It's UP time for your Fabius Township blogger!

We did our annual straying from the lower peninsula of Michigan this past week.  The Mighty Mac, over the Mackinaw Straits connecting Lakes Michigan and Huron, is a fabulous way to enter the Upper Peninsula. 

What ignites your imagination?

Recent explosions on the sun have ignited not only my imagination but also incredible sights on earth.  Auroras are not insipid events!  I have had only one incident of viewing one live and that was just outside Marquette in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula back in the early 70’s.  It was late August, and the friend we were visiting woke us about four in the morning to invite us to come outside.  First he pointed out the frozen (!) bucket of water and then pointed up to the sky which was filled with the most brilliant, undulating waves of lights, greens and reds and whites, whose impression is impossible to catch with words.   One is awe-struck when in the presence of an aurora borealis!  

I wish I could include one of my own photos of an aurora, but since I have none I will send you to SpaceWeather.com to see the photos that others have captured in the last month.  There you can also learn more about upcoming events in space to keep an eye out for.  I invite you to sign up for email alerts of solar flares, auroras, meteors, etc.   Have you seen the close conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in the western sky over North America?  Keep scrolling to find the aurora albums.

From the auroras photographed in February, here is one on Lake Superior's Au Train Bay where I have photographed amazing sunrises but not auroras -- yet....!  Aaron Peterson shot this on what he said was a rare clear night sky over Lake Superior.  See more of his photos at his website, archive.aaronpeterson.net.

And finally here  is a time lapse photo/video of the March 12 aurora in Wasilla, Alaska.  This needs to be watched when you have time to drift along with the lights.  Although we couldn't be there, we can contemplate its beauty in this 6-minute video. 

Do not stay in ignorance of the other inspiring bloggers on Mrs. Nesbitt's ABC Wednesday.  I am insistent about your visiting ABC Wednesday!

Nimbostratus for ABC Wednesday

I was feeling like a numskull.  I had neglected to even negotiate my way through the N’s in the dictionary and I was very nervous.  Here it was Wednesday morning and I had no new entry for ABC Wednesday, nary a one, nada, nichevo.  I had the notion to skip doing an N-blog, but then I really did not have the nerve to break the nexus with the ABC gang.  That wasn’t the notoriety I craved.  So stop being a nattering nabob of negativity, knuckle down and nab a dictionary, I said to myself.   So I did!

And next thing I knew there was the word I needed and I even had a photo to illustrate it.

This nimbostratus cloud (a low dark cloud that precipitates rain, sleet, or snow) appeared one day when we were in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan just a month ago.  You are viewing Lake Superior from Shelter Bay and it could certainly be raining over Au Train Island.

Please do not neglect checking out the numerous contributions to N-Day on

ABC Wednesday.

Just a week ago

Sunrise over Lake Superior's AuTrain Bay last Friday as we prepared to head south at the end of a week in our favorite part of Michigan, the Upper Peninsula.  It was the last day with pasties for lunch and no more whitefish at every supper for another year!

Please find more skies from around the world at Skywatch Friday.

Just joking?

Driving along H01 in Alger County last week we came upon an unexpected sign in the forest, a very folkloric-looking sign.  It stood out amongst the trees and vegetation of the Hiawatha National Forest and I had to stop and grab the camera while Gene and Willow waited patiently in the car.  My guess was that since we were definitely in Finnish-settled land of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan the language of the sign was Finnish.   What does it say?

If you have very good eyesight, you might be able to read the English in the lower right hand corner of the sign.  I don't;  so when we arrived home I went straight to Google Translator and was startled by the translation possibilities.   See for yourself what I discovered is the translation of Harran paska puro.  You can see the creek in the second and third pictures.  It doesn't look quite that bad to me!  OK, OK, it is a little brown.........

For more jollity, please visit ABC Wednesday!

I is for island

Incredible morning on Shelter Bay with AuTrain Island silhouetted against the horizon of Lake Superior.

More I's at ABC Wednesday!

Back to the UP for T-day on ABC Wednesday

It is the tantalizing Tahquamenon Falls in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.   They are a teaser of a waterfall because they are spilt into two sections, upper and lower, just like the state.  Part of a Michigan state park (visit Tahquqmenon Falls State Park website) they are probably the most visited falls in the UP because the park is just about two hours from the Mackinaw Bridge.
Here is the another view of the lower falls and the island that divides them.

Enjoy more pictures and information about Tahquamenon Falls at this excellent Wikipedia article.

And treat yourself to more explorations of the letter T on this week's ABC Wednesday.

Paean to a Pasty

As you can see we could not wait to eat before allowing this pasty to have its portrait taken.  It is sitting with us at a picnic table at  Bay Furnace National Forest Campground just west of Munising, Michigan, where we bought it at Muldoon's Pasties (their Facebook page).  It is a complete meal in a crust,  perfect for lunch at a roadside picnic table as you travel the UP.   Pasties for lunch and whitefish for supper and we are the happiest UP travelers!

Pasties, originally brought here by Cornish miners, are "the" food of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  We have tried the pasties from one end of the UP to the other and Muldoon's stand up with the best.  Originally we would always get pasties at Dobber's in Escanaba and then it became Gramma T's in Negaunee, but two summers ago when at the Porkies we discovered The Pasty Corner in Iron River.  It is now our #1 for flaky crust and delicious filling, however it is the farthest away from us.   Perhaps the bottom line here is that we never pass up a pasty shop; we have tasted pasties from Suzy's in St. Ignace,  Lehtos, Wildwood, and the AuTrain Cafe along the way, and Toni's in Laurium on the Keweenaw Peninsula. Visit Pasty Central for more not only on pasties but on the UP in general.

Here are the traditional ingredients of a UP pasty: diced potatoes, rutabagas, carrots, onions & ground or diced beef. But these days you can also buy a vegetarian or chicken pasty.  If you would like to learn more about the origin and history of this Cornish cuisine, visit Wikipedia's article, Pasty.  I am now so hungry I must complete this blog and search for a proper substitute for a pasty.  Wish me luck!

For less edible but still fascinating words beginning with P, visit ABC Wednesday.

Oh no, snow in the forecast

Yes, this morning the local weather forecast mentioned the word some dread, some cheer, snow.  In honor of this first mention I bring you the ultimate winter cap, the Stormy Kromer.  A UP (the Upper Peninsula of Michigan) classic, this sign is on the side of the Mackinaw Straits Fish Co. in St. Ignace, our first stop after crossing the bridge.  Here we purchase supper, fresh whitefish fillets.  

Explore the history of the Stormy Kromer cap and learn more about George "Stormy" Kromer who asked his wife Ida to modify a baseball cap for colder weather, the Stormy Kromer cap.
And for a more traditional place to buy your cap, you cannot beat the best department store in the Upper Peninsula, an old fashioned, traditional department store, Getzs in Marquette.

Going the wrong way?

Hmmm, nobody is going our way!  It is a Saturday morning in September and everyone is going north causing long lines on the Mackinaw Bridge, the Mighty Mac.  The photo might be very different if it were taken on a Sunday afternoon when the traffic on the Bridge and I75 is headed south.   For bridge traffic all over the world, please do visit the Sunday Bridge website of San Francisco's Louis LaVache.

Have I told you that the Yoopers (Michiganders living in the Upper Peninsula) call the folks from the Lower Peninsula "trolls," that is ones who liver under the bridge?  There is a definite rivalry and the Yoopers who have come south to work in the factories consider themselves living in exile. 

And one more piece of Michigan trivia: the state motto expressed on the state flag is "Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice." (If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.)  And there are two of them that make up the state.  And thus the need for the Mighty Mac.  For more on Michigan, visit the Michigan Department of Transportation website.

M28 Bridge over the AuTrain River

We are in the UP (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan for this Sunday's Bridge for M. Louis LaVache and other bridge friends.  The AuTrain River's journey to Lake Superior is almost finished.  Here M28, the road between Sault St. Marie and Wakefield, crosses the river as it begins to flow through the glorious white sand beach of AuTrain Bay. 

For bridges from all over the world, please visit Louis and friends at Sunday Bridges.

Lake Superior I

We are standing at Sand Point looking over to the beautiful Grand Island East Channel Lighthouse, a unique wooden structure built in 1869-70 but not used as a lighthouse since 1913.  The Alger County Historical Society has been raising funds to restore it.  This is Munising Bay on the greatest Great Lake, Superior.  Our internet connection is intermittent, but hopefully there will more Lake Superior blogs this week!

Viewed from the top of the bridge

You are looking at part of the structure of the Shelldrake Dam and the foot bridge that crosses over it in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.   This dam and bridge were a part of a rustic (i.e., no modern plumbing) Michigan State Forest Campground until closed two years ago because of budget problems.

It was located just to the northwest of Paradise (see my Mighty Mac bridge photo on April 18) and southeast of Whitefish Point, off which the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior in November, 1975.  The "Fitz" was carrying taconite, low grade iron ore, from Superior, Wisconsin, for the steel mills of Detroit and Toledo when she sank just north of Whitefish Bay in the "gales of November;"  this tragedy of all lives lost was immortalized by Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot.  For more of this story of the inland seas, go to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.

For more bridges from around the world, visit Louis la Vache's Sunday Bridge Series