painted rocks | Change Is Hard

Let’s see, before Katie decided you needed a Katie fix I was about to take you over the Mackinaw Bridge and on into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. My friend, who was in the passenger seat, got some really cool shots of the bridge as we drove over it. I should ask her to share them here…but meanwhile let’s go see what we saw once we left downstate behind.

You might think that the UP (short for Upper Peninsula) is nothing but trees and lakes and mosquitos. You would, of course, be wrong. Thought not far wrong…there’s plenty of all that too.

For example there’s the lighthouses. Did you know Michigan has more lighthouses than Maine? Yea…I forgot, I told you that factoid a few years ago when we were traveling in Maine.

*This one is in Mackinaw City, at the Southern end of the big bridge.*

We visited one of them on our first full day in the UP. It’s a lighthouse that’s not easy to get to, and they tell you on their website and in their literature not to try to find it using GPS.

Trust me, they know what they’re talking about.

There’s no GPS or any kind of service out there, and you get dropped while you’re still miles away in the middle of the middle of nowhere. You need to follow sandy, sometimes two track roads. But the route is mostly well-marked (except for one very important corner where I had a 50/50 chance of guessing right but went left) so if you pay attention and follow the signs you will eventually get to Crisp Point Lighthouse.

*Your first glimpse of Crisp Point Lighthouse makes you smile.*

It’s definitely worth the multi-mile drive through the woods on roads filled with deep holes and standing water. Actually, the roads are one of the reasons I love it so. There are fewer people (but not NO people!) out there. You definitely won’t want to take your RV on those roads, and there’s nowhere to turn around, but if you have a car with a bit of clearance you’ll be fine.

Anyway, once you’re finally there, and have breathed your sigh of relief, you’ll be able to climb the tower if volunteers are on duty to open it up. We were lucky and got to enjoy the view from the top.

*From inside the tower you can see forever.*

And then, since my friend is into rock picking, we walked the beach looking for perfect stones. Though to be honest they all looked like perfect stones to me.

She’s a rock painter, someone who paints rocks with cute colors and pictures and than hides them for people, often kids, to find. It’s a thing. And I found out how fun it is to hide her painted stones as we left more than a dozen behind during the three days we were out exploring, tucked into crevices across the UP.

So I looked for smooth, white rocks that would be good for painting, and she looked for specific types of stones, like quartz (we both found some of that) and granite (lots of it!) and pudding stones (maybe!) and all sorts of others. I don’t remember most of it, but I was pretty good at finding smooth white stones.

Eventually we had to leave this perfect place and find our way back to the world of paved roads. We intended to spend the evening at Whitefish Point, several miles up the Lake Superior shoreline. Maybe there would be a sunset. Maybe there would be stars.