Saturday, October 4, 2008

Our first full day in Munising started off slow. It rained in the morning, though the weather predictions were, at the time, stating that it should have been sunny and warm. I sat in the room eating my English muffin, staring out at the wet and foggy Munising Bay, and I worried about the fact that we didn't bring any rain gear. Boyfriend Extraordinaire slept in quite late, which I let him do because I wasn't in a hurry to start our vacation off in the pouring rain. At around noon, the clouds cleared and the sun came out, so I lit a fire under him and by 1 PM we were finally out of our room.

We drove through town and found that gas was $3.69, as it was at home, so I suppose we were no worse off. B.E. wanted to check out some local garage sales, which there were few of, and we headed out of town, through Christmas, MI, to see Scott Falls. There aren't many times of the year when Scott Falls isn't plunged into darkness, and this was not one of those times, so we headed back to Munising to enjoy the sun before committing to the darker areas.

We lunched briefly back at the room and headed to Sand Point Beach, our favorite beach in the world. The sandbar that protruded from the beach, about 50 yards out into the lake, seemed to have been washed away, but I wasn't about to dive into the water in October to find out.

Around mid-afternoon, we decided to tackle the Sand Point Marsh Trail, which we call the Bog Walk. When we were here last, it was a dried up wasteland, in the middle of one of the worst droughts the area had seen, and we were looking very forward to creating new memories of the place bursting with life. We were not disappointed.

The area rebounded from the drought just fine, with the glorious, towering pines looking as strong as ever.


The morning rain left us a few sprinkles of scattered drops where the sun hadn't touched to steal the water back.


Even the dead birch trees were alive with fungi, amusingly arranged like a step ladder to the top.


I was just goofing around when I took this picture. Using my macro lens, I tried to focus on a huge glob of pine needles, and the effect was kind of fun.


We saw some nuthatches, blue jays, an abundance of ducks and a blue heron fishing in the pond, which is a stark contrast to the lack of anything in the animal kingdom we saw last year. The bog has great resilience.

We always hope to see a fox, coyote, or anything else mammal, but it has yet to happen. There is a large beaver den in the middle of the main pond, but no beavers in sight. At one point, B.E. made a loud announcement that I jumped into.

BE: Attention beavers! We mean you no harm!

Me: We are from the beaver census. We are here to count your beavers.

BE: Heh, so please, send us your beavers.

Me: We just want to see your beavers.

BE: We love beavers.

We were giggling too much at that point to continue. Alas, no beavers came forward.

B.E. also found his favorite plant in the woods: wintergreen. Of course, I was chewing wintergreen gum, which he didn't know, and he kept announcing that he smelled wintergreen everywhere we went. Finally I broke the news to him and blew a big wintergreeny bubble. He was quite disappointed that we weren't surrounded by wintergreen, but he did delight breaking a leaf to share the fresh scent with me. Not that I needed that. My breath already smelled just like it.

We emerged from the bog walk to find a very beautiful sunset at Sand Point Beach, which we watched happily as if it was our first sunset ever.


B.E. loves to get creative with his sunset shots and take them from the perspective of a snake. It's fun to watch him crawling around in the weeds to get shots like this.


Other shots he takes effortlessly from the passenger seat of the car. With the heat blasting while he has the window down, of course.


Back to the room we went that night, enjoying a cheap meal of beans, rice and cheese from the handy microwave. Strangely, the budget food didn't detract from the perfection of the trip. Go figure! Perhaps it helps that we stayed up late watching the Food Network, living vicariously, watching people on television eating fancy food.