Almost into Wisconsin

Thursday, August 10…

Lake Michigan Shore
(looks a lot like pics I took
 in southern Louisiana)

Another fairly long drive, with lackluster scenery. We pretty much followed the curve of northern Lake Michigan west and then south to a very nice little park along the Menominee River, which separates Michigan from Wisconsin. The southern edge of Michigan’s upper peninsula is in the Central Time Zone and our phones dropped back an hour as we pulled into the campground. Greg washed the car and the MH right away (the MH windshield was overrun with dead bug slime), but he wasn’t happy with the quality of the rinse water. A couple hours later a local thunderstorm dumped plenty of pure Michigan rain on both vehicles, and they dried spotless. All’s well that…

Very pleasant arrival.

Then the heavens opened up.

Dry skies and a bit of blue at sunset.

BlogThoughts… A couple days ago I commented on what seems like a surge in immigrants and/or visitors from India. Today I’d like to note the impact of our own Native American Indian culture (esp language) on place names in the U.S. Without doing any research, I’m guessing the total number of European-derived names (New York, Rotterdam, El Paso, Hanover, etc.) pales in comparison to those drawn from the various tribes across our continent. [What drove this point home today was seeing signs for Little Bay de Noc and wondering what noc meant (or referenced). My first thought was that it might be related to the Spanish noche, but that wasn’t logical for several reasons. Sure enough, minimal research revealed that Noc is a shortened form of Noquet, a Native American people thought to be related to the Algonquians. There must be thousands of such examples across the country.

One last quick thought.  Much of today’s drive paralleled the Lake Michigan shore, and we saw dozens of ordinary homes with waterfront backyards, but often those yards were actually only a matter or feet – like maybe 10’ for one of them. There’s hardly any elevation here – a good storm over the lake would whip water right into/across these grassy plots.  Later, I happened to take a good look at a full map and realized this particular section of Lake Michigan is actually Green Bay, so there is more protection than I thought at first. (Still and all, 10’ is closer than I’d want to be.)