Pictures Galore from Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Location: City of Munising Tourist Park Campground; Munising, Michigan
(click pics to enlarge)

I arrived here last Saturday and am finally getting caught up with the blog after being without reliable internet at the last campground. The trip here was uneventful and was over nice two lane roads through beautiful country. Munising is a nice moderate sized town. It is a two grocery store town (that is how I size towns now). There are a lot of tourist shops, but not excessive.

One of the reasons I wanted to come here for was to see the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and see more of Lake Superior.

Lake Superior is the largest, deepest, coldest, cleanest and clearest of all the Great Lakes. It is larger than all of the other great lakes combined plus two extra Lake Erie's. Lake Superior is the largest, by surface area, fresh water lake in the world. The lake makes up 10% of all the surface fresh water in the world. There is enough water in the lake to flood North America and South America to one foot deep.

There is a 40 mile stretch of shoreline on Lake Superior near Munising, Michigan that makes up the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. It is the first National Lakeshore in the country and was set aside by President Johnson in 1966. The cliffs are made of sandstone with different mineral deposits scattered throughout. As those minerals seep out, they create distinct colors.
The colors/minerals are:
Red and Orange is from Iron
Green and Blue is from Copper
Black is from Manganese
White is from Lime

The best way to see the Pictured Rocks is from the lake. There is a 2 1/2 boat tour that takes you out to the lakeshore to see the sites. Although it was a little cloudy, it was a good tour.

I took nearly 200 pictures and have trimmed that number down to about 50 or so for the blog. Some of the pictures will have captions but most will not. They aren't in any particular order and may be of the same thing but at a different angle or viewpoint. If you have any questions, leave a comment.

Here we go with the pictures. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking them.

Tour Dock on a partly cloudy day

Looking out at Lake Superior.
Grand Island is on the left and
the Pictured Rocks on the right

This picture shows the "will to live"
for the tree. There isn't enough dirt
and nutrients on top of the rock
to let the tree survive so it gets its
nutrients through the roots that
span over to the mainland. There
used to be an arch there but it
feel down many years ago.

This one picture shows almost all
of the different minerals

Copper deposits

That is a stream/waterfall flowing
into the lake

This circular hole would have been
created by an ancient log that was
there when the rocks formed.
It rotted away long ago, leaving
the hole

This is a lighthouse that used to
guide ships into the Munising Bay.
It is more than 100 years old but
has been out of service for a long 
time. It was replaced with Range
Lights.

Ya'll take care of each other. Cya down the road.