Long Lake Yarns

This is Forty Mile Point Lighthouse. It’s forty miles southeast of Old Mackinaw Point and forty miles northwest of Thunder Bay. So, an appropriately named lighthouse. It was completed in 1896 and has guided Lake Huron sailors since April of 1897. The tower is still an operational beacon. It’s lit by a 4th order fresnel lens set at three second intervals. The lens [...]

US-23 from just south of Alpena to just north of Harrisville is a feast of public folk art. Dinosaur Gardens is so 1950′s that you’ll want to dust off your hula hoop and bring your poodle skirt out of its mothballs. I confess to not having toured Dinosaur Gardens or even played putt-putt at its [...]

The unseasonably warm weather is hurrying up ice out this year. The big thaw is being hastened by temperatures in the mid-seventies! This “river” cuts a swath near shore in the first bay, if you are coming out of the Narrows, on the east side of the big part of Long Lake. My theory is [...]

We arrived at the lake Friday evening, March 2nd, just as the snow was starting to fall heavily. The trip from the Detroit area had been mostly rain. A hard rain whipped up into a frenzy by high winds. Once we got to the Rose City/Alger exit, traffic had thinned and the rain had stopped. [...]

My brother Norb is an avid fisherman and a wonderful woodworker. A few weeks ago I received a surprise package from him: this set of hand-painted fishing lures. He salvages hooks and parts from old lures and carves and paints new bodies. Of course, they are way too cool to load up with nightcrawlers and [...]