Munising, Michigan...........Superior Rocks!

 

Colorful rocks and leaves along the shoreline of Lake Superior!

It's hard for me not to get mesmerized staring at Lake Superior.  This is especially true when I blend the magnificent scenery with thoughts about the size, depth and ever changing weather conditions on this massive body of fresh water.  I wrote a blog last year about Lake Superior.  If you're not too familiar with some of the fun facts about it you might want to follow the link below to learn more.

Lake Superior-a well named lake!  

We're grateful that we have a little more than a week left before we load up the Silver Bullet and say goodbye to Munising and Lake Superior.  We're also grateful for the fun we've had with our new hobby of collecting rocks from the lake shore.  As I mentioned in the last blog, we learned about certain prized rocks from Stacy, the owner of the home we're enjoying so much.  While we still haven't (at least to our knowledge) found any prized rocks we have found a lot of beauties.  

By "beauties" I mean colorful.  I took a geology class my first semester at the University of Florida.  It was rumored to be "rocks for jocks" and an easy A.  I guess someone forgot to tell the professor.  From what I can remember about half the class dropped it and I was VERY lucky to end up with a C.  So as you can imagine my knowledge of rocks is very limited.  When I did do a little research on what gives Lake Superior rocks their color it's a combination of rapidly cooling, mineral rich lava and about a billion years of aging.

It didn't take a lot of searching to find beauties.

Beth, her sisters Cindy and Debbie and I hunted rocks for several hours at the Grand Marais public beach.  This beach is sometimes referred to as Agate Beach because of a prized rock that can sometimes be found there.  We also searched a rocky area near Au Train Beach, which is just a short drive north of Munising.  When Cindy and Debbie left they took a hefty collection of their prized rocks with them.  As you can see from the pictures below, they have been quite creative in how they are displaying them. 

Cindy's treasures..........

Debbie's treasures

Cindy needed a few more rocks to complete her display so earlier this week Beth and I made the scenic drive back to Grand Marais for a little more rockhounding.  The leaves along the drive are rapidly changing now and within a few weeks most will be on the ground.  It was a little cool, windy and wet so it was a quick but productive expedition.

As for mine and Beth's collection.  Well, we have two one gallon bags of rocks ranging in size from dime up to egg size.  They've been washed and oiled (you can use cooking, mineral or baby oil) to give them a little extra glow.  We'll load them (about 20 pounds worth) in the Silver Bullet and take them as souvenirs and the fabulous memories of rock hunting with us when we put Munising in our rearview mirror.

Our display isn't quite as nice, at least not yet.....

......but we have some good ones!

It seems like these days there are more and more signs warning us about practically everything we eat, touch, hear, say and even think.  Maybe there should be a sign along the shore line of Lake Superior with the warning that "Picking up a rock can quickly become habit forming"!