Michigan lighthouse pictures taken with Treo camera enhanced by roadside telescope!

Using the crappy Treo camera and a lot of patience I was able to take pictures through the sightseeing telescope at a rest stop near Gros Cap on the way to the Macakinac bridge on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This one is the St. Helena's Island lighthouse. I think the picture turned out surprisingly well. Also this saves me getting on a boat and taking hours and hours to visit the lighthouse in person in order to "count" it as seen.



Here is a ship just before it crosses in front of White Shoal Light. This lighthouse is painted like a red and white candy cane but you can't see it that well in this photo. Cut me some slack I took with the Treo through a telescope that cost 50 cents to operate. This isn't Ansel Adams. For more and better pictures and info try here, here and here. For preservation info look here. Other people have this same obsession and better cameras and web design skills.


Finally I knock off two lighthouses in one shot with the above picture of the Waugoshance Shoal and Grey's Reef Lightstations in one shot across St. Helena Island. This is great because I am very unlikely to visit these in person.



Above you can see why I needed the telescope, that lighthouse on St. Helena is tiny. Luckily there was a convenient telescope nearby and I had two quarters. That was four, count them, four lighthouses in one 15 minute rest stop. I hope you enjoyed my crappy Treo camera magic.

The Bandwidth is narrow here.

I am a little cutoff from the web up here in the great Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In spite of its great lighthouse museum (Sand Point), Escanaba feels a little away from it all.



Which is perfect for vacation, but blogging will be sparse. I don't even have web access on my phone to post! eek!

These last few posts come to you courtesy of the free wi-fi at the 8th Street Coffeehouse in downtown Escanaba. Thank you to them.

I will return to my commentary duties when the vacation is over and the bandwidth improves. Since I have a ton of books up here I am sure there will be interesting things to comment on.

Happy Independence Day

My friends,

Celebrate your independence and your freedoms. Speak your mind. Vote. Write your representatives. Disagree with others if you must but be prepared to fight for their right to say it. Support your troops but think carefully about the policies that require their use. Be patriotic in your heart not just with the flag flying once a year.


Put four ribbons on the inside, don't just paper your car with them. Pledge allegiance not so much "to the flag" but "to the republic for which it stands".

Think what a break from history the freedom represented by the United States of America has become and cherish and take responsibility for it.

Go to your city parks and watch the fireworks (or safely shoot off your own), cheer and remember what all this is for. Celebrate.

Menominee North Pier Lighthouse

We did make it to Michigan on July 2nd. The first order of business was a lighthouse because we are on the Great Lakes!



This lighthouse was much harder to get to. The town seemed to glory in its existence with a picture of it on flags all through downtown, they just needed to follow through with actual directions on actual signs. We drove along the main road peaking through the buildings until we saw what looked like the pier and then we found the path.


The steel tower halfway along the path gave me a chance to exercise my photographic creativity. Everybody can now ooh and ah about negative space and lines and geometrics. I definitely don't know what I am talking about here.



It does seem that in an effort is being made to alleviate the safety responsibility of owning all of these lighthouses that people want to visit, but that are in some dangerous places, especially if the weather is bad. The Coast guard has out up these scary signs, that even manage to work the word "thereof" into the warning.


"WARNING
THIS IS A
NAVIGATIONAL STRUCTURE
USE THEREOF
IS AT YOUR OWN RISK
CORPS OF ENGINEERS
U.S. ARMY"

"CAUTION
SURFACE OF BREAKWATER
IS SLIPPERY WHEN WET
THIS HAZARD ALONG
WITH THE IRREGULAR
SURFACE MAKES WALKING
DIFFICULT AND CREATES
A SERIOUS POTENTIAL
FOR DROWNING"

Manitowoc Breakwater Light

This is the Manitowoc Breakwater Lighthouse. We thought we were going to have to walk on a treacherous breakwater with huge unevven blocks of stone. That would mean that you would get no picture. Instead cooler heads prevailed and we found the correct path and were able to walk out on the windy path to see it. This one is still in use.

Can anyone tell me what these markers are? And how to interpret them?

A genuine World War II Hero

Charles M. Stewart is a true American war hero. He led the last part of our tour of the USS Cobia. He is here in the stern torpedo room of the very submarine where he served and lived and even slept during World War II.

We got chills as he described the fateful Mother's Day when the sub sat on the bottom of the Gulf of Siam waiting out 8 hours of depth charges. The charges were so powerful they drove the sub into the muck on the bottom and resulted in even more tense moments of trying to free the sub after the attack had subsided.

He also told of the day he was loading ammunition for the deck gun when the Cobia was in battle with two ships and his crewmate was killed by machine gun fire in the only casualty to occur on the Cobia in the course of its war missions. I didn't know that although many ships were sunk by torpedoes the smaller ones were sunk using the deck gun to conserve torpedoes for the larger ships.

More stories from Charles can be found here. More information can be found at the Wisconson Maritime Museum website.

More USS Cobia

Some more pictures of the USS Cobia showing the stern deck gun.

The next picture is of the forward torpedo tubes. The torpedoes were more than 20 feet long and the torpedoe crews slept in that compartment.

The bridge is the command center with all kinds of controls. Think of the movie U571 when they are still in there own American submarine.

The last picture is the radio and sonar room. Lots of buttons and gadgets.

Wisconson Maritime Museum in Manitowoc

We stopped in Manitowoc to tour the Wisconson Maritime Museum. This museum is unexpected but it turns out that many World War II submarines were built here and they have included displays on the fishing industry and Great Lakes shipping.

The most interesting part by far is the restored USS Cobia submarine. Though the Cobia was not made here it is identical to the submarines that were. The last picture above is me taking aim at through the 3 inch deck gun (3 inches is the diameter of the shell!)

Serenity Now

Despite my glowing recommendation of Chicago as a great town, be careful when you go there it appears to be under construction.

Here you see me gently admonishing the other drivers on the road to signal lane changes, drive defensively and obey all of those pesky little rules that keep all of us from killing each other.

Chicago is my kind of town

Today our travels take us to Chicago, which is my kind of town.

Chicago has its great tall buildings and a vital downtown. On the way in we drove past the wrong stadium, wrong because I am a Cubs fan not the White Sox.

It used to be called Cominski park but now it has some corporate sponsorship that I won't bother to remember because the company will be bought or sold or merged or go out of business before I can commit it to memory.

Though I have yet to add it to my list of travelled destinations, another cool thing about this town is Navy Peir and they have a beach right on the lake in the middle of the city. The arial photo was taken from an excusive highrise in the north part of Chicago. Chicago has to supply its own tall biuldings for its vistas because it is so flat.

I will not get to State street that great street on this trip.