Dunes and Beach

I have continued my hiking ways up in the dunes and on the beach. Here are a couple of shots taken up in the dunes.




Now that the ice is almost all melted, you can see the rocks left behind.







Here are a few updated pictures of Sable Falls.

Lake Superior Beach Photos

Friends Marsha and Denise from down state visited this past weekend, along with Denise's son Adam, who is a student at Northern in Marquette. It was such a beautiful day on Sunday. We spent time on the beach at First Creek plus we also checked out Sable Falls and went up into the dunes.

Here are some shots I took at First Creek.







Around half way between First Creek and Second Creek (Sable River), someone built a tee pee last fall. I had a photo before of the tee pee but I never went and checked it out in detail. This time we did. Someone really worked hard to construct the tee pee from driftwood. We counted at least 85 different pieces of driftwood used to make the structure.





After I posted my sorry excuse for a photo of the albino deer the other day, I received an email from local resident Wendy Lowe. Her husband, Jim, took the following picture with his web cam. Apparently the albino is not coming around as much as she used to. Wendy reports that sometimes the other deer are not nice to the albino.

What causes some whitetail deer to be albinos? Well, although albino deer a rare for the most part, albinism is not. Internet research shows that albinism is a recessive trait found in many animals including mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and even plants! Albino animals do not have the gene for normal coloration and do not produce the enzyme responsible for skin, hair, and tissue coloration. The result of this genetic oddity is the total absence of body pigment.

In addition to the lack of body pigment, the eyes of an albino are pink because blood vessels behind the lenses show through the unpigmented irises. As you can guess, albinism is not a great trait for an animal, either predator or prey, unless they live in area with constant snow cover.

Obviously, being totally white year-round makes concealment in most deer habitat difficult. To make matters worse, many albinos in general have poor eyesight. Perhaps that is why albino deer are rare: lack of camouflage increases deer predator attacks, poor eyesight, and a recessive, rare gene. Because albinism is a recessive trait, both deer must carry the gene before it can occur in their offspring. An albino deer bred to another albino would have only albinos. An albino bred to a normal deer with no recessive genes for albinism would produce all normally pigmented white-tailed deer. Offspring from this cross would carry the recessive gene for albinism but would be normally colored. When carriers of the recessive gene for albinism breed there is a one-in-four chance they will produce an albino fawn. Based on deer hunter reports, only about one deer in 30,000 is an albino!

Sunset Photos

You know it is spring when the sun sets far enough north to see it "intersect" Lake Superior from the beach in town. Here are some sunset pictures I took over the weekend from various vantage points.







The north-northwest wind we had on Friday night broke up most of the ice that was hugging the shore. Also the temperatures in the 40s and 50s that we have had the last couple of weeks melted and shrunk the ice, too. Here are a few shots of the remaining icebergs.

Miscellaneous Shots

Today's update will include a few different things. First here are some shots I took yesterday when I hiked from Sable Lake to Lake Superior across the sand dunes with friends Renee and Dianna. As you can see, there is almost no snow in the dunes.






Samething on shore. There is very little ice hugging the shore. For those of you agate hunters who have been itching to come up -- the time is here.




Each year I try to come up with a new mineral art product or two. This year I am making hanging sun catchers in the shape of animals. Those I selected are fish, butterfly,bird, and tutle. Also pictured are some of my standard sun catchers. This year each sun catcher also comes with a high quality suction cup.







Finally, I received the "dummy" mock up of the book. It is the actual size and has the actual paper and bindry. The specifications for the book are:

 Size = 6 inches wide x 9 inches tall x ¾ inch thick
 Pages = 258
 Number of photographs and diagrams = 265
 The book’s text pages are printed on bright white, heavy gloss art paper coated with a protective press varnish.
 The cover is printed on a heavy artcard stock with gloss lamination and grain embossing to help the book to be “backpack” proof.
 The bindery is a new-technology sewn lay-flat binding that allows the book to stay open to a designated page when it is placed on a flat surface.
 The cover also has 3.5 inch flaps that fold to the inside. The flap inside the front cover contains a Quick Reference List of agate hunting tips.

Grand Marais Harbor Shots

This week I have been feeding my friend's cats while she is out of town. She lives on the south side of Grand Marais bay and has a telescope. I decided to try to put my camera up to the telescope's eye piece. The angles didn't exactly match up, but I was able to get this shot.


Here are some other photos I took from Wendy's house.




The quality of the last photo below is very poor since I took the shot as it was getting dark. It was very exciting as I finally saw the albino deer. I was over at Georgina Mixon's house and was just leaving when the albino deer was standing in the middle of the road. Georgina also saw the deer. We were able to watch it for a couple of minutes.

More Lake Superior Beach Phots

Yesterday it was the warmest day yet this early spring. Temperatures were near 60 degrees along the shore. I went down to First Creek to check the status of the melting ice. It has been one week since I was last down the beach and the amount of melting surprised me. The icebergs hugging shore have broken up and there is exposed rock almost everywhere. The ice that is left is around 40 percent less than it was last week.

These first two shots are of First Creek. The first is looking north where the creek is draining into Lake Superior under the ice. The second is looking south up creek. Although the creek's flow has slowed, notice how the creek, which previously had higher flows, carved a bank that is around four feet high.




The next shot shows how the icebergs dredge and collect rocks.



The next two shots were taken from the exposed beach next to the icebergs looking west and east. The first one below shows friend Kathleen and her dog Scout.




The last shot documents the last bit of ice melting off the end of a driftwood log. Where does the log end and the ice start?

Mouth of Sable (Second) Creek

Here are the rest of the pictures taken on Sunday night when Renee and I went down the steps at Sable Falls to the mouth of what we locals call Second Creek (Sable Creek). The river flow was very high and has broken through the icebergs to enter into Lake Superior. There were several sections of shore exposed with rocks showing. We had to "post hole" walk through some snow to get down to the beach, but it was worth it. It was a beautiful evening.