• Friday-What'sUP April 14 - 11:18 pm

Cascading over the edge and down along the creek-bed, this Dickinson County waterfall is making a beautiful noise and a scenic picture! Thanks to the photographic eye of Nate Alwine, we get to share in the beauty of Fumee Falls and Creek too! If you read the message on the sign posted at the sight of the falls, it tells of the reason for the wooden staircase and the need to use it so that the foot traffic up the face of the falls won't continue to cause the erosion that once stopped up this pretty spot to the point that the creek actually took a re-routed detour around the footbridge you see in the third photo. We sometimes don't like the rules put in place at our favorite spots to visit, but they're enacted to preserve those places for our future generations too. Looks like it's time for a waterfall road trip!

I made it!!!! first post :-)

All sillyness aside, it looks like spring has sprung in the UP. I do hope the staircase and fencing helps preserve the area around the falls; it is such a pretty area. I know over the years that area has been eroding quite quickly, caused mostly by "post-glacial hominid activity"....

What a great spot. The color of the rock and the water really remind us of how much we love the UP.This is the kind of place we could just sit for hours.I think I have asked this before,but how does Fumee get its name?

John and Anne,
Straight from the Fumee Lake Natural Area website....

"The name Fumee originates with the French and is related to the Indian name for the town of Quinnesec which got its name from nearby waterfalls. The waterfalls on the Menominee River were once known as "The Big and Little Bekuenesec", which means "smoking falls" in the language of the Chippewa Indians. Fumee has the same meaning in French." Hope this answers your question.

I suppose you can already tell, today is one of those boring half-days where all one can do at work is post on the PastyCam until I leave, hehe.

Color of rock is different all over the UP...It is always a change to drive from Escanaba with the grey-beige limestone of beautiful Lake Michigan..... to Marquette and Houghton with it's beautiful red rock and sandstone of Lake Superior.....to Iron Mountain with its grey rock of the Iron range....never boring to take a 50 mile drive....lucky us......

Thanks for the waterfall pictures....a great time of the year!

Great falls shots! I wish I could head up the tracks in west Hancock to Swedetown creek right now! It must be running high! I love to go for a run there on the trails! Here is an awesome link to a live cam on an eagle nest. My brother sent me the link...it is NOT Hancock, Mi... this is somewhere in Canada.
http://www.infotecbusinesssystems.com/wildlife/

I agree, it's never a boring drive in the UP looking at the different rocks and formations. What's really fascinating is to study the geology of the Upper Peninsula and learn just how different the geologic processes from place to place are. The UP has pretty much the full gambit of geology, from some of the oldest rock on Earth to recent glacial activity.

Charming weather again there in Houghton and Hancock!!! I see its webcameras!

Paul & Nate...I understand that the glacial action, during the ice-age, took most of the UP topsoil into Wisconson (Kettle-Moaine) and Iowa. .......guess that is why farming is better in that area..??

The waterfall pics bring on a feeling of serenity! Wishing all a Blessed Easter to you and yours!

Marylou,
Exactly!! Glaciers are like huge bulldozers, scraping up the soft material and pushing everything in their path, in this case, to Wisconsin and points south. The soils in the UP are relatively young for this reason, less than 8,000 years old in most cases. Wherever you see a large mound/hill of sediments in the Midwest, you can almost be sure it was deposited by a glacier. They are called end or terminal moraines, and mark the furthest advance of the ice. There are other types of moraines, but the terminal is the most recognizable. What's interesting in Wisconsin is that Eau Claire and south to Richland there is a large area that was spared the ice. Called the Driftless Zone, it gives glacial geologists a look at what the Midwest might have looked like before the Pleistocene event.

I love the pictures, but can't figure out if it's the first one or the third one. No matter, I want to be there which ever one is up and running.

Morning! Beautiful mid-morning day here in the Copper Country or Keweenaw, depending on what you prefer to call it. :)
Anyone else hear that Mother Nature did a number on the turrets at Miner's Castle? Sounds like when it crumbled it missed some fishermen. I haven't seen any pictures of the new "look" yet. Nature doing what nature does I guess.
Happy Easter to everyone!

Editor's note: Stay tuned for Monday's Pasty Cam, we'll be featuring a shot of the "new" look!

Sitting here looking at these beautiful pics and wishing that I was sitting there taking in the sights, in person. What a beautiful place for a picnic...or just sitting and doing nothing but enjoying the moment, eh.

There is a large moraine just east of Seney on M28, just past the Fox river bridge. The large gravel pit across 550 from Whetmore's Landing is old glacial till full of neat fossils. The Kono Dolomite at the Harvey Rockcut is beautiful and the pillow lava just east of old Marquette County Airport on US41 is interesting. The black slate at the old Arvon quarry near Skanee. The formation that Marquette Lighthouse sits on runs down through town from the center of Park Cemetary and contains a whole semester of Geology. The Black Rocks at PresqueIsle are a relatively youg formation compared to the greenstone of the 41 bypass rockcut at Front street in Marquette. If nothing else they all make great pictures.

Paul and Nate.....I understand that there were wooly-mammoths in southern Wisconsin Wis..(near the Kettle Moraine)...do you suppose they were here in the U.P. as well.....???

Donald,
It's actually the "Kona" Dolomite and is 2.1 billion years old. Those pillows near Marquette are in so many geology textbooks it's unreal; one of the classic US localities (along with Ely, MN). The dark rocks at Presque Isle are known as serpentinized periodotite and they are aprrox. 2.7 billion years old, so just as old if not older than the rocks at Front St.

Marylou,
Yes, there were Wooly Mammoths in WI. I know there were also some found in the Lower Peninsula, along with lots of Pleistocene animals. I doubt there were any right away in the UP simply because there was still a lot of ice covering this part of the country. After some more of the ice retreated however, I wouldn't be surprised if a few wandered in the newly uncovered land that is now the Upper Peninsula. To my knowledge, none have been found but it wouldn't surprise me if someday one is.

Spell check doen't work on a word such as Kona, if you spell it in longhand you can make your O look like A and no one knows you got C- in spelling in the third grade! My "old" book has the Black rocks as very late precambrian, which would make them "young" but perhaps that theory has been changed. It reminds me of Economics class where you can give the same test every semester because they change the answers every 6 months.

...Certainly puts world events in the proper perspective when we try to understand the time-frame of billions of years....may God Bless those of us who share His beautiful world today...especially on this Good Friday, 2006..PEACE..

For Miners Castle, check out miningjournal.net

great pics and i love the geology lesson.\

Has anyone seen pictures of the falls on the Black River during the spring.
Those babies must be a rushing torrent. When I was hiking up there in the summer, you could see where the water was at least 15 feet higher than where it was.

great information on up rocks thanks

Could anyone tell me where in Dickinson Co. Fumee Falls are? My husband would love visiting those. He's a waterfalls fanatic! Great shots!

Mary says: Try this link for directions, Deb: Finding Fumee Falls. And for the "Falls Fanatic" in your hubby, here's a link to some others: Upper Michigan Waterfalls. Happy exploring!

My family and I found these falls last summer after visiting the mine tour in Vulcan (also worth every penny!). https://pasty.com/pcam/albuu52

It was in the process of being redone when we were there with construction materials everywhere but it was still beautiful and another of those wonderful "little" finds you come across on the roads of the U.P.