August 15, 2018: part 2, Petoskey State Park

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Sky over Little Traverse Bay (an arm of Lake Michigan), at Petoskey State Park.

Sight and sound of the Big Water.

Mother Nature's assemblage on the beach.  Pretty sure those are (invasive!) zebra mussel shells.

Closer crop of the middle of the left edge.  I'm still amazed that a phone camera (with its teeny lens) can do this good a job.

Also amazed at the diversity of rocks that make up this sand...........

Betting that brain-looking thing, lower left, above, is a seed?



Ok, never saw this before........  It was floating around in the water, looking like a piece of cloth.

Pretty darn sure this is a fish skin.  !!!  It felt like you'd expect the skin on a bucket of paint to feel, if you were to pick it up.  Flimsy, slimy, feeling as though it was barely holding itself together.......  This was a pretty big fish.  This is more than two feet long, even without its head and tail.

Closer look at a part that's near what I presume is the tail (which is at the top of the prev).

Guessing these are the reinforcements that hold up fins.  Interesting that they are stuck to the skin, rather than being with the skeleton.  Assuming there was a skeleton -- I don't know of any cartilaginous fishes in the great lakes, but that doesn't mean there aren't any............

These sticky-up things were as long as my fingers.  And I bet we can tell how big the scales were from the marks on the skin.  BIG.

I'm not sure what this is, but I think it is a fish bone.  It smelled very fishy.  But what sort of bone, I have no clue.  It's not exactly small!

We saw thousands of shells.  This is the only one I noticed that was not made by a mussel (guessing those thousands of shells are invasive zebra mussel shells).

I don't know what this teensy snail-ish guy is, nor whether it belongs here or not.

Another of Mother Nature's assemblages.  Someone on my Instagram account identified this as a sphinx moth.   What cool markings.

We picked up smooth beach stones, feathers, a few shells, and a LOT of trash.  Sigh.

I believe this is a ring-billed gull, sitting on a beach that is totally solid with human marks.

Because I can't get too much of the Big Water.........

We had dinner in Petoskey, and then went to East Park again.

Sunset over Lake Michigan.

I think this is snowberry.  We saw a sparrow-size brown and black bird taking the berries.  Interesting that this shrub seems to be blooming and fruiting all at once.  This must be a good source of food, over a long-ish period of time, for whoever likes it.

I wonder what happens to the levels of the great lakes when ocean levels go up.

All of that construction on the shore just left of the sun is brand-new rich-people condofungus.  Wondering what happens to all of that when the water level rises............

The sun got redder and redder as it went down.

Closer crop of the above.  I have cropped this, but have not done anything that affects the color.  This color is just as the (phone) camera and I remember it.

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July 26, 2017 -- island trip

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July 26, 2017 was a bridge day.  My plan was to take a ferry over to the islands.

I walked along to the convention center where the bridge was played.  There is lots of art in the convention center.  Love this waterfront mosaic.

Made of loose(ish) hunks of ... ribbon?  Fabric of some kind.  The visible part of each individual piece was about 3"x3"..........  I've never seen anything else made with this technique.

This is what a bridge tournament looks like.  Zillions of card tables..........  (note balcony at the top of the next image, with neon art on the wall up there....)

Now I'm standing on another part of that balcony, looking down at this part of the tournament.  Many different events take place at the same time. This is two events (or maybe three; there might be two in the larger section here).  Other events took place simultaneously in other parts of the building.

If you traverse the balcony in the shot two up from here, you get to a gerbil tube that crosses over the railroad tracks to another building.  The next image is interesting carpet along the way.

Looking north from the gerbil tube.  Railroad tracks, and the bottom of the the CN tower.

Looking up at the CN tower from the gerbil tube.

Gardens on the way to the lake.

Outside, now, walking basically under the CN tower.  I found it disconcerting to have it looming overhead, and didn't linger underneath.

No pics of waiting for the ferry, or the ferry ride.  A small cafe was open on the residential island.  I had a salad, and then walked through to the beach.

Lake Ontario.

This beach had three distinct colors of sand.  Every wave rearranged the sand colors.....

I picked up a lot of trash.  A lot.  It was appalling how much of the trash was shattered.  I couldn't pick up a plastic cup; I had to pick up piece after piece after piece of the cup.  So many very little pieces of plastic.

Looking out at the big water.

Wave marks on the beach.

Closer crop.

I picked up a few pebbles, and one empty shell.

I was tired.  My throat was getting sore.

Horsetail.

Heading back to catch the ferry.  I love this mosaic.

Pebbles and ceramics.........

Red coneflowers.

You may recall I was told that the most touristy parts of the islands were closed because of flooding.

I saw some soggy ground, but no standing water.

Sandbags, with the Toronto waterfront skyline on the horizon.

Walking back to the hotel after the return ferry ride.  I definitely had a sore throat.

Fancy begonias in planters.

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March 10, part 3 -- Lake Tahoe

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There's a nice beach at the north end of Lake Tahoe.  Looking south.

Looking east.

Looking southeast.

Looking west.

Looking south.

Looking north.  There had been enough rain, recently, that the beach showed erosion from the shore toward the lake.

The black sand and the tan sand are different enough from each other that they congregate with their own kind.

Looking south.

Looking east.

Gull on the beach.  We learned in Theropods to Birds that gulls are generalists, and that this has enabled them to take good advantage of humanity (and all our garbage....).  This is why you see gulls in places like Ann Arbor, where there is no open sea for a very long way.

If you've been watching here for any length of time, you know I did this.

It wasn't very warm, and it was pretty windy.  Cold.  And the water was cold, too.  But there wasn't actually ice on the beach, so my toes made it into the water.



Looking east.  What a sky............................

I've dried off my feet, and am walking up toward the parking lot.  This rock was probably about the size of my head.  I left it there, despite its interesting colors.  I did bring home some pebbles.

That black Jeep thing was our vehicle for the day.  It was large.  Ask for a small sedan, and then pay a small-sedan price for a bigger vehicle.........

Something (water, or wind?) pushed a lot of sand up against this sidewalk.   Note wind pushing pants tight against legs...........

We were hungry.  We drove on to Tahoe City, and had a very nice lunch in California.   Here's what our table top looked like.  I have no idea what sort of wood this might be.

We were right across the street from the lake. 

After lunch we walked across the street and had a look.  The lake is noticeably lower than the street, here, in contrast to the beach we visited at the north end of the lake.

Someone built a big spiral.  This is dozens of feet across.

We had thought we might circumnavigate the lake in a counter-clockwise direction, but the road was closed near the south end of the lake.   That means "*the* road is *closed* and you can't go there."

The mountains basically march right down into the lake in most places, I think.  There are many places where there is no level ground to build on.  They've forced two lanes of road around the lake, but part of that road is often closed, especially in winter................

So we headed back north.

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