Quotes

Last weekend (actually starting Thursday evening) I headed north for a visit to Marquette, MI to see my girlfriend, Spring. I hate driving but I love the “northwoods” and since I am kind of keen on her too this makes the drive bearable.

I started driving in the late afternoon of the 9th (last Thursday) “camped” at the village campground in Wilton, WI (I put “camped” in quotes there because I didn't actually set up a tent. The sky was clear and I decided that the possibility of rain was, hopefully, remote so I slept under the stars) and was on the road before five the next morning. I'm usually not an early riser but it gets dark early these days and there isn't much to do except have a campfire or go to sleep. Part of the nice thing about a campfire is the camaraderie it brings about...so since I was by myself and camaraderie wasn't an option I was asleep by 8:30. One nice thing about not setting up a tent is not having to take it down in the morning...I was on the road 15 minutes after I woke up.

So I had plenty of time to get to Marquette (or so I thought, more on this later in this paragraph). One downside of getting up so early is that nothing is open. I was getting low on cash and wanted to stop and get some. I don't have an ATM card so I had to stop about 2 hours up the road in Stevens Point since they have a branch of the bank I use there. Problem was that I got to Stevens Point at seven and had to kill time until they opened at eight. So I lost an hour there. I got the cash and drove for about another hour and a half and stopped to take some pictures. Taking pics took maybe an hour or hour and a half. I drove some more and stopped for lunch at a city park in Eagle River, WI. It was there that I learned that I was still 2 ¾ hours away from Marquette. Ugh. It was pushing one o'clock (central time, I lose an hour going to Marquette, which is in eastern time and so by their time it was two o'clock) and since I was kind of eager to see Spring (we don't get to see each other any too often being 8 hours apart) I kind of hauled ass to get there. So even though I had gotten up and got on the road early I still was in a rush to get there.

These are some of the pictures I took on the way up there are some that were taken while I was there.

It had sprinkled a bit of rain on this leaf that I saw when I was trying to get some pictures of the dells on the Prairie River in northern Wisconsin.

Interesting contrast of colors on these leaves (I think they are raspberry)

More interesting contrast between the leaf veins and the rest of the leaf.

I got this on a hike up to Hogsback Mountain. It's not really a mountain but it is the highest point in the Upper Penninsula and the view from up there was pretty awesome. The fall colors were at their peak and Lake Superior was not to far off. Too bad I had my camera set to manual, (and so it was set to expose for pictures in the much-dimmer forest on the way to the top and not the brightly lit and exposed-to-the-sunlight top) and all the pictures were terrible.

One day was breezy so there were a few waves on the lake. I managed to get this one. It was one of about 10 pictures I took of the waves. This was the best one.

This was also taken near Lake Superior on a beach right near her house. It had been windy and the tips of the grass got bent down and rubbed back and forth in the sand to make the curves you see in the sand on the left side of this picture. I've seen these curves before in both sand and snow and seeing them always strikes me as seeing a story...you can see what made those curves. And you know it was windy even if it isn't now.