Long Lake Yarns

It’s drop dead beautiful here. The science of fall colors doesn’t seem to be much of a science. But wet weather followed by cold weather followed by very wet weather followed by very warm weather must have been the ticket. This is just a taste of Montmorency County at its showiest. The maples are especially [...]

All it took were some thunderstorms that kept us off the water. A few extra hands pitched in. Soon the 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle was completed. In record time. No pieces missing, though there were a few desperate moments at the end until I found some of Holland’s tulips hiding out under the coffee table. Michigan and Michiganders (yes, that’s [...]

The Plath’s Smoked Meats story goes way back. Way back to 1913 when Emil Plath, Sr, a German immigrant, opened his small butcher shop in Rogers City and began selling sausages. I’m thinking many a homesick sailor out on the Great Lakes, and sailors shipped out of Rogers City in large numbers in those days, [...]

This is April 3rd on Hillman’s Long Lake. Geez. We checked our logs. Last April 3rd we had just gotten the dock into the water.  Ice out occurred about two weeks earlier. On April 3, 2010 we were paddling in Ghost Bay and I saw a giant pike spring out of the big weed bed. [...]

Northeastern Michigan is sinkhole country. It has nothing to do with our economy at present. Geological structures. Shakeholes. Swallowholes. Sinkholes. A sinkhole is a depression in the earth’s surface caused, here in Michigan, by the chemical dissolution of carbonate rocks–like limestone and dolomite. Groundwater is what mostly causes the rocks to dissolve.There is a gradual [...]