Day 1

The first day of our vacation started out with the one thing Lynne and I hate to do most, drive through Chicago. We left early hoping to miss some of the traffic and all in all the drive through Chicago went smoothly, as did the drive through Indiana. Before we knew it we were in Michigan and our vacation had really began.

Our first stop in Michigan was the White River Lighthouse. This is a pretty little light just outside of Whitehall. It’s located where White Lake goes into Lake Michigan. From there we drove north to the Little Sable Lighthouse, a 107 foot tower that is located right on the dunes along the lake. Our last stop for the day was the Ludington Pierhead Lighthouse. This light sits at the end of a pier that juts half a mile from the shore. We walked the whole pier to get pictures of the lighthouse. Ludington was our stop for the night after a 370 mile drive around the lower half of Lake Michigan.

Day 2

Our second day started off with photographing the Ludington Lighthouse in morning light. We then proceeded north to Manistee and went to the peirhead lighthouse there. We then followed Highway 22 up the coast viewing the beautiful scenery along the way, including a pretty little farm where they had created these cool cornstacks in the field. Our next stop was the Frankfort Breakwater Lighthouse in Frankfort. Just a short distance from there we came to the Point Betsie Lighthouse. This is a beautiful light right along the shore of the lake. In some of the photos I took of the light it looks more like a Caribbean beach than Lake Michigan. The lighthouse and keepers quarters are currently under restoration, I’d love to see it when they are done.

Our next lighthouse was the Charlevoix Pierhead Lighthouse. I was a little disappointed here because this light use to have a unique paint job of white and black. It’s now painted in the red that so many Lake Michigan lights are painted in. From Charlevoix it was north to Mackinaw City where we stopped for the night. Before quitting for the night though we had to go see the Mackinac Bridge and Mackinac Point Lighthouse. Seeing the bridge was one of the main reasons for this trip and it didn’t disappoint. The Mighty Mac is the third longest suspension bridge in the world and it’s pretty amazing.

Day 3

We started third day back at the bridge and lighthouse, shooting them in morning light. Then it was south to Cheboygan to visit two lighthouses there, the Cheboygan Crib Lighthouse and the Cheboygan River Front Lighthouse. We also got a bonus light that was out in Lake Huron, the Fourteen Foot Shoal Lighthouse. We took this side trip so that I could see Lake Huron, my fourth of the five Great Lakes.

Back in Mackinaw City, we crossed the Mackinac Bridge and were officially in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where we visited a little lighthouse in St. Ignace. From there it was north to Tahquamenon Sate Park and Tahquamenon Falls. Before we got to the falls though, we stopped in the little town of Paradise for lunch. We ate at this cute little restaurant where I had a cheeseburger. The reason I’m mentioning this is that now I can officially say I’ve had a Cheeseburger in Paradise :-) (I don’t think that’s what Jimmy Buffett had in mind when he wrote the song, but what the heck.)

After lunch it was off to the falls. It’s hard to describe the Tahquamenon Falls and river.  The water is the color of dark beer, or like Lynne thought, root beer. It gets it’s color from the leaching of minerals from the forest floor and the riverbed. The water also produces very thick foam that forms below the falls. It’s all pretty interesting. Our photography at the falls was a challenge. The sunlight glaring off of the river was horrendous and combined with the deep shadows of the forest made getting good pictures pretty tough. We did manage to get some good shots of the lower and upper falls though.

From there we headed west to Munising, our home for the next two days. Along the road to Munising we kept our eyes open for the local animals in the area.  Namely bear, moose and wolves. Unfortunately we didn’t see any.

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The North Point Lighthouse is one of Milwaukee’s treasures. The current lighthouse is 74 feet tall and when it was in operation it contained a Forth Order Fresnel Lens. In 2007, the lighthouse and keepers house were completely restored to early 20th century splendor and are now open to the public for tours and visits.

The history of this light is very interesting. It was originally built in 1855 on a bluff 100 feet east of it’s present location. The first tower was 28 feet in height, but because it was on the bluff, it towered 107 feet above Lake Michigan.

In the 1870′s, shore erosion along the bluff caused 16 feet of the lighthouse’s front yard to fall to the the beach below, so the government decided to rebuild the lighthouse 100 feet farther inland. The new lighthouse was finished in 1887 and was 39 feet tall. The keepers quarters were built the next year in 1888.

At the turn of the century another problem hit the lighthouse, the trees in Lake Park began to block the light and ships on the lake could no longer see it. So instead of cutting the trees down, congress in all of it’s wisdom, stopped funding for the lighthouse and it was shut down in 1907. Later that year an organization in Milwaukee went to work to get the light back on. In 1909 a bill was passed and in 1912 work began on a 35 foot steel structure next to the lighthouse. When that structure was finished, the old light tower and it’s lens were rebuilt on top of it to create the 74 foot tower we see today. The lighthouse remained in operation by the US Coast Guard until 1994. The lighthouse is currently owned by Milwaukee County and leased by the North Point Lighthouse Friends.

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Wind Point Lighthouse, lake Michigan, Racine WI

This image was made by taking 3 horizontal pictures and stitching them together vertically. This allowed me to shoot the lighthouse at closer range and create a perspective that looks much more natural that what you get with a wide angle lens. To read more about this image, see my post on SBDigitalArts: The Art of Visualization

Last Friday, after I had finished cleaning up the driveway of snow, I went down to the lake to see what was happening there. What I found was some of the wildest natural scenes I have ever seen. The lake was going crazy. The waves were crashing  into the ice shelf and exploding 30-40 feet in the air.  Due to the non-stop pounding of the waves, the 20 degree temperature and the 7 inches of snow the night before, the ice shelf had grown huge, and it was still growing with every explosion of water. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

These first pictures were taken down by the harbor in the same area I took the snow volcano pictures last week. I was standing on the beach and zooming in on the action. That’s all ice that you see out there, even the dark, dirty stuff.  The temperature at this time was 18 and the windchill was 7.

This second set was taken a little to the north and looks back on the area above. Though I was close to the action in these pictures, I was perfectly safe standing on the sea wall outside of the splash zone. In this area the water would bounce off of the ice shelf and slam into the waves coming in. Where the outgoing wave met the incoming wave, huge explosions would take place. Notice the wave in the background of the first image.

I also shot video of all this action. I’ll get it posted sometime this week. The video really shows how amazing this show was.