Lake Huron | Change Is Hard

October 24, 2024
by dawnkinster 33 Comments

Walktober (or maybe Drivetober) 2024

Where to go for my Walktober, where to go? It’s been weighing on my mind.

I’ve done so many, taken you to visit all my local favorites, some of them multiple times. You and I have walked in Detroit along the riverfront, and in my own backyard, and on the beach of Lake Michigan.

This year I wanted to take you somewhere we hadn’t been before, so how about Tawas State Park? It’s on the eastern side of Michigan, on Lake Huron and only about three hours from me. Plus it’s ‘up north’ so it’s just got to be beautiful by definition.

I decided to do a combination walk and drive for this annual Walktober post. That way you’ll get to see the most stuff from my 6 hour adventure.

I left on the spur of the moment, last Sunday afternoon, after I had attended a Fun Run rally competition with Penny. It was our first together and deserves a whole post to itself. Let’s just say after that experience I needed a good, long, pretty drive.

Without a puppy.

Initially the trees weren’t that colorful, mostly yellow, and I was concerned that I had missed the show. But as I got further north, and stopped at a little roadside park, I noticed things were looking a bit better.

And by the time I could actually see Lake Huron the color was starting to pop!

When I got into the park I noticed there were a lot of cars in the lot given it’s definitely off season. But as I climbed over the low dune to the beach I could see why.

The place was crawling with kite boarders!

I walked on the beach for a bit, braving the brisk wind and blowing sand, watching the kiteboarding folks skim over and above the waves.

That was fun, and made for some challenging photography, but I had planned on walking the birding path I’d heard about, up near the lighthouse. So I headed over that way.

The wind was so brisk that I doubted I’d see any birds, but I stubbornly headed up the path because that was why I had come!

It led me right up to the Lighthouse, which was pretty, but I wasn’t, for some reason, excited about exploring that.

I kept along the birding trail, never hearing or seeing a bird of any kind. In fact the trail was becoming quite boring. Then I spotted a narrow footpath heading back through the beach grass.

That was definitely more my style. The wind had played sculpture with the day’s footprints, and I liked how the lowering sun made the sand look, so I stopped for a moment to take a picture on my way back to the shore.

Coming off the dune and back onto the beach I saw there were even more kiteboarders riding the wind.

And I couldn’t help but notice how the sun made the water silver.

Up ahead of me was a little spit of land, poking out into Lake Huron. Last time, more than 15 years ago, when I’d been on this beach there had been many, longer spits of sand, but this year there was only this one that I could see.

If you stood at the base of it you could see the water being blown into shore from both sides. I thought the combination of waves, light and sand was just beautiful.

But what about the kiteboarders, you say? What were they doing as the wind kicked up higher and the sun began to descend?

Well, they were doing what kiteboarders do. They were racing back and forth across the water and leaping high above the waves.

It was sooo much fun to watch.

But after awhile I realized I needed to head home, even though I was having too much fun watching all the action. So I said goodbye to the lighthouse and Tawas State Park and got back on the road.

But wait! Is that the end of my Drive/Walktober? Is that all there was to see? Well of course not! There’s still that three hour drive through farmland on the way home. What do you think I’ll see?

Here’s a hint:

Well, this is getting long. Maybe you better take a break now, at intermission so to speak. Or get a coffee. At least stretch a little.

I’ll wait.

Welcome back to Part II of my 2024 Drive/Walktober. On US 23 the trees were glorious. So pretty I had to stop a few times and pull over to admire them.

And the folks that live here? I’m only a little jealous of the fact they live among all those beautiful trees while looking out the back of their house at Lake Huron!

Of course I had to turn off US 23 a few times because I saw pretty barns in the distance. In the fall sunlight they were even more beautiful than they’d be in the summer at noon.

And sometimes it was just the light on a field that caught my eye.

But to be honest it was mostly the barn.

Or sometimes an old house…

…or the sign at an abandoned speedway.

I turned around to get that image. I just couldn’t NOT!

I had to go around a few blocks to get back to this grain elevator too. Something about an old truck under the grain chute.

So that is the end of my Drive/Walktober. Almost. By the time I shot the old truck it was getting late. The sun was definitely on a quicker slant to the horizon. Plus I had to go to the bathroom. So I stopped at the Bay City rest area. And there, I found the most magical ending to my Walktober adventure.

I bet just about anything that this last image made you smile. It did me then and it does today. After all that driving and walking and shooting I found my image in a rest stop on the way home.

Isn’t that just the way it goes.

If you have a Walktober in mind, go out and take a few pictures (or a lot) and post your blog linking to the original post about Walktobers and I’ll gather them all in early November and share them all with everybody!

Questions? Just ask!

May 17, 2024
by dawnkinster 28 Comments

The third (and last) Harrisville adventure debriefing

So what does a person do while camping at Harrisville State Park once the main mission has been accomplished?

Well. If we’d had another clear night I’d have been out there on the beach getting a second good look at the Milky Way. But we weren’t that fortunate.

*We went to the marina on Tuesday to look at the boats. There weren’t many there.*

Monday, as we were setting up camp under blue skies, a park employee told us that Tuesday would be rainy but Wednesday was going to be nice. We figured we’d get through Tuesday and find something fun to do on Wednesday.

*Tuesday looked like this most of the day.*

We figured wrong.

During the day Tuesday we kept expecting it to rain, but it was just breezy and cold. The rain held off, but we expected it at any time. It was really too cold to enjoy walking on the beach.

We went to the local library to stay warm as we tried to find something to do. I googled “What is there to do in Harrisville Michigan?” Google came back with 5 things.

1. Sturgeon point lighthouse. Been there, it wasn’t open but we got an amazing image.

2. Harrisville State Park. That’s where we were staying.

3. Cedarbrook Trout Farm. Well, I guess that was a possibility.

4. Bailey School. Saw it through the window, it wasn’t open.

5. Sturgeon Point State Park. Well, that’s where the lighthouse is…so…..

We spent a couple hours at the library, reading magazines and hanging out. When we headed back to camp to make dinner it began to rain.

*You can always count on a library to fill a couple of hours.*

So we each grabbed some snacks and our reading material and ducked into our tents.

*Peanut butter on crackers…perfect snack food.*

Fourteen hours later it finally stopped raining. Though I like listening to waves while I sleep I really didn’t need to listen to them for that many hours in a row.

And the kicker was that Wednesday wasn’t really any better than Tuesday had been. Windy and cold. We decided to go to the local diner for breakfast.

*A warm breakfast always helps to make the day brighter.*

There we asked the waitress what there was to do in Harrisville, and she mentioned a couple of stores. One was an art gallery that we had planned on visiting, another was a resale shop with supposedly cool stuff just waiting to be picked over.

We had hope.

*We skipped, reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, down the city sidewalks. We were still cold.*

But it turns out neither place was open because we were up there before Memorial Day, the official start to summer. Sigh.

We walked around the nearly empty town and then drove back to the library where I skimmed a book and she read another magazine.

And then we decided to pack it in and go home.

*Time to go, even though it wasn’t technically time to go.*

We’d only made one meal at camp. We’d spent way more hours in our tents than we’d planned. It was cold and wet.

We’d accomplished my goal so we could call the trip a success, and sleeping in a real bed in a warm house looked pretty good. It only took us an hour to throw everything in the car and head home.

*Sometimes you have to admit that Mother Nature won.*

Of course halfway home we stopped at a roadside park and the sun came out. But that was OK, we felt good about our decision to bail on our last night at camp.

The sun came out on our way home. *Made us smile.*

After all, there’s always another adventure waiting in the wings. I could tell you what and where, but that would spoil the story.

*This little guy ate better than we did!*

And I wouldn’t want to do that.

May 16, 2024
by dawnkinster 50 Comments

When a 3 night reservation turns into two…continued

Let’s see. When I left you last my sister and I had driven a few hours north, scoped out a potential night sky photography site at a lighthouse, and set up our campsite at Harrisville State Park.

The purpose of this three night camping adventure was to capture the Milky Way in darker skies than those around my house. I’d made the three night reservation six months ago in order to get a prime Lake Huron shoreline site.

I was sure that at least one night would have clear skies.

*A view of the lighthouse from about where we planed to stand later that night.*

Based on weather forecasts it looked like Monday night/Tuesday morning was my only chance. So we set our phone alarms to get us up at 2:00 a.m. and in the early morning darkness we drove the few miles to the lighthouse.

We quickly found the “X” we had drawn in the sand earlier in the day and began to set up shop. But while I was lengthening the tripod legs I noticed a light way out on the horizon, shining just above the bench I intended to use as a foreground. The light bothered me because it was so bright.

*See that light in the middle of the horizon? It was a lot brighter than it looks here. The orange is light pollution.*

I took a couple shots but didn’t like what I was seeing.

*Too much light from towns to the south.*

I decided to shorten the tripod legs in an attempt to hide the light behind the dune. I sent my sister over to the bench so I could try to focus on it, intending for it to be in the foreground which would be stitched together with another image with the focus being the stars.

*She’s walking back using the red light. You can still see some of that bright light on the horizon to the right of her.*

That didn’t work, I couldn’t focus on her at all, so I gave up that theory. Plus we were too far away from the bench and if I moved closer there would be that darn light out there on the horizon.

I decided to just try for a single image, nothing I had to stitch together later, just practicing getting the stars in focus. That worked and I took several of the same image so I’d have some spares to practice stacking when I got back home.

*You can see the bench, but it’s really small and there’s too much light pollution.*

But all the time I was focused on the Milky Way I’d been distracted by the lighthouse to my right. The grounds had a single large light on the other side of the building which was lighting up the side of the tower. I thought it was beautiful and wanted to get a shot of that even if it wasn’t a Milky Way image.

*I started to move the camera around while not realizing the shutter was still open.*

So once I was done with the multitude of stackable images of the Milky Way, and feeling disappointed in the images I had so far, I turned the camera toward the lighthouse. And the first test image I took I realized included a small part of the Milky Way!

How exciting, it was possible to get the Milky Way and the lighthouse in the same image! Quickly I shifted the camera to the right. And this is what I saw:

*Nikon Z6ii, 20 mm, iso 3200, 12 seconds.*

The yard light they had perfectly lit the tower without being obscene. I had enough time in between flashes of light to get the image because there was so much other light around. And by moving to the right I had eliminated most of the ugly orange light pollution that blasted out over the lake.

I was thrilled.

The rest of the night I worked on getting the best composition, and then taking multiple shots to stack later. I think I was also trying to get one image with the lighthouse in focus that I could use as a foreground to be blended with my best sky shot.

To be honest I don’t know if I did that. I haven’t looked closely at all the images yet. I fell in love with the single image I’m showing you now and sort of stopped looking after that.

It’s such a great reminder of the entire adventure.

If I don’t end up doing anything more with these I’ll still be happy. I need to read the study guides in my online class to learn how to do blends where part of the image is from one shot with the foreground in focus and the rest of the image is from a sky shot with the stars in focus. It can’t be that hard. Right?

Right???!

So what did we do the rest of our three nights at Harrisville? Well…this has gotten too long already so once again you’ll have to wait and see. But I don’t think anything we did the rest of our time there will top that first night.

*Hint: There were no more clear skies, day OR night!*

When I’m out shooting the stars I don’t feel the cold. My sister, who was patiently waiting for me was marching up and down the beach trying to thaw her toes. I didn’t notice the cold until we got back to the car, and then I realized I was cold to the core.

We got back to camp about 5 a.m. and headed to our tents to get one hour of sleep before the 6 a.m. sunrise which we wanted to photograph. But we were both so cold all we did was shiver in our tents, even with our electric blankets, as we waited for the sun to come up.

And after we got a couple shots with the sun rising we scurried to McDonalds to get a hot cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich. It took a couple hours before we were ready to head back to our tents for a nap.

*It was pretty but we were too cold to appreciate it.*

Warm was good.

So Monday night/Tuesday morning was the highlight of our camping adventure. Would it be worth it to stick around Harrisville for the rest of our reservation? Hard to say. When I get some more time I’ll show you around town.

But it won’t be under the stars.

April 3, 2022
by dawnkinster 32 Comments

Starry starry night

I’m taking an online Milky Way photography course. There are many modulus, lots of basics, but lots of details too. Our homework this ‘new moon cycle’ was to take a single image of the Milky Way. I’ve been trying to get somewhere dark on a night when there are clear skies.

*March 12 at Katie’s park. Clouds AND too much light!* (Bortle 5)

It hasn’t been easy. There is so much light pollution where I, and most of us, live. You can check out the amount of light in your area using a light pollution map. There are 9 levels of light pollution, from a bortle 1 (darkest) to bortle 9 (the most light).

Friday late afternoon I drove a couple of hours up into the thumb of Michigan, with a specific destination in mind. Though we were under heavy cloud cover the weather people said the sky would clear by 9 p.m. and stay that way up till 3 a.m. The Milky Way wasn’t scheduled to rise until 3 a.m. But I was running out of nights when there would be no moon, so I decided to hope and headed north.

I reserved a hotel in Bad Axe, and thought I’d shoot in the Dark Sky park which has an elevated platform and pretty close to 360 degrees of sky and was located ten miles away in Port Crescent. Imagine my despair when, after checking into the hotel, I arrived at the park to explore before sunset and found it closed for the season! OH NO!!!

March 27. *Too much light, and so cold my fingers froze after only 7 shots.* *(Bortle 4)*

I drove up and down the thumb coast looking for another location as the sun began to sink. I slowly came to the realization that any open access to the beach was going to have me pointing my camera in the wrong direction. I needed to be able to see the horizon in the southeast. I’d be looking north or west on the western side of the thumb.

Downtown *Port Austin. Too much light, and looking northwest.*

So I drove over to the eastern shore, remembering two spits of land at Grindstone City that Katie and I had explored three years ago while camping up there. I needed to see if I’d feel safe there alone at night.

*April 1. This looks promising.* (Bortle 3)

Turns out one of the spits of land is a boat ramp, and the houses at the top of the ramp didn’t appear to be inhabited in this offseason of cold and wind. I didn’t see a street light either. I figured it was my best chance. I drove back to the hotel for a nap, setting my alarm for 2 a.m.

But at 2, when my phone started chiming I was so nice and warm in a comfortable bed I considered just rolling over and letting sleep claim me again. After all, the clouds were supposed to be moving in and what were the odds I see the Milky Way anyway? Plus it was a half hour drive to a dark boat ramp. Kind of scary. Maybe I’d just stay in bed.

But that would be a waste of careful (and not so careful) planning. It was my last night of clear skies before the moon put in an appearance. My last chance this moon cycle to try. So I convinced myself to at least get in the car and drive up there. And I gave myself permission to not get out of the car if it didn’t feel right.

On the drive I could see stars overhead. I never saw another car the entire trip. Arriving at the boat ramp it felt comfortable. Twenty-eight degrees, no wind, I could set my tripod up right next to the car, facing out over a small bay and Lake Huron.

I decided to sit in the car and let my eyes adjust. Also to make sure that I was alone out there. So I turned off the headlights and waited for the dash lights to dim They stayed on. And on. I thought maybe if I locked the car doors they’d turn off. So I clicked the button and the doors locked and the dash lights still stayed on. I sat there waiting and they shone brightly back at me.

Well darn.

Maybe I’d just get out and set up the camera and wait for my eyes to adjust out there. I pulled the interior door handle to release the lock and the car alarm went off. Well double darn. Here I am trying to be inconspicuous and the dash light won’t turn off and now the headlights are blinking and the horn is blaring and I’m fumbling trying to get it all to just stop!

*Deliberately overexposed to check star focus. Is that the Milky Way near the tree?*

I finally click the right thing and the horn stops, and I sort of fall out of the car, slam the door and begin setting up the tripod. But one of the top sections of the tripod isn’t tight, and the camera flops around and in the dark I can’t figure out what I have to turn to stop the flopping.

I take a deep breath and tighten up everything I can figure out to tighten and wonder why nothing seemed loose in the hotel room. I take a test shot, deliberately overexposed, to help me check the focus of the stars. I think I see the Milky Way in that shot, but frankly, it’s hard to tell.

Whatever, there are stars so I’m happy.

I take several (ok, 50+) images, moving around a little bit, but finding that if I move away from the car I’m in even more light from the streetlight over on the other spit of land, and hope that maybe at least one of them is exposed correctly while also in focus without tripod tremor. (At one point my camera slowly sank to the right because something still wasn’t tight!)

I never felt nervous, never got cold, and I lost all track of time. I packed it up around 4 a.m. I was pretty much taking pictures of the same tree the entire time, but I was never bored. That’s what getting lost in the stars does for me.

*April 2, 3:00 a.m. Lots of light everywhere. Not even sure that’s the Milky Way, but it was pretty!*

I wish I could do more of this, but it’s just so hard to find a place that’s dark enough but where I still feel safe. I’m going to start planning for the next new moon cycle. Where to go, where to go…

And a side benefit? There were lots of barns around Bad Axe. Lots and lots of barns.

Stay tuned.

March 21, 2022
by dawnkinster 24 Comments

Betrayed!

Katie here.

I can’t even believe I have to tattle on mama again. It’s not as if I haven’t discussed time management skills with her before. I even thought, these past couple of years, that she was finally getting the hang of paying attention to me and only me.

But she fell off the wagon yesterday.

*Deuce and his little brother Ace on the shores of Lake Huron.*

While I was home ~~napping~~ supervising my daddy she was off galivanting with other dogs. And worse, they were boy dogs! She can’t fool me, I might be old and deaf but my nose still works just fine!

I can’t believe it! Seriously, I am too old for these kinds of shenanigans. Mama should know better.

*Ace is only 2, and he likes the water. Silly boy.*

She says she thought about taking me but decided the drive would be too scary, what with how I shake when I have to go in the car these days. I told her that she’d shake too if the only place she ever got to go was the vet!

*Deuce is 10 and smart, like me. We don’t like our feet getting damp.*

So she said she was sorry, and she made me my supper and tickled my ears and tried to play lovey-dovey.

*These guys will pose anywhere for a treat. I need to tell them about my one image, one treat clause.*

But I told her there was only one way she could make it up to me, only one thing she could do to make me consider forgiving her this time.

Yep.

That’s how I got to go on a nice long walk with my mama in my park right after supper while the sun was setting.

But shhhhhhh. Don’t tell mama, but I didn’t mind staying home all that much. I got lots of loving from my daddy and lots of naps and I didn’t miss a single meal either.

*That was your one picture, mama, now lets get to walking.*

PLUS I got to make mama feel guilty.

Score.

Wordless Wednesday

November 28, 2018 by dawnkinster 4 Comments

June 17, 2016
by dawnkinster 24 Comments

Evil waves !

No it’s not mama who thinks waves are evil. It is I, Princess Katie, who doesn’t trust those noisy, ever moving, elusively wet things. Not at all. And mama knows I don’t like them, yet she took me on an adventure where there were lots of waves! Sometimes I don’t understand my mama. At all.

Our home away from home.

But you know what? I had a really good time anyway. You know how much I love to camp with my mama and we went to a park we’ve never been to before, way up north, on the shores of Lake Huron. Mama scored a beautiful campsite with our own private path to the beach (and those pesky waves!). Lucky for me it was a ‘no dogs allowed’ beach so I didn’t have to spend much time out there!

Some people ask me what I do all day when we’re camping. Well! Let me show you! We go on lots of walks around the campground where I can show off my beautiful self…

Not too many people around to admire me!

…and we take lots of naps. When my mama is reading in the tent I like to nap up on her bed, right next to her…

Reading is boring mama!

…unless I’m busy keeping watch on my private pillow from my own private window.

What’s going on out there?

And when my mama is reading in her chair outside I like to keep track of the world while keeping cool under the picnic table. It’s my secret hideaway. Nothing gets by me!

My secret hiding place!

But we explored lots of other places too. This campground has a dog beach and the first evening we went to find it. The path went through some tall trees and the sun was getting low which made the trees (and me!) just glow. Mama spent a long time in there taking pictures of everything.

Isn’t the light cool in here?

When we finally got to the dog beach I made it very clear with my flat ears that I did not like it mama! I especially didn’t like when the noisy waves were behind me. Mama tried to tell me that these were just little, harmless waves and she wasn’t going to make me get my feet wet but I was still very glad we didn’t stay there long.

What IS that mama?

The next morning mama almost missed the sunrise! I slept all night, hardly moving at all, while my mama shivered under four blankets while wearing layers of clothes. She finally fell asleep in the early morning hours and expected that I’d wake her up at the usual 5:30. But I didn’t! It was so nice sleeping in the cool night air that I just rolled over and kept sleeping. She woke up at 5:45 and woke me up! She wanted to go out on the beach to see the sun? Is she crazy?

The sunrise was nice but I didn’t want to be there, so she brought me back to camp, put me on my long leash and gave me breakfast to keep me busy while she went back out on the sand to take more pictures.

Morning light on my fur.

Well. I do not like to be separated from my mama! So after I finished my breakfast (You didn’t think I was going to leave that in the bowl did you?) I figured out my leash wasn’t really attached to my collar and so I walked casually right back out to the beach to find her!

Hey mama! Whatcha doing out there?

She turned around to check on me and there I was, standing next to the path (I don’t like the sand in my toes.) watching her! Mama came running and I got hooked up to my leash really good. I think she was sort of surprised that I came back out on the beach on my own. I like surprising my mama. Keeps her on her toes.

Later that day we went on a little road trip. And guess what? I got to see a real lighthouse in person! This is Sturgeon Point lighthouse. It’s very beautiful. Mama would have walked up to the top, but the tower was only open on the weekends. And she had me. As you know I don’t do stairs.

What is more beautiful than a lighthouse? Why ME of course!

Of course there was a beach there too, with even bigger waves and I didn’t like it. So mama and I walked around the grounds of the lighthouse instead of out by the water like she wanted. She’s good about compromise, my mama.

There is also a one room school, the Old Bailey School, on the site. Mama said that since there weren’t any waves nearby could I please sit and look pretty so she could take a picture with me and the school. But I was more interested in what that thing was over to the right of me. Plus there were two people on the other side of the school and I could hear them talking and I wanted to go see what was over there. So all my mama got was this.

What IS that mama?

By the time we got back to camp I was exhausted! I slept all night again, and mama shivered all night. She put on all her clothes and even wore a pair of socks on her hands and she was still cold! I don’t know about you mama! I was wearing all my clothes too and I thought the weather was perfect for sleeping! Anyway, this time my mama set her alarm to wake us up at 5:30 so we could go out and see the sunrise. It was spectacular. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

The sun’s got nothing on me!

Wouldn’t you? Out on the horizon was a fishing boat which made it even more interesting. The sky was just gorgeous. Everything was gorgeous, and this time I didn’t even act scared of the waves! I let mama enjoy everything!

Colors beyond description!

But then the clouds started rolling in….

Uh oh…

…and it began to rain. And rain….and rain. Mama and I hung out in the car. We drove into town so she could check the radar. We drove back to camp. We hung out in the car again and it continued to rain. And the wind picked up and the waves were getting bigger and noisier.

Getting noisier out here!

Mama thought about another night of sleeping in the cold. And now we were both wet from me making her take me on walks to do my thing. Even if she wore all her clothes again she’d be cold. And she didn’t think we’d ever be dry again. So she packed up camp. She didn’t even ask me if I wanted to go home! And I did not!

Goodbye lake! We’ll be back!

Sometimes mama uses that old excuse “because I said so” and I have to just go with the flow. But I have to admit I was really happy to see my Dad when I got home. I guess it’s nice to be here too. I slept upside down on my king sized bed that night. But now I want to know….what are you going to do to top this one mama? Huh? Huh?

What’s next mama?

It better be good, that’s all I have to say. Because a princess has certain expectations you know. And it’s very bad if she’s disappointed. I’m going to go take a nap now, in preparation for the next royal event.

I like the woods best!

Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: Lake Huron