Northern Michigan

This blog was written while camping in "Picture Rock National Lakeshore"

Michigan reminds me of Maine. Visitors are looking for moose, mosquitos are loving you, same types of trees and similar climate. The difference of course are the huge fucking lakes surrounding Michigan on all sides.

I'm at a beach in Lake Superior where the only way to get here is to hike four miles or take a boat. Its enclose in rock cliffs on both sides with a 1/2 mile beach between the two...when I'm standing on the cliffs the rock is 500 million years old. During the last ice age the glaciers acted like the mother of all bull dozers and shaved off 500 million years of accumulated sediment and rock. The "Cambrian Explosion"!!......multicellular organisms were first forming on this planet and I'm standing on it!

I like Michigan immensely. I drove from Pennsylvania's north western corner straight to "Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore" on Lake Michigan. I camped two nights back country...skinny dipped at sunset on my private beach. I was the only back country camper that night and the next day I walked the beach for miles. I survived torrential rains that night. Had my tent collapse in the middle of the storm...had rough weather for a couple days...but spirits were never down.

I raided another continental breakfast - this time a Best Western and they had a waffle maker...JACK POT! I even got to take a hot shower when a nice couple checked out but left their door ajar with the door latch.

Picture Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior is just as grand as the Dunes. Doing two nights along the Lakeshore Trail. About 19 miles round trip....When I was sitting on the beach the second day a small ferry boat disappeared into the cliff. It was pretty weird to see...It reminded me of "The Spy Who Loved Me" when the submarines were swallowed by the freighter ships or in "You Only Live Twice" when the space shuttles fit neatly inside volcanoes. I investigated by walking along the cliffs which led off the beach - eventually when the cliffs turned my ledge disappeared into the water and I was forced to take a plunge - The boat had snaked its way into a small channel between the cliffs about thirty feet across. Sand stone rock hung over my head fifty feet up and I thought that rock could fall in an instant or a million years and no one would be the wiser. I clung to the cliff while swimming back and came face to face with a conglomerate layer of rock nearly 550 million years old - with smooth round pebbles cemented into the rock having to be millions and millions of years older. This kind of shit gets me going man...I love it!

I often make a mental list of places which should be visited at least twice. Chapel Beach in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshre on Lake Superior in Michigan is on that list....

If I "came too" on this beach with no idea where I was my millionth guess would not be Northern Michigan!

I'm loving every minute of this....future blogs will be updated 1-2 times a week, but the SPOT google location is updated a couple times a day. My roughly current location can be found by clicking the link on the right. More photos are on facebook. Cheers everyone!

-Matt