Every year, the Monroe Lotus Garden Club sponsors a lotus bed tour.  Of course, every year I inadvertantly miss it:(  But Charles Slat has a nice article about yesterday’s tour in today’s Evening News.

http://www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070729/NEWS01/107290026

I was reading the Blind Pig official website when I came across this funny quote.  The Blind Pig is, of course, the legendary rock bar on the west side of Ann Arbor’s Main Street area.

“Ann Arbor has always been a cultural oasis of sorts - a plateau that protrudes through the lackluster blandness of small-town midwestern life, that provides a unique stepping stone between the industrial sprawl of Detroit and the thriving bustle of Chicago.”

The quote is funny because it completely disses the surrounding area - and probably half the bar’s customer base.  Of course, the quote does have a certain “truthiness” to it.  Ann Arbor IS the cultural mecca of southeastern Michigan.  Events happen in Ann Arbor that don’t happen in the surrounding small towns, or even in Detroit or the suburbs.

What I find fascinating about Ann Arbor is the way that it has spun a web across the southeastern Michigan landscape.  Small cities within about 45 minutes of Ann Arbor get “caught” by Ann Arborites desiring a slower, cheaper and more permanent pace of life while still maintaining commuting distance to the mother ship.

And for many natives of places like Adrian and Monroe, Ann Arbor provides just enough cultural opportunities to make a move to places like Chicago unnecessary.

The benefits of this symbiotic relationship are clear.  Cities like Saline, Dexter, Chelsea and Tecumseh are entirely more affluent and culturally diverse than they would ever be without the close proximity to Ann Arbor.

Of course, the drawback is that these towns do probably lose some of their small town character as they become commuter towns for the larger burg.

Monroe County, of course, sits partially within Ann Arbor’s sphere of influence.  Cities like Milan and Dundee.  Are they becoming the next cities caught in Ann Arbor’s cultural web?  Mmmm…

http://www.blindpigmusic.com/history.html

 

This weekend, the communities of St. Ignace and Mackinaw City celebrate the 50th anniversary of the the longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere - the Mackinaw Bridge.

I’ll be honest, I’m not quite sure why the celebration is happening this weekend.  The bridge didn’t open to traffic until November 1st of 1957.  Maybe they completed the span in July of that year?  Who knows?

What is clear, however, is that the bridge is awesome!  During high winds, the center sections of the bridge can sway up to 35 feet.  As winds die down, it slowly returns to a more centered position.

One of my favorite bridge memories happened in about 1998 or 1999.  My friend, Chris, and I were on our way to Iron Mountain for a wedding.  We had to leave pretty late and ended up crossing the bridge at about eleven or midnight.  We were all set leave civilization behind. 

But as soon as we left the bridge on the St. Ignace side, we realized that all of the streets were lined with people two or three feet deep.  Some were cheering.  Some waved to us.  It was the craziest thing ever.  Apparently, we had stumbled onto their annual car cruise and the festivities were lasting well into the night.

What a great bridge!

http://www.mackinacbridge.org/about-the-bridge-8/

 

Kathy and I decided to go out for Korean food a few weeks ago.  We just love Korean food and we are constantly looking for great Korean restaurants.  So, we stopped in at our favorite restaurant in the whole wide world - Koreana.  As we took our tables, one of the servers approached us and commented, “Hey, you haven’t been here in a while.”  Well, maybe that’s because we live in Michigan and Koreana is in Appleton, WI.

I don’t know why, but I just love the fact that we get recognized at a restaurant 500 miles away.  Kathy and I make it a habit of going there every time we visit.  On many occasions, we get off the plane in Appleton and go straight to the restaurant.  We’ve taken all of our Wisconsin friends there.  We even took all of our parents there after Kathy’s graduation from the University of Wisconsin.

Did I mention that I love Korean food?  Michigan has some good Korean restaurants.  We go to the University Cafe and Seoul Garden in Ann Arbor sometimes.  When we were in Philadelphia, we found a place where the meal gets cooked right inside the table.  I’m a big fan of the be-bim-bop, a mixture of vegetables, meat, rice and egg.  Kathy love the bulgogi, which means “fire meat” in Korean.

I also love Asian restaurants in general.  I used to go to a place called Hinodae on State Street in Ann Arbor.  It was almost impossible to find, hidden inside the entrance to a Greek coney place near Urban Outfitters.  They always played NPR on the radio and I’d read the paper while this neat Asian family worked behind the bamboo-reed-decorated counter.

I also love the China Wok restaurant near Food Town in Monroe.  It is run by an incredibly nice Asian family.  They are so pleasant.  And they cook good food.  Tecumseh has a great Chinese restaurant near the Busch’s grocery store.  We don’t even have to order when we walk in.  They just know that I want the Moo Shu Chicken with the plum sauce and rice wrap.

But back to Koreana.  Koreana has this great little sushi counter.  I don’t usually order sushi, but one time I did and placed a heaping bit of wasabi on top.  Oh my!  To say that it was hot is kind of like comparing a roller coaster hill to a plane crash.  There was no bottom to that hotness.

Another time, I ordered the be-bim-bop in the hot bowl.  Kathy just started laughing at me when I got so hot, I had to run outside for some fresh air.  Fun.  Fun.  Fun.

But anyway, if you are ever in Appleton, look up Koreana.  We might even be there.

http://www.thekoreana.com/

Here’s the pic of the day.  It was taken at the NEA national convention a few weeks ago in Philadelphia.  Needless to say, I came prepared with a little bit of maize and blue.  And I got on the big convention screens.  All of the Michigan people at the convention hall cheered.  Go Blue!

Heads up, Monroe County.  We just had golf-ball sized hail at about 8:45PM.  This was the nastiest storm I’ve ever been in.  Everything except the garden seems okay.  Goodbye sunflowers:(

Note: More hail, pea-sized at 3AM.  Woke us all up:)

Arrrgh.  We got a bit more damage than I thought.  We’ve got siding chips and Kathy’s car has some nice little hail dents.  Anyone have experience with insurance claims for hail? 

But we are lucky.  I think that we averted disaster.  I think that we were THAT CLOSE to really bad stuff.

Dean Cousino has a nice article in today’s paper about the long-awaited reconstruction of Stewart Road between Blue Bush and Bates Lane.  Several sections of the article jumped out at me.  Here’s the first:

“The improvement includes widening the road to 22 feet, Mr. Behrendt said. The work includes adding two 11-foot-wide lanes in each direction plus three-foot paved shoulders on both sides of the road.The board also awarded a contract for $55,800 to the road commission to add paved shoulders. The goal is to create an all-weather road that can handle heavy residential traffic and walkers and joggers, Mr. Behrendt said.”I applaud Frenchtown Township for working pedestrian accessibility into this road plan.  Stewart has the potential to go from one of the worst roads in the county to one of the best.

I applaud Frenchtown Township for working pedestrian accessibility into this road plan.  Stewart has the potential to go from one of the worst roads in the county to one of the best.Another paragraph, however, also jumped out at me.  Here it is:

“Next year, the township plans to resurface about 1.25 miles of N. Dixie Hwy. from the Detroit Beach subdivision to N. Stony Creek Rd. The township is kicking in about $1.2 million, or about a third, of the estimated $3.1 million project, the supervisor said.”

It has long been my belief that Dixie Highway is one of the keys to making Monroe County more pedestrian and visitor friendly.  It connects most of the best natural areas within the county and it basically sits within the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge boundaries.  It has the potential to become a great pedestrian route.  If the township paves some nice road shoulders on that route, Frenchtown could be well on its way to addressing its pedestrian and passive recreation deficit.

Here’s the full article.  Nice job, Dean, on the article.  And nice job, Frenchtown Township, on the road projects.

http://www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070726/NEWS01/107260044

 

According to the tourist brochures, Door County in NE Wisconsin has more state parks - five - than any other county in the United States.  They are generally small in size, but quite large in terms of natural beauty.

Potawatomi State Park sits about half-way up the Door Peninsula on Lake Michigan’s Sturgeon Bay.  The “bay” is actually one section of a shipping channel that splits the peninsula in half.  Ships use the channel to save time and distance on routes to Green Bay.  So, the park allows for good freighter viewing.

The park also includes rocky hills and cliffs that are evidence of the peninsula’s limestone base.  Similar cliffs are visible across the bay from one of the park’s many scenic overlooks. 

Eight miles of hiking trails and nine miles of biking trails make parallel figure-eight-style paths across the park’s terrain.  These trails are never terribly far from the park’s circle road, but they allow for a good natural experience.  The Ice Age National Scenic Trail, a “national” trail found completely in the state of Wisconsin, actually begins within this park.

http://www.iceagetrail.org/PDF/4e1_DoorKewaunee250.pdf

There are no sand beaches along Potawatomi State Park’s rocky shore.  But there is a 75-foot-tall observation tower that allows a visitor to see above the trees.  This is THE highlight of the park for me.

The park is only about three miles away from the 16+ mile Ahnapee State rail-trail, so bikers and long-distance hikers can create a good adventure in this area.  It would be wonderful if an off-road trail could connect these two systems with an off-road path.

Click on the links below for more details:

http://tinyurl.com/yovc3v

http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/parks/specific/Potawatomi/#trails

The response to my first hiking video was so phenomenal that I decided to upload another.  This one shows a freighter on course towards the Detroit River Light.  What will happen?  Watch to find out. BTW, the film was taken from Pointe Mouillee in extreme NE Monroe County.

During my recent visit to Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to walk a bit at Whitefish Dunes State Park and Cave Point County Park in the beautiful Door Peninsula.  For those who don’t know, Door County is the portion of Wisconsin that sticks out like a finger into Lake Michigan.  It is filled with beautiful parks, pleasant shoreline and plenty of unique and progressive resort towns.

Whitefish Dunes and Cave Point are essentially the same park.  Wisconsin is not blessed with the great dunes of Michigan’s western shore.  So, the medium-sized dunes inside of the park are maintained with great care.  Walkers are only allowed to the top of the largest dune.  The rest are off-limits.  Visitors can stay on the actual beach area or hike the beech forest inland of the dunes.  The park has more than eight miles of hiking trail.

What makes this park extremely interesting to me is the limestone point that juts out into Lake Michigan within the small county park.  This is a portion of the Niagara Escarpment.  I have blogged about this geological phenomena previously.  It is the same rock feature that makes Niagara Falls possible.  And, in fact, the peninsula would probably not exist without this limestone backbone.

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/expatriate/?p=410

In this corner of Wisconsin, the limestone of the escarpment creates a beautiful rocky shore.  Generations of visitors have hunted for brachiopods in this area.

The exposed nature of the point means that waves can be particularly fierce in the park.  Swimmers are advised not to swim in certain areas because of rip tides.  These powerful waves have undercut the limestone in several areas, creating neat sea caves.  Kayakers have a particularly good view of these features.

Together, Whitefish Dunes and Cave Point total about 900 acres in size.  Visitation is day-use only.  That said, there are plenty of opportunities for additional hiking, camping and lodging on the peninsula.  Be aware that Door County is one of Wisconsin’s premier tourist areas and reservations during the peak months can sometimes be difficult to secure.

Check out the links below for maps and additional information:

http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/parks/specific/whitefish/

http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/parks/specific/whitefish/maps/

http://www.doorcounty.com/outdoor/parks.aspx