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.

Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus)_0314_1, photo by johndykstraphotography.

We’ve been seeing a lot of snowy owls this winter in the Absolute Michigan pool on Flickr. These 2′ birds are native to the Arctic tundra, but they’ve been sighted in large numbers in Michigan this winter. Snowy owls flock to Mich. in unusual numbers in USA Today explains:

Scientists say the likely reason for the explosion is that the owls’ chief food source, small animals called lemmings, was abundant last summer, allowing the adults to raise more young. Now, in search of food, young owls are heading farther south.

Although there are a few snowy owls spotted in Michigan every year, “I can tell you this winter is highly unusual,” said Karen Cleveland, bird biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

…The phenomenon is called an irruption, an invasion of birds in unusual places or in high numbers. It usually occurs because of a lack of food in the birds’ home territory.

They even talk with photographer Stacy Niedzwiecki about her snowy owl photos, which we featured on Michigan in Pictures a few months ago!

The Snowy Owl page at All About Birds notes that they are the northernmost, heaviest, and most distinctively marked owl of North America, and that an individual adult Snowy Owl may eat three to five lemmings per day, or up to 1,600 per year! While this irruption means that there are many more owls than usual in Michigan, they are a common wintertime visitor.

John captured this owl in Muskegon County earlier this month. See it bigger and see more in his Snowy Owl slideshow.

More Michigan birds on Michigan in Pictures!

Reach into the sky, photo by adonyvan

Jiqing Fan writes: As I was snowshoeing on the lake shore, I was constantly looking for interesting lines as my foreground. Lucky for me, the snowdrifts have so much to offer.

Check it out on black and see more from his wander along Lake Superior in the Houghton & UP MI slideshow.

Hope you get a lot of what Michigan has to offer this weekend. I don’t know if you got a look at our impromptu mashup with tweets to #mich175 on Twitter and photos from the Absolute Michigan pool we did on Absolute Michigan. It was fun: check out What’s great about the Great Lakes State.

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.

Sugar Cookies – Michigan, photo by betsyweber

We, the PEOPLE of the territory of Michigan … mutually agree to form ourselves

into a free and independent state, by the style and title of “The State of Michigan’”

~Constitution of Michigan of 1835

While Michigan’s Constitution was written in 1835, it took until January 26, 1837 for President Andrew Jackson to sign the bill making Michigan the nation’s 26th state (more about that right here but the short answer is, blame it on Ohio). That makes today the 175th birthday of the Great Lakes State. We’ve been making a fuss of it and giving things away on Absolute Michigan all week, and joining a whole lot of people in touting the good things about our great state at #Mich175 on Twitter.

Here’s some fun facts about Michigan:

• Michigan is derived from the Indian word Michigama, meaning great or large lake. (more about Michigan’s name on Michigan in Pictures)
• French explorers Étienne Brulé & Grenoble are the first recorded Europeans to set foot in Michigan (you never know though). In 1668 Fathers Jacques Marquette and Claude Dablon established the first mission at Sault Ste. Marie, and in 1701, French officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded  Fort Pontchartrain in Detroit.
• The Michigan Territory was created, with Detroit designated as the seat of government and William Hull appointed as our first governor.
• Michigan became the 26th state on the 26th of January, 1837. Is 26 our lucky number? FYI, our first State governor was Stevens T. Mason, the 25 year old Boy Governor (the youngest state governor in American history).
• Michigan’s nickname is “the Wolverine State”. It is generally believed to have been coined during the 1835 Toledo War between Michigan and Ohio, when our southern rivals gave us the name due to the wolverine’s reputation for sheer orneriness!
• The Great Seal of Michigan was designed by Lewis Cass and was patterned after the seal of the Hudson Bay Fur Company. It depicts an elk on the left and a moose on the right supporting a shield that reads Tuebor (“I will protect”).The interior of the shield shows a figure on the shore with the sun rising over a lake. His right hand is raised, symbolizing peace, but he holds a rifle in his left hand, showing readiness to defend the state and nation.Below the shield is the inscription of our state motto Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice: “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.” (I just learned that Michigan has an Office of the Great Seal – how cool would it be to say you worked there??)
• The original State Capitol of Michigan was Detroit, and it moved to Lansing in 1847 to help develop the western side of the state and due to the need to develop the western portions of the state and for easy defense from British troops. Here’s a pic of Michigan’s original Capitol Building and an 1890s view of the current Michigan capitol.
• Michigan is the 10th largest state by area if you count the water … and who wouldn’t count the water??
• Speaking of water, we have 3,288 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, good for second to only Alaska in coastline!

More fun facts from the State of Michigan.

Check this out background bigilicious and in Betsy’s Cookies slideshow.

PS: I made a little Michigan Birthday cover photo for Facebook that you are free to grab.

Happy 175th Birthday Michigan!!

Saginaw – Winter street scene, photographer unknown

This black and white photo shows winter carts loaded with lumber on an unidentified street in Saginaw. It’s from Seeking Michigan .

Old Mackinaw Lighthouse under the Northern Lights, photo by yooper1949.

The sun has let off a big flare – read all about it and see a cool time-lapse of the October aurora on Northern Lights a strong possibility! at Absolute Michigan.

Carl shot this in October of 2011 – see the photo bigger on black and in Carl’s gorgeous Lighthouses slideshow.

Many more Northern Lights / Aurora Borealis photos on Michigan in Pictures!

Barton Dam 1/21/12, photo by pcaines

ArborWiki’s entry for Barton Dam says that:

Barton Dam is one of Ann Arbor’s four dams on the Huron River. It was designed by engineer Gardner Stewart Williams and architect Emil Lorch and built in 1912-13 as part of the development of hydroelectric power on the Huron River by the predecessor of Detroit Edison. The earthen-construction dam is 34 feet high and 1767 feet long, and has a typical surface area of 315 acres and typical storage of 5050 acre-feet. The dam can be accessed from Huron River Drive from the city park located at the foot of Bird Road.

The City of Ann Arbor purchased the dam from Detroit Edison in the 1960s, and restarted hydroelectric generation in the 1980s. The facility has a 900-kilowatt turbine that generates 4.2 million kWh per year.

In case you’re wondering, Emil Lorch (1870-1963) was the first University of Michigan Dean of Architecture and – as this page from the Bentley Historical Library explains, Gardner Stewart Williams was the engineer who worked with the Detroit Edison Company to identify sites for dams to generate power on the Huron in the early 1900s. There’s also a Flickr group for Barton Dam where you can see a lot more photos!

Be sure to check this photo out bigger and see more in cpcaines Ann Arbor slideshow.

Lake Michigan, photo by GLASman1.

This coming Thursday (January 26) is Michigan’s 175th Birthday (#mich175 on twitter). We’re making a big fuss of it with a 175th Birthday Bash on Absolute Michigan, and this morning I inadvertently stumbled on a piece of Michigan’s heritage that I guess I never really thought about.

Wikipedia’s Lake Michigan entry begins:

Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located entirely within the United States. The other four Great Lakes are shared by the US and Canada. It is the second largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third largest by surface area, after Lake Superior and Lake Huron (and is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of West Virginia).

Hydrologically, the lake is a large bay of Lake Michigan-Huron, having the same surface elevation as Lake Huron (among other shared properties). It is bounded, from west to east, by the U.S. states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. The word “Michigan” originally referred to the lake itself, and is believed to come from the Ojibwa word mishigami meaning “great water”.

It makes complete sense to me that the Lake was first. However, since I’m pretty much never able to leave ambiguities un-investigated, I dug up a discussion thread about the origin of “Michigan” from the Ojibwe Language Society Miinawaa. One member listed a few variants:

mishigami = large lake
mishigamaa = large lake
mishi’igan = large lake
mishigaam = large shoreline

and then another member wrote

my understanding of the word ‘Michigan’–which may be different from others’–is that it comes from ‘michi-zaaga’igan’, which means ‘only/just/nothing else but a lake’ [michi 'only, just, that's all there is' + zaaga'igan 'lake'].

If you think about Lake Michigan and Lake Huron and how you might perceive them before aerial capability or maps, wouldn’t they seem like one big lake to someone questing to walk or paddle the shoreline of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula? The “only lake”? Love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Check this out bigger and in Mark’s Point Betsie Lighthouse slideshow.

More Lake Michigan on Michigan in Pictures.

01192012_emergency_9854_autolvl_crop, photo by CreateWithKim

Kim says that yesterday she braved -19 degree windchills in Marquette to take photos and came across the Coast Guard practicing rescues. This photo shows five rescuers heading out to rescue two drowning victims. See some more photos of the Great Lakes’ most vital branch of the armed forces in action on the Marquette Coast Guard Facebook page.

Check it out bigger or see this and a couple more photos from the training in Kim’s slideshow.

View another photo and read more about the Marquette Lower Harbor Ore Dock on Michigan in Pictures. Have fun this weekend and stay safe!