Lake Superior rocks dot the shoreline, both the rock hounding kind and the ones that are a bit too large for putting, in your pockets. Doug and Becky Grusser snapped up a couple photos of the flip-side of rock collecting, showing the large rocky formations doing the gathering, with an assembly of seagulls dotting their craggy slopes. Typical of anywhere along the coastline of the Big Lake, but these particular seagull perches were spotted somewhere off the shores of Marquette. I'm sure someone will recognize the birthday greeting and be able to tell us just where we can find these scenes!

Sorry for the delay in releasing today's photo. Computer's all fixed. Carry on.

p.s. Guess I get the early bird award ;0)


Mary says: Cute, Charlie, very cute! :o)

3 more days until I'll me U.P. bound. Yeaaaaa.
We will be staying in Eagle Harbor.

Whew! A nice change of scenery. That was one long bus ride.

Welcome back, and thanks for all the great images that are made available on a daily basis.

Thank you so much for this website - it's the first thing I check every day!

You are looking at "Picnic Rocks". The picture with the happy birthday on it is 3rd Picnic. The other picure is 1st Picnic. In my young days in the eary sixties, you would walk down to the water from a sandy knoll with a few trees on the point closest to 1st Picnic then wade out to it. You would swim to second and only the bravest would swim to 3rd (furthest from shore). Today you have to swim to all three and the parking lot is right to the water's edge with no up hill climb first, only down to the water. Usually 3rd Picnic is adorned with the latest high school year of graduation and occasionally repainted with a message like this or last summer it even had the class reunion year painted on it. Who knows how many layers of paint one would find on that section of rock but you can be assured it there would be many layers of "history". Though the nature lover in me would prefer it left alone, it has become such a regular sight over the years the locals have all come to accept it.

Did the seagulls 'paint' that birthday greeting with their
'whitewash'? :)

Remember, it was the sea birds that caused the cliffs at Dover to be called "The WHITE Cliffs of Dover". Perhaps some day we will hear a song about the White Rocks of Marquette.

Oh and by the way, the rocks are off shore between the two Marquette Harbors, about a mile north of the Marquette Lighthouse.

And some days the kids from Northern will smim out and paint the rocks. The next day a different group will repaint them. ahh to be that age again!!

Good afternoon!

Bill: the cliffs of Dover would still be white without the help of birds. The cliffs are composed of white chalk that was deposited in the ocean around 70 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period. In fact, the Cretaceous Period gets its name from the significant chalk deposits that were formed during that time (Creta = chalk in Latin).

swim out there? with or without a wetsuit? brrr
:)

I wonder who I should thank for the birthday greeting?

(LOL)... Charlie's Early Bird Award!

The chalk hill drawings of southern England are very
cool, Dr Nat.

Wow, I thought it was the end of the world when I didn't see todays picture!

Whew! Glad we're all set now!

Keep your eye on Ivan, he seems to be going a little to the West. My boss seems to think that us Texans might get some of what he's got one way or another. Any other Texans agree?

What a nice place I'd like to be there now.

Very nice scene of the Pictured Rocks, Perhaps they should be called the (Never Look Up Rocks)

Or the Make Sure You Look UP A Lot rocks (in case of incoming...)

if ivan should blow due west accross panama to the pacific is it still called a hurricane?

When I was a student at Northern a group of friends and I swam out to 3rd Picnic even though I am not a strong swimmer. While we were out there soaking up the sun the wind shifted. On the swim back to 2nd Picnic from 3rd, I was blown off course and got a good fright. I picked up my head halfway across the distance and saw that I was facing (and swimming!) out into the open water. Needless to say I did make it safely back to shore, thank goodness!

The Law Enforcement Torch Run just passed Calumet Ave. headed South for those of you
watching these great volunteers.
Lee

Just catching up with chats since last evening. And I owe a lashing with a wet noodle to you folks who got that song "50 Ways To Leave a Lover" goin' round in my mind! When I can't fall asleep tonight because of that song, I'll be putting a "jinks on you" (for the touchy ones...just joking)LOL Also, for what it's worth ($.02) I'd rather this site stay clear of religious chatter. It really doesn't fit the yooper joviality. :)

To James/Il. where in Eagle Harbor are you staying? have a good day everyone!

Aren't Pacific storms of this magnitude called typhoons? Or are typhoons descriptive of some other type of maritime storm?

Not sure, but I don't think a hurricane has ever travelled across all of North America and started up again in the Pacific ... When it does we will sure need a new name for that phenomenon...

tom tc:
Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic and the Eastern Pacific are called hurricanes, in the western Pacific they are called typhoons, in the Indian Ocean they are just called cyclones. So, yes, if Ivan crossed Panama and didn't lose a lot of strength, it would still be a hurricane.
Although farely rare, a few hurricanes have managed to cross the isthmus of Panama into the Pacific. Possibly the strangest storm occurred in the early 1960s. Hurricane Hattie formed in the Atlantic Ocean. It crossed over Guatemala, where it weakened into a tropical depression. Once in the Pacific, this tropical depression strengthened into a tropical storm, now named Simone. Simone crossed southern Mexico back into the Atlantic. Again, it weakened to a tropical depression while over land, but strengthened over the ocean back into a tropical storm, now named Inga. So this one storm that couldn't make up its mind if it wanted to be in the Atlantic of Pacific ended up with three names.

http://katc.com/Global/category.asp?C=51728&nav=NN3X

Here is what we are watching. Its pretty awesome to say the least.

Have a good night.

Shelly

Tropical storms are called cyclones in the South Pacific,
esp in the Fiji Islands where whole villages full of palm-
fronded houses (called 'bures' )are devastated.

Rose gets my vote for humorist of the day - that's a great (non-bus)line - LOL

I've been to Dover--it's all chalk and hedgerows and one heck of a big castle. On a clear day you can see France.

hey....the Packers are playing.....

I was just there tonight. Played some volleyball and made smores at the beach.

Hey the packers just won!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good luck to the dear folks in Florida. We are
hoping that all goes well for them.

While in England we were told that the birds were responsible for the white cliffs. Anyway, they were always a welcome sight when returning to England. That channel is choppy and cold and isn't a good place to ditch. Sorry for the bad information. :(

Rocky, those are not the Pictured Rocks; the Pictured Rocks are between Munising and Grand Marais & the only pictures are in the viewers' imagination. A really beautiful area. Definitely no grafitti.

Must be a student thing; on the campus of U of M there's a rock that gets painted & re-painted. No swimming involved.

Waded out to these rocks near the Marquette lighthouse a looooonnnnnnggg time ago and vowed NEVER to do that again. It was in July, warm air, perfect day, and we thought we would walk out there with visiting brother in law and his family. Knee deep water, and let me tell you, frigid is not even close to describing the feeling. My legs were numb from the knees down and not a gallant gentlemen in our group would agree to take me piggyback on the return to the shore. It took all the gumption I could muster to get back in that water to walk back to the beach. We won't discuss the unladylike language I used all the way back to shore either. Now we visit, walk out to the beach and lighthouse, but will never, ever set my tootsies in that cold water again, never, never, never. My Scandinavian blood has thinned out over the generations, can't handle that kind of cold.

I have a shot of my daughter Taryn swimming at Picnic Rocks this past summer. Yeah, I tried snorkeling, even with a short wetsuit, and could only stay in for a few minutes. That kid was in there for an hour, tho! Amazing what we can do when we're young!

http://pasty.com/pcam/Marquette-Vacation,-Summer-2004/Taryn_in_Lake_Superior

When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s I didn't see as many seagulls and ducks. I remarked the same to my brother, who credited the banning of DDT with the resurgence of bird populations in the area. Good deal!