Day 11: Marquette Mi to Lorain OH (Under const)

June 17, 2021

Farewell to Lake Superior

I had to . . . get up early and witness this rising sun. This is our last morning in the North Country and the last morning of extraordinarily long days. What you see here is the sun has actually risen, but is reflecting off the lake, the reflection lights up the clouds and I stand in awe along the Highway 41.

Flowers, birds, insects of all colors dance around me in a biological rainbow unlike any I have seen in my familiar places. These low angles of sun filtered by complex chemistry create a Kaleidoscope in the ever changing landscape. Even the people who live here long time seem to be in awe of their surroundings this time of year.

We are now headed as much south as we are East. This journey to the northern tier has been very out of the way and also very magical. There will be somewhat less geology spoken of, not because there is less geology, but because we go by it all too fast.

Suffice to say the rocks on average will be getting younger as we go east and we will see more of what was added onto the continent between the Cambrian and Present from here onward.

North shore lake Michigan and Mackinac

We had planned to stay along Lake Superior, but I accidentally stayed on US 41 at the turn to continue along the north side. We are now very much movign forward in time again. Rocks here were deposited atop an older continental shelf, from Cambrian and later. We don't see any of these, but I notice the land is a little flatter and there is more sediment around.

The northern end of Lake Michigan is full of long sandy beaches and wooded river lands and is perhaps a bit more populated than the corridor we drover the day before . . . more beach side resorts, more activity on the road. Still very empty and far away here. I keep wanting to know more about the sand, where it comes from, what it's made of, but we simply do not have the time to linger if we hope to get into Ohio by day's end. I keep thinking we should be in St. Ignace any minute, but it takes over well over 2 hours driving at high speeds. This area is beautiful, vast and very not crowded. Finally we get our first sighting of the Mackinac Bridge and the Straits it spans. It is all that and more. The density of resorts increases. Restaurants promise fresh caught whitefish and bridge views. We stop for gas and coffee and trail mix, attempting to eat quickly for this leg of the journey