Best Lake Beach: Petoskey State Park

Petoskey State Park – Smile, photo by Brian Gudas

TV 9&10 News reports that Weather Channel viewers have named the beach at Petoskey State Park as the Best Lake Beach in America.

The Michigan DNR’s page on Petoskey State Park explains that:

Petoskey State Park, located on the north end of Little Traverse Bay, is situated on 303 scenic acres and offers a beautiful sandy beach on the bay. The park has two separate modern campgrounds. Tannery Creek offers 98 campsites, and Dunes offers 70 campsites.

The park land was originally deeded to Pay-Me-Gwau under an Ottawa Indian treaty in July of 1855. Later, much of the land was the site of the W.W. Rice Company. In 1934, the City of Petoskey purchased the land and named it the Petoskey Bathing Beach. In April of 1968, the beach was sold to the State of Michigan. On May 21, 1969, the state was given the title to the land. The campground opened its sites to the first campers in July of 1970.

Check Brian’s photo out on black and in his North Camping Trip slideshow.

You can see some more shots in the Petoskey State Park slideshow from the Absolute Michigan pool, and more great Michigan beaches from Michigan in Pictures.

What do you think? What’s your favorite beach in Michigan?

Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus)

Adult Piping Plover caring for her chicks, photo courtesy National Park Service

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore page on piping plovers begins:

The Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus) is an endangered shorebird. They are sand-colored on the back and white below. During the breeding season adults have a black forehead band between the eyes and a single black band around the neck. (Its larger relative the Killdeer is commonly seen at parks, playgrounds, and golf courses, and has two dark bands around the neck.) Piping Plovers nest only on beaches and prefer beaches with cobble. There are three small populations: one in the Great Plains, one on the Atlantic Coast, and the one here in the Great Lakes. They winter together on the Gulf Coast but travel to the separate areas during the breeding season. It is a special opportunity to be able observe Piping Plovers since there are only between 50 and 60 nesting pairs in the entire Great Lakes area and less than 5000 individuals worldwide.

You can read more about piping plovers at All About Birds where they also have some photos, a plover call and a video. You can also check out a video of a piping plover feeding from the other side of the state on Saginaw Bay.

The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore reports that four pairs of this federally endangered shorebird have made the Glen Haven beach their home for the summer. It’s an easily accessible location that provides visitors an excellent opportunity to view a rare bird in its natural habitat. While the entire shoreline will be open for walking, certain areas of the beach will be temporarily closed to all entry.

More photos of piping plovers from Alice van Zoeren and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Kayaking at Spray Falls in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Kayaking at Spray Falls, photo by Aaron Peterson

In Wednesday Waterfall: Spray Falls on his blog Aaron writes:

Remote Spray Creek bubbles up somewhere in the middle of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, meanders through miles of maple and beech forest—then flies foam-first over a 50-foot cliff into Lake Superior. Seeing the creek upstream, you’d never guess the little guy had it in him to become one of the most dramatic waterfalls in the region.

Due to its remote location and precipitous drop, visitors to Spray Falls will have to decide ahead of time how they’d like to view it: from land, or from water. Each gives an amazing perspective and a good workout (3 miles by foot, 12 miles by float). Either way, you can contemplate gravity and the world’s largest lake in peace, because the park’s tour boats usually turn around a couple miles short of this fascinating feature. Scan the water at the base of the falls for the rusting remnants of a boiler from an 1856 shipwreck.

Read on for directions and another stunning shot of this amazing waterfall. Click to see this photo bigger and check out some more shots by Aaron of Spray Falls and view a lot more of his photography of the Upper Peninsula and the Lake Superior region on his website.

Many more Pictured Rocks photos on Michigan in Pictures.

Grand Sable Lake in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Grand Sable Lake, photo by Gary of the North

The Michigan DNR says (in part from this PDF) that Grand Sable Lake:

…is a scenic undeveloped lake located in Alger County, about 6 miles southwest of Grand Marais. The 630 acre lake lies within the boundaries of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (PRNL). The shoreline is mostly wooded with mixed hardwoods, conifers, and cedar species. Most of the surrounding soils are sandy. Sand dunes 200 ft high are located on the north end. Grand Sable Lake has a maximum depth of 85 feet, but averages around 35-40 feet. The banks drop off quite rapidly. Even so, the shoreline at the public access site on the northeast shoreline remains shallow for over 200 feet, dropping quickly into deep water…

Access to the lake before the area became part of the PRNL was from the small park on the north end. At that time, the park was managed by the village of Grand Marais. A 1949 fisheries survey documented the presence of rock bass, northern pike, yellow perch, smallmouth bass, white suckers, and minnow species. Past stocking efforts included rainbow trout, splake, smelt, smallmouth, largemouth, pike, bluegills, and lake trout.

It’s apparently 50% white suckers now – click through to read more. Also see the Grand Sable Loop at DW Hikes.

Check this out background big and check out some other views here and here. More in Gary’s Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore slideshow.

Much (much) more from the awesomely amazing Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Michigan in Pictures!

The Guru Of The Green and our science fiction moment

Guru Of The Green – Flint, Michigan, photo by J.M.Barclay.

“It’s almost like science fiction at this point.”
~Weather Underground weather historian, Christopher C. Burt

Dr. Jeff Masters flew with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990 and co-founded Ann Arbor-based The Weather Underground in 1995 while working on his Ph.D. He’s Wunderground’s Senior Meteorologist and has been writing some insightful and frankly scary articles about what he calls “Summer in March” which has seen up to a week straight of record high temperatures. Yesterday he wrote:

Since record keeping began in the late 1800s, there have never been so many temperature records broken for spring warmth in a one-week period–and the margins by which some of the records were broken yesterday were truly astonishing. Wunderground’s weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, commented to me yesterday, “it’s almost like science fiction at this point.” A few of the more remarkable records from yesterday:

Pellston, Michigan in the Northern Lower Peninsula is called “Michigan’s Icebox”, since it frequently records the coldest temperatures in the state, and in the entire nation. But the past five days, Pellston has set five consecutive records for hottest March day. Yesterday’s 85° reading broke the previous record for the date (53° in 2007) by a ridiculous 32°, and was an absurd 48°F above average.

The low temperature at Marquette, Michigan was 52° yesterday, which was 3° warmer than the previous record high for the date!

Also don’t miss this article where Jeff looks at how extraordinarily rare for climate locations with 100+ year long periods of records to break records day after day after day.

James snapped this amazing capture of the Guru frozen above some green water left over from St Patrick’s Day at Flint’s Riverbank Park. Check it out bigger and in his free run sun slideshow with some Free Running / Parkour action. He also has a show starting Saturday – details on his Facebook.

Spring Beauties say welcome spring!

tinyflowers_vista, photo by CreateWithKim

Wikipedia’s entry for the season of Spring says that the  vernal equinox, the point when the earth is straight on its axis and the sun passes directly over the equator. That put the official start of spring at 1:14 AM EST this morning. As the northern hemisphere tilts sunward, temperatures begin to warm and all kinds of good stuff starts growing and popping. A few of my personal favorites are daffodils, crocuses and yes, spring beauties. Yours?

According to the University of Michigan Herbarium, Michigan is home to two native species of Claytonia: Claytonia caroliniana and Claytonia virginica:

The two native species of Claytonia only rarely grow side by side in the same forests in Michigan. When they do, C. virginica reaches the peak of its flowering later by at most a few days than C. caroliniana. The vegetative parts of both turn yellowish after a short flowering and fruiting season in the spring, and soon the plants are no longer seen above ground in forests which may have been carpeted with them a month previously. Both native species are extremely variable in leaf shape and size as well as in other characters, such as the aberrant presence of extra leaves on the stem. The petals are usually pale pink with deeper colored veins, but the ground color ranges from white to very deep pink; the corolla may be as much as 27 mm broad.

The photo above looks like virginica, but Kim shot this on the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and the Herbarium doesn’t list Alger as one of the counties it is found in.

Check this photo out bigger and in her Mostly Wildflowers slideshow.

Sleeping Bear Dune Rides

Dune rides, photo by creed_400.

This photo prompted me to dig out a ton of information & photos about this vanished part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes experience. Enjoy Sleeping Bear Dune Rides: Remembering the Dunesmobiles at Leelanau.com.

See it background big and in creed_400s Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore slideshow.

Iced Roots

Iced Roots, photo by Happyhiker4

See this photo from the Lake Michigan shore at Point Betsie bigger on Mark’s Facebook, where you can also see the trees from the other side! About these photos, Mark writes:

Sometimes gifts just appear in the strangest places. In this case it was the gift of the most beautiful trees, wrapped and protected with the most beautiful layers of ice, with a most amazing lake in the background. I watched as the waves crashed and delivered the next layer. It certainly was a gifted and blessed day. Blessed in Nature, What a Life.

What a life indeed.

Tahquamenon Falls in Winter

Tahquamenon Falls in Winter, photo by Karen Lancour

You know that we love, love, love Tahquamenon Falls on Michigan in Pictures. If you haven’t made the trek in wintertime, definitely do – it’s amazing!

Karen shared this photo on the Michigan in Pictures page on Facebook. See it bigger on Facebook and click here to see more of the photos folks have shared with us!

The Hiawatha National Forest

Hiawatha National Forest, photo by Sean Depuydt.

Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o’er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Song of Hiawatha

The Hiawatha National Forest in the Upper Peninsula is known as “the Great Lakes National Forest” because nearly 1 million acre forest touches three Great Lakes: Superior, Huron and Michigan.

The landscape of sandstone and limestone includes the watersheds of the three Great Lakes, five National Wild & Scenic Rivers – the Carp, Indian, Sturgeon, Tahquamenon, and Whitefish.

Northern hardwood and mixed forest types are common on the Hiawatha National Forest. Tree species include sugar maple, red maple, American Beech, white pine, red pine, northern white cedar, eastern larch/tamarack, and balsam fir. Jackpine savannahs are also common in some areas. Much of the Hiawatha is covered in wetlands, and as a result there are many wetland plants.

Spring wildflowers bloom in May and June.
The Forest contains habitat for northwoods species like whitetail deer, gray wolf, and lynx. Kirtland’s warbler, an endangered species, relies on young jackpine stands for its nesting grounds, and piping plover nest along our pebbly Great Lakes beaches. Trout are native to coldwater streams, and our inland lakes support strong, diverse fisheries

In short, a wonderful place. Here’s hoping you get a chance to have fun as the covering snow piles deeper this winter.

Check the photo out on black and in Sean’s Upper Michigan slideshow.