• Friday-What'sUP September 25 - 09:00 pm

Barb Bouwkamp recently spotted something "other-worldly", floating in Lake Superior, off Big Traverse shoreline. Barb thought at first, maybe the Loch Ness Monster, until an end surfaced and she could see it was a large pipe. When a small boat appeared on the scene (photo 2), they hooked up to it and started towing it away. Next thing Barb knew, there was a Bobcat on shore and it was pulling the pipe onto the beach, but it bogged down in the beach sand and then became stuck. Come to find out, this is a section of dredge pieces that went floating away last week.

That boat in the bottom photo, according to Barb, is a sonar boat that is patrolling the shores, looking for "Superior Nessie's" sisters, that at the time were still lost somewhere out in the Big Lake, too. This made for lots of excitement on the shores of Traverse, but thank goodness it wasn't really a lake monster!

Just think if it WAS a monster! Traverse would become the next "gotta see it" spot...and it would be splashing across the globe making HUGE news! :D

Actually, I'm just thrilled they came and took that back out and are looking for the rest of the "lost treasures"...thank you guys for cleaning up!!!

I've heard it said that Lake Superior is one of Mother Earth's "ears" and the other is that large fresh water lake in Russia. (sorry..I don't recall the name of it right now...)

It's Lake Baikal.

Sounds like it would have been fun to be there watching this all go on. And, of course, Big Traverse is a favorite spot of ours. My son got married there a couple of years ago.

Looks like one of those Big Lake snakes...I believe it's called a Gitchi-conda.

Thought it was a hose for someones sauna water intake until I read the size. Glad they collected it.

Winger, my man, your're a hoot!

With an arm that long, I'd hate to see the rest of the octopus......

Looks like a northern relative of West Palm Beaches "Muck Monster". Recently the WPB city commission voted to make "it" an honorary citizen and fund feeling and observations posts for it. ;-)

Boy! I hope you don't have snow snakes that big in the UP! Here in Wisconsin they only get a few feet long.

Does anybody know the "folk lore story" about the abundance of apples and berries this year? Also, the mountian ash trees are in full bloom. I hope it doesn't have something to do with "long winters"??????? Ewwwwwwwwww.

In 1996 I saw a Nessie just like this out on Lake Michigan in front of the house. Put the Fear in me for a minute, until I saw the tow tug way out in front of.

The extra cool part came when they laid the 24-inch diameter pipe along the beach, just like you see in today's photos. They hooked it up to a dredging barge out in the Muskegon River channel and pumped water/sand slurry along the shorline for two and a half miles. It's pretty cool; in the morning you see the slurry burbling out of the pipe north of you, and when you get home, there's dudes driving bulldozers and 4WDs on the 150-foot wide instant beach. The artificial beach isn't permanent; over time wave action distributes the sand along a much longer stretch of shoreline. They call it "shoreline nourishment", and they do it occasionally in areas near the arrowhead breakwaters that interrupt the natural flow of sand along the shorline. The dredging picks up all kinds of interesting artifacts that were carried to the big lake by the river.

Sure would hate to run that over with my boat going fast and not seeing it.

How cute!