Black River Harbor

Setting sun shining through the trees, Black River Harbor, north of Bessemer, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, August 2008.

One of the things I love most about Duluth is how many cool places are within a day's drive. Every so often I like to zip out of town for a weekend - heading north to Canada, northeast up the Lake Superior shore, east to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, etc. Last August I headed east to the Black River Harbor area of the far western U.P. There are a bunch of waterfalls, a little wharf tucked along a riverbank off Lake Superior, a nice beach and a campground. It's also just north of the massive Copper Peak ski jump (link to another of my stories).

I pulled into the campground in the afternoon; it's located on high ground about a quarter-mile from the harbor. I found an awesome spot a stone's throw from the bluffs over Lake Superior, where there was a wide-open view of the lake and, later, the sunset. After dinner I decided to walk down to the harbor. It was a pleasant trail through the woods, winding down a slope to the harbor below. There were ripe berries everywhere. Right as I got to the end of the trail, I saw a massive pile of bear scat - full of berries, in case you wanted to know - in the middle of the path. In the middle of the trail I had to take to get back to the campground, unless I wanted to walk well over a mile out of my way on the road. The trail full of berries I had to walk back on at dusk, with underbrush and twists and turns.

I spent some time walking around the harbor area and out across a cool suspension bridge to the beach. But before it got too dark in the woods - the sun was still up, but it didn't penetrate the leaves very well - I steeled myself to head back into the woods. In a throwback to my solo hikes in Alaska, I repeatedly kicked stones and banged my walking stick against trees in a surely-comical-to-anyone-watching effort to make my presence known to any animals up ahead. On some occasions - not here - I've been known to yell, moderately loud, "Hey, bear" when rounding a blind corner. It takes a lot, though, for me to break my Midwestern modesty and do that.

Anyway, I made it almost all the way back - I could see the campground ahead - when I noticed the sun breaking through the forest canopy. I found a good spot, and snapped a series of photos that included this one. The ensuing sunset was awesome, and I took a series of photos I hope to frame someday of the sun sinking beneath the Lake Superior horizon.

I realize now that this whole story was totally setting itself up to have a bear sighting... sorry, there wasn't one. Not this time. But I have had close encounters with bears other times. I'll save those for another post.

The beginning

Northern lights and a shooting star over Lake Superior. Taken from Middle River Beach on the Wisconsin shore, east of Superior, looking north toward the Minnesota shore, October 2007. 

I was driving on Highway 2, heading home after visiting my aunt and uncle's house near Ashland, when I saw the clear sky, and a hint of the northern lights. I decided to take a detour up to this beach, which is at the end of a long gravel road off Highway 13. I had been there on a 90+ degree day the previous summer when I had to get out of sweltering Duluth and picked it off a map. (Nice swimming beach, but the water is COLD.)

It was a cool night, and the beach, of course, was deserted; there are no houses nearby. As I often do in those circumstances, I psyched myself out imagining some criminal, or a bear, rushing out of the woods. But I stuck around long enough to get my tripod set up and snap a series of photos. I knew I got some good northern lights photos - the best display I had shot since leaving Alaska more than two years earlier - but I didn't realize until after I got home that I had caught a shooting star on this frame. That was the icing on the cake.

So begins this blog, started the day before my 30th birthday. I have a big archive of photos - some really good photos, in my opinion - that have been hidden away for far too long. I plan to share those photos and the stories behind them, as well as share some stories from adventures old and new as I travel, fix up my misfit house and in general try to make my way through the ever-changing world.