October 23 - Driving around the Thumb of Michigan

We awoke to the pitter-patter of rain and sleet on the roof and were very grateful to be in a warm, solid trailer. I’ve had tents collapsed by this kind of sleet/snow precipitation, and there is nothing more unpleasant than trying to re-erect a tent with cold and stiff hands in freezing precipitation. Ah, not-so-fond memories. Cozy in our bed, we slept in and had a leisurely breakfast while it shifted back to a cold rain, and then set off for a drive up the “thumb” of Michigan, which is north along the Lake Huron shoreline.

We were out to look around in general but also to take pictures of lighthouses in particular. We found several nice examples on our way up the coast. The one at Harbor View had picture windows cut into its foundation, which must have created a beautifully lit interior and made the house more livable. A couple of miles beyond Port Hope we found Lighthouse Park, which was indeed a park with a functioning lighthouse in it. The old attached keeper’s house is a lighthouse museum, but it was unfortunately closed for the season. Otherwise, we found only some small end-of-the-breakwater harbor lights, and even with a 10x zoom they looked quite tiny in the picture, what the Germans call a “Suchbild” or “searching-picture” as in “where is it?”

As usually, serendipity struck while we were on the hunt for lighthouses. Between the lighthouses just off Michigan Route 25 we ran across Huron City, an open-air museum having nine historical buildings, including the Point au Barques lifesaving station, a real log cabin, an old country store, and a church. The church came with a story about the local minister in the 1920s inviting a Yale English professor who visited during the summer to give guest sermons. The professor gave such great sermons that the church had to be doubled in size in 1925 and again in 1929. Ultimately he had 600 people crammed into the church and 400 people listening to the sermon out on the lawn each Sunday. Now that’s successful preaching, and I really wonder what and how he preached to pack folks in like that. Altho all the buildings were closed for the season, it looked like every one of these buildings was furnished with period artifacts and exhibits. We would definitely like to come back and visit when this museum is open, but unfortunately that is only for a rather brief window from July 1st to Labor Day each year, so that will make if more difficult.

Rather than continue down the Saginaw Bay side of the thumb after lunch, we cut straight south on Routes 53 thru the county seat of Bad Axe—I can almost guess how it got that peculiar name! Continuing south on Route 19, we turned east thru Deckerville to arrive back in our campground. We paused only to pick up a scrub brush and some detergent before returning to the Sanilac Cemetery where we cleaned the lichens off the family gravestones. While looking around the cemetery earlier, I clearly saw that the lichens were a major factor in eroding the surface of the older gravestones and ultimately making them illegible. So I figured cleaning off the lichen growth would at least let the gravestones of my relatives be legible for another generation or two, so folks can find them to visit them, which I think would make them happy. Anyway, it made me feel better.

Monika had the idea of also putting flowers on the graves, an old German custom, and I thought that was a wonderful idea so we returned to Port Sanilac to purchase some. Given the late season, we decided silk flowers were the only reasonable alternative and Monika found some at the local curiosity shop. Returning to the cemetery, we arranged them on the graves of my aunt and uncle and great grandmother and grandfather. The graves looked much more cheerful, and we were both very pleased with our afternoon’s work.

On the way back to camp we stopped by the building I thought was my Mom’s old schoolhouse. I asked the woman who lived there and she said it was definitely an old schoolhouse, so I was finally sure that I had located the right place. She said the name was “Custer School”, which made sense because it’s on Custer Road. I told her the history of the place and my Mom, boring her a bit I guess, but she was polite and I couldn’t help it. She confirmed the fact that my great grandfather had sold that 1 acre corner of his property to Sanilac Township for the school—she said that when she recently purchased the building it came with exactly 1 acre. She also told me the previous owner in the 1990s had taken down the slate blackboards that had apparently been there since the 1920s! How I wish I could get a piece of that blackboard or something else my Mom taught with in 1919—wouldn’t that be a kick!

Having tied up all the loose ends, we returned to the campground and went searching for Petoskey rocks on the beach until dusk. Monika found one and maybe two Petoskey rocks and so we are now tied in the Petoskey rock count—not that I’m keeping score or anything. I was mollified by finding some really nice fossils for my Zen garden. Really, I’ve never seen so many fossils in one place; I very seldom found any at all in the past and here they were just popping out at me. Some were typical examples of shells, but others were things like small animals and leaves. One fossil seemed to depict blades of grass frozen in motion as if it were a crystal photograph, and the thought that those grass leaves were caught and preserved while waving hundreds of millions of years ago was just mind-boggling. I mean, how much of what any of us are so desperately trying to do today will exist 300 million years from now like a Petoskey rock? That makes me feel quite humble or, as the Germans would say, “So hoch, mit Hut” (So high, with hat).

We ended the day with our typical evening of crocheting and journal writing, but I didn’t sleep too well that night. Part of it may have been the fact we were once again the only people evident in the campground, but I don’t think so because inhabited houses were nearby and I didn’t have that “home alone” feeling. Instead, my sleep seemed to be disturbed by some apprehensiveness about driving the trailer the next day. Altho I was pretty used to the driving by this point, it was still not routine by any yardstick and required constant attention “backward” to what was happening behind me with the trailer. I think the constant switching of attention from the traffic ahead to the trailer in the rear is wearing.