Good morning everyone. Regrettably, I need to take a break which (fingers crossed) won’t be too terribly long to deal with some health issues. In the meantime, I hope all of you are able to enjoy the bounteous offerings of Michigan summertime!
Jeff took this photo two years ago at sunrise on June 29th (my birthday) in Traverse City (where I currently live), so I thought it would be a perfect placeholder while I’m gone. See more from Jeff in his Most Faved (Best of) gallery on Flickr.
Rod took this photo of the classic laker and steamer Wilfred Sykes in fog on the St. Clair River at dawn last week. Head over to his Flickr for the latest!
Here’s a sweet shot I shared 5 years ago on June 3rd of a boat in the mist on Lake Leelanau in the northwestern Lower Peninsula. See more in Francios’ Michigan Journey’s gallery on Flickr and have a great weekend everyone!
Lake Michigan Carferry, Inc. is in the early phases of looking for ways to ditch the coal that currently propels the 410-foot historic ship across Lake Michigan.
“We are just in the early phases at looking at what other options could be viable for the Badger,” said Sara Spore, general manager of Lake Michigan Carferry. “There are not any definite plans, but we know that coal isn’t the long-term solution. We really are starting from scratch and looking at all of our options.”
This cool old photo from the Library of Congress shows ships at dock on Mackinac Island, including the black hulled steamer Juniata. Head over to the LOC for a lot more from Mackinac.
Via Leelanau.com, here’s a photo of the Manitou Isle ferry that I took 20 years ago for . The boat was sold a year or so ago. According to the caption on the photo below that Manitou Island Transit recently shared, the beloved vessel is still sailing on the Great Lakes – off Michigan’s Thumb on Lake Huron! If anyone catches sight of it, be sure to let me know!
Manitou Transit service to North & South Manitou will begin on or before Memorial Day. More on their website.
At the northwest corner of Lake Huron, in Michigan’s eastern Upper Peninsula, is an 80 square-mile town of 240 people, one phone booth – and one boat building school.
That school is growing explosively, bringing the entire community along with it. Experts estimate that a planned expansion of the Great Lakes Boat Building School could bring an additional $2.5 million to residents of Cedarville.
The small town has a rich history of wooden boat building and repair. For over a century, wooden boats have been the primary mode of transportation around the nearby Les Cheneaux Islands. As the boating crafters grew older, the artful skill risked being lost.
To keep its wooden boat building heritage alive, the Cedarville community founded the school in 2005.
“In all of these academic qualifications we have for high school students, we have neglected our need for tradespeople,” said Ken Drenth, former Great Lakes Boat Building School president and current director of the Les Cheneaux Islands Community Foundation. “Everybody doesn’t have to get a four-year university degree. We need plumbers and electricians and wooden boat builders.”
Craig got this tasty shot of the tugboat Karen Andrie and the barge Endeavor making their way up the Detroit River last summer. Detroit is on the left & Windsor, Canada is on the right.
Is this winter wearing on anyone else? If so, I invite you to sail to summertime with me on this sailboat that Bruce photographed in July 2021 on Lake Huron. He shares:
It was a hazy summer morning in St. Ignace, Michigan, giving a unique hue to the sky and sunrise. The haze was created by the wildfires in Ontario and out west. Captured a sailboat drifting by the red rising sun on a very calm and peaceful Lake Huron.
Above is a portrait of Elsie Schuenemann at the wheel of the Christmas Ship, near the Clark Street Bridge on the Chicago River in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The boat carried Christmas trees to Chicago from Michigan. Her father, Captain H. Schuenemann, died when the Rouse Simmons, a ship carrying Christmas trees, sank in 1912.
The trees behind her likely came from the woods of Escanaba. Though the story of Barbara Schuenemann and her three daughters carrying on the tradition of the Christmas Tree Ships has perhaps been a little over-romanticized, there can be little doubt that the Schuenemann family and the many others who participated in the difficult trade of hauling Christmas trees south as the storms of winter closed in were heroes cut from a cloth that isn’t found too often today.
If you’d like to read more about all the Christmas tree ships (there were many more than just the famous Rouse Simmons) I recommend Christmas Tree Ships from Fred Neuschel. He has also written a book called Lives and Legends of the Christmas Tree Ships (available from UM Press). The National Archive also has The Christmas Tree Ship: Captain Herman E. Schuenemann and the Schooner Rouse Simmons that details the Schuenemann’s story.
Michigan in Pictures 