Grand Marais. 45 years later.

We started yesterday by swinging by the new bakery we came across in Manistique. OK, but nothing special. Did our last grocery shopping at Jack's then drove to Grand Marais on the Lake Superior shore. The sign tells the history of the area. Grand Marais has a year around population of about 500. The downtown area is a few streets with two restaurants, a hardware store, a grocery store and a few tourist junk stores.

The harbor area.


Grand Marais does have the Pickle Barrel House of which the village is justifiably proud. It's on the official list of historically significant places. A cartoonist from the Chicago Tribune built the house as his summer cabin.

We're staying at the town campground; Woodland Park. A fairly typical campground. Since we've been in Michigan, this is only the third campground we've stayed in that had electrical hookups. We arrived about noon time and there were only four available sites. We got the last one with a view of Lake Superior. The campground is just a few blocks from the downtown area. Each day the three of us took a nice walk.

Access to the lake shore is via a long and steep set of steps so, unfortunately, Carol couldn't get to the shore. She did, however, have a nice view. Gopher & I took some nice long walks. I collected rocks and she swam and chased sticks. The rocks are all worn very smooth from being tumbled for thousands of years. Some are very colorful. This area is very popular with geode collectors but since I don't know what they look like, I don't think I found any. We have a water garden in our backyard. Rocks & driftwood from our travels are scattered around the pond. Unfortunately, we can never remember what rock came from where, but we enjoy looking at them just the same.

RUST. Seems that any car or truck with MI tags, that's more then about five years old is rusted out. A camping neighbor I met a while ago was in the snow plowing business. He said the salt from the roads just eats cars up and there isn't much that can be done to prevent it. Undercoating helps, but not by much. The rust is the smaller issue. The worst, he said, was the damage the salt water spray does to electrical connections and fittings. We don't generally buy used cars, but if I did, it wouldn't be one from a snow state.

Rust

August 6, 1966 Carol and I got married in Groton, CT. Today is our 45th wedding anniversary. I was a newly minted ensign in submarine school and Carol was a medical technologist at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in New London.
After the wedding we had the reception at Carols parents house. That's where we were at this time of day 45 years ago. Who would have ever guessed we would be spending a beautiful day overlooking Lake Superior 45 years later.