It’s dark out there: Grand Marais, Minnesota, has decided to attract visitors with what it doesn't have – an overabundance of city lights. KSTP reports on Visit Cook County’s recent ad campaign promoting a chance to see the stars in the dark night sky. A map of the county showing the best stargazing spots was created with the help of our photographer friend, Bryan Hansel, who also does night sky workshops. The website Dark Star Finder shows just how rare a dark sky is east of the Mississippi River. Visit Cook County has a special webpage dedicated to northern lights.
Medical emergency on a freighter: Wawa-News reports that a man was evacuated from the James R. Barker first to Marathon, Ontario, and then to Sault Ste. Marie in the wee hours of the morning Thursday. Because the boat was in Canadian waters, the evacuation involved the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station in Traverse City and the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Trenton, operated by both the Canadian Royal Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard. The 53-year-old man’s condition or medical need was not available in the report.
What’s the size of a toddler, is nearly 5 decades old and lives in Lake Superior? A darned nice-sized lake trout living in the Gull Island fish refuge in the Apostle Islands. Duluth News Tribune’s Sam Cook tells about its catch and release during a recent Wisconsin DNR fish assessment.
50 Years of Botanical Beauty: Thunder Bay’s Centennial Botanical Conservatory celebrates 50 years this Saturday. The lush conservatory was created to recognize Canada’s centennial in 1967. The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal describes the history of the conservatory and its ribbon cutting – with an axe and a log! The Friends of the Thunder Bay Conservatory webpage features information about events and descriptions and photos of different plants. These passion flowers common to South America were photographed by Allen Nunn. (This year is the country’s sesquicentennial year, of course, and we have a Lake Superior Magazine story about what the Ontario shore was like 150 years ago.) Be sure to add the conservatory to your visiting Thunder Bay list.
A different cross-country “skate” style: On Facebook this week, a video turned up that was posted on BuzzFeed Sweaty last spring in Duluth. This is apparently what energetic outdoors folk do when ice hinders the trails. (We especially appreciate the dog.)
Piping plovers came over: It was a big year for the little shorebirds, nesting on all five Great Lakes for the first time and with a record 76 breeding pairs, reports John Myers of the Duluth News Tribune. A few years ago, Lake Superior Magazine chronicled the work to attract the plovers back to the Big Lake. This year four nesting pair were spotted in the Apostle Islands.
A bit of community can-do: When the only grocery store in Aurora, Minnesota, closed last year, that left the small Minnesota Iron Range community without easy access to healthy, fresh food for folks with limited transportation. Starting today, a bus will pick up Aurora residents every Friday at their home to bring them to Super One in Biwabik and IGA in Hoyt Lakes. They need only call before Friday to use the service, provided by a partnership of Essentia Health, the Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency, the Rutabaga Project and Arrowhead Transit.
A piece of the past: “The recorded history of Garden River begins, or seems to, with Shingwaukonce and carries on through his two sons, Augustine and Buhgujjenene, to the present day.” That is how today’s Garden River First Nation describes the modern history keeping, which began after the signing of the 1850 Robinson Huron Treaty that created this Ojibway reserve near Sault Ste. Marie. The Ojibway people, of course, have a long history in the region. “Prior to the signing of the Robinson Huron Treaty in 1850, the Ojibways of Garden River occupied the entire areas of Sault Ste. Marie and Echo Bay,” the nation’s website continues. SooToday published an interesting story from the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library Archives about one of Chief Shingwaukonce’s sons, Buhgujjenene (or Buhgwujjenene), who traveled to England to raise funds for a local school.
She’s. Almost. There: Back in July we told you about Traci Lynn Martin, a neonatal intensive care nurse attempting to circumnavigate all the Great Lakes in her surf ski this year, thereby attaining a Guinness World Record for a solo surf ski paddle. A surf ski is a kind of slender kayak in which a paddler is tucked into an indent in the top rather than into an interior space. In July she was heading toward the Apostle Islands. She started March 9 in Port Huron at the southern tip of Lake Huron, taking advantage of the earlier ice breakup there. Last Friday, Nov. 10, GoErie caught up with her as she awaited better weather to cross Lake Erie. She’d already traversed Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron. She completed the south shore of Lake Erie this week, planning to continue onto Lake Ontario, circling that and return to do the north shore of Lake Erie. On Tuesday, the Buffalo News caught up with Traci on eastern Lake Erie, which she called the hardest crossings so far. She hopes to complete her full circle of the Great Lakes in December, ending with a celebration where the Detroit River flows into Lake Erie. You can track Traci’s progress and her story via Just Around the Point.
As Traci completes her challenge, three standup paddleboarders plan to test themselves on Lake Superior next summer to raise awareness about the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, reports 9 & 10 News.
Photo & graphic credits: Tom Spence/Visit Cook County; Allen Nunn; Ted Gostomski; 992.2-P272 courtesy of Sault Ste. Marie Public Library Archives; JustAroundThePoint.com.