirt residue on windows and cars.
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Yeah. Usually the amounts of dust are small, maybe changing the color of the morning and evening sky but no visible dust on the ground. There has been occasions when the dust from Sahara gives the surface of snow a pale red hue, even north of the polar circle.
The amounts of dust blowing from Sahara must be really huge.
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