Ken Harmon
Sawtooth Mountain Fall
On Minnesota's North Shore, photographers have been posting loads of color shots, many just slightly inland, like Ken Harmon's magnificent drone shot taken this week from along the Sawtooth Mountains, the spine of the shore. While mid-September seems early for fall colors, that's actually more historically along the norm, as you can see from our color map. For those planning their color safaris, each of the shoreside states and province have fall color updates. For Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the current status shows most places with 10-25% change with the peak not expected until early October in most locales. The U.P. tourism website also has a wonderful set of 10 suggested U.P. color tours, which, of course, you could mix and match. The Minnesota color finder shows much of the North Shore (and certainly inland) as being from 25-75% changed. In the provincial state parks along the vast Ontario shore, colors changes noted Sept. 10 indicated 30% at Batchawana Bay on the east to 20% at the Pigeon River at the border near Thunder Bay. Wisconsin color changes, on the shore that could be considered Lake Superior's "banana belt," changes were hovering at about 20-25% with peaks expected the second week of October. And we have our own suggested autumn road trip with our "7 Great Fall Drives" by Bob Berg.
Fall Color Chart
Ahoy, History: Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore posted an image of a piece of wreckage that washed up during recent storms. "This 10 foot by 2 foot artifact is probably from either the Sitka or Gale Staples, ships that wrecked on the Au Sable Pointe reef over 100 years ago," the park reports. Great Lakes Dives has a nice listing of various shipwrecks along the park's coast. Julius F. Wolffe Jr.'s well-respected Lake Superior Shipwrecks book notes the Gale Staples, a 277-foot, 2,197-ton wooden steamer, sank in October 1918, some 8 miles west of Grand Marais, Michigan. It had a cargo of coal bound for Port Arthur, Ontario (now part of Thunder Bay), and all hands were saved, according to Great Lakes Dives. The Sitka, a 272-foot, 1,740-ton wooden steamer loaded with iron ore, hooked onto the Au Sable Reef 1 mile from shore on Oct. 4, 1904, according to Julius. The crew was removed safely, but the boat was pounded down. As an interesting side note, Julius points out that a few weeks later, the schooner-barge W.S. Crosthwaite burned while at anchor in Whitefish Bay after a stove being used to heat laundry water caught fire. "It was all but over when the flames hit the heavily tarred deck," he writes. He adds some sailors felt the fate of the Crosthwaite was sealed when the schooner loaded the yawl salvaged from the Sitka and oars from another wreck. "Sailors consider it extremely bad luck to take on board equipment from a ship which had been lost." So, note to self, leave that newly washed up artifact on the shore.
Word Has It: Merriam-Webster chose "Yooper" as its tweeted Word of the Day for Monday, starting the week out on a high note, we feel. Emily Bingham of MLive did some nifty reporting on the wordy notice of this noun nickname, and quoted the dictionary's Twitter post link about the words Yooper and U.P.: “Yoopers have been saying both out loud now for about 40 years, but it’s only in recent years that those beyond the U.P. and its geographical neighbors have begun to encounter Yooper in use.” As Emily points out, the dictionary added "Yooper" just five years ago. We also like the follow up Tweets from the U.P. residents, including one from Michigan Tech's Archives, which hesitated to "like" the dictionary tweet because they came to the site just when the Word of the Day logged 906 likes – 906 being that magic U.P. number (area code). "We were going to like this tweet," posted the archivists, "but it was sitting at 906 likes, and we just couldn't bring ourselves to change that."
Webcams and Picnic Places: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Detroit District announced this week that its Soo Locks webcams are up and available once again after a long hiatus. There are four cameras set up with links that refresh every five minutes. It's nice to have the webcams up, especially since the Corps has had a lot to handle in the last few weeks. Last
week, on Tuesday, the Poe Lock, which locks through about 90% of the commercial vessel traffic, was down a second time this year for about five hours while divers finished – for now – emergency repairs on Upstream Gate 1 sill. "The team successfully installed three braces on the north side of the sill to reduce the risk of sill seal armour movement until the permanent repairs can be made over this winter during the shutdown," the Corps posted. The Corps also this week announced an addition of a community picnic shelter in Brady Park near the Soo Locks (in photo), adding that on Thursday, Sept. 26, the Corps will celebrate an official grand opening. Community members are invited to bring picnic lunches.
More Community Construction: Teri Cadeau of the Lake County News-Chronicle out of Two Harbors, Minnesota, reports on the converting of Knife River's historic train depot into the Knife River Heritage and Cultural Center. The first phase, workers hope, will be completed this construction season. "Exterior work made up the majority of the first phase of reconstruction work and included patching the roof, replacing historic windows, installing concrete footings to raise the building's foundation and working on the siding," Teri reports. General contractor Larry Ronning told Teri that the project has a special place in his heart. As a Knife River native, he remembers waiting for the train to Two Harbors at the depot. “It’s about both paying back and paying it forward,” he told Teri. “And it’s a depot, which means it was built to be somewhere safe and secure and pleasing architecturally. It has such historic significance for this community, and that’s one of the main reasons to save it.”
It's This Weekend!: In our events newsletter earlier this week, we invited everyone to enjoy the great annual Bushplane Days Festival at the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Only one problem, we listed the dates as last week! Of course, savvy e-newsletter readers knew those dates to be wrong (and well past), but we wanted to remind anyone in the Sault neighborhood this weekend – Sept. 21 & 22 – not to miss a chance to enjoy Bushplane Days during the 30th year of the heritage centre. A few of our favorite things at the centre are the interactive exhibits about planes and fighting wildfires, the feel-the-wind-in-your-hair film (you'll understand it when you see it) and, of course, the planes themselves.
Clean Your Beaches: Saturday is International Beach Cleanup Day and on the Alliance of the Great Lakes website, there are several locations on Lake Superior where you can sign up to sweep a beach. Of course, just because there's no formal cleanup on your shore, doesn't mean you can't go out, enjoy the beach and collect a few unsavory items that should not be littering the shoreline.
A New Pie Lady: With respect to the late Betty Lessard, our own true "Pie Lady," young Emmy shows a marked enthusiasm for pies and pie tasting on her YouTube video on EmmyMadeInJapan. The video was shot in Duluth, where she stopped in a park to savor the 5-layer chocolate, pumpkin, strawberry rhubarb, The Great Lakes, apple and pecan pies she bought at Betty's Pies on Minnesota's North Shore. We marveled at her in-the-moment reviews and her obvious pleasure in the pie eating. She also gave our book, The Original Betty's Pies Favorite Recipes, a nice plug. We wish she could have met the original Betty, a sweet, but tough and practical baker who made lots of great pies (about 60,560 just in her first 25 years at the restaurant). Oh, and if you're wondering: Yes, watching Emmy eat pie makes you want to eat pie, so that's our warning to you and your waistline.
Photo & graphic credits: Ken Harmon; Lake Superior Magazine; Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore; Merriam-Webster Dictionary; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Bushplane Heritage Centre; Alliance of the Great Lakes; Emmymadeinjapan