Timeless Transportation

  This is a photo from a couple years ago taken on Mackinaw Island.  I thought it would make a nice classic painterly type photo.  I used Topaz Simplify, Impression and Detail on this one.

Ahhh! Refreshing Coke

Old treasure we ran across when in Michigan, processed in LR then added textures in OnOne using some from 2Lil' Owls.

LR processing

 

OnOne textures added

Lake Michigan

This is an image from Lake Michigan that I have added several textures to. I am trying to post this remotely so I can blog while we are gone next week, now to see if it works.

Mackinaw Transportation

 It is hard to believe that it has been a year already since we planned Dan's parents 60th anniversary trip to Mackinaw Island.

Tulip Festival in Holland, Michigan

  The festival last an entire week with parades, street washers and dancers in the wooden shoes, unfortunately we were only there for about 1/2 a day but did enjoy seeing the shoe factory and all the tulips.  There are 6 miles of tulips and over 6 million tulips planted throughout the city.  We would love to go back again and spend an entire weekend.

 

Shoes

 

We were in Holland, Michigan during their Tulip Festival and visited the factory where they make the wooden shoes. 

Grand Haven Lighthouse

  Last year we photographed this light house on a stormy day but we weren't able to stay until nightfall but luckily we were able to be there overnight this year. 

Bears

We visited the Oswald Bear Ranch outside of Newberry, Michigan.  They are the largest rescue center for bears and have been in operation since 1997.  They were having a great time chasing each other in and out of the water.

  The Upper Tahquamenon Falls on the Tahquamenon river, the locals call them the "Rootbeer Falls" because of the brown color, this is from the tannins leached from the cedar swamps which the river drains.  The upper falls are more than 200' feet across and drop 48', the sound was incredible.

Apples

Dan and I were pleasantly surprised at all the different crops grown in Michigan. There were apple and cherry orchards everywhere and rolling hills of vineyards. We were told they are also the asparagus capitol but that this year because of the early warm up in March that when it came time to harvest the asparagus the migrant workers had not arrived yet and they had to plow under half of their crops.

A light house located in Grand Haven, Michigan.  The day was pretty grey with a few glimpses of sunlight and the wind was brisk, the water was much rougher but there were still crazy people surfing.  I wish we had been there in the evening when the lights would of been on but that will have to be another trip.

Liquid gold

The eagle has landed

  A hodge podge of images along Lake Superior, we started out in Ironwood, MI and went to Copper Harbor the first couple of days.  Copper Harbor is the fartherest north location on the upper pennisula, not much there though.  We have found that most of the Michigan tourism companies tend to exaggerate ....a lot!!!

  I haven't done very good about keeping up with the blog but we have been going until dark, then getting supper and showers, by then we are exhausted.  The fall colors haven't been very good, the locals say it was a very dry summer here also and that it really effected the trees. There were a lot of disappointed people on "fall colors" tour buses.  The weather has been perfect, the highest temperature we have had is 65 degrees, there have been some very overcast days which didn't help in the photo department but we still have had a great time.

Lake in the Clouds in the Porcupine Mountains

 These are a few of the photos I have gotten uploaded, we will have tons to go through when we get home.

Bonds Falls

We went to see a couple falls today, the one was a complete bust but Bonds Falls was pretty awesome.  I used my 8 stop ND + Polarizer with a 4 seconds exposure.  We had such a great time there and met lots of  really nice, friendly people. Today we are headed to a copper mine, should be interesting.