The topic of conversation in the restaurant on Sunday morning was the weather, not the current sunny-blue-sky weather, but the forecast. A storm would be moving in Sunday night that could bring up to 13″ of snow before moving out on Monday night. Our plans had been to drive home on Monday. Since we came up to the island to experience its winter weather, the decision to stay an extra night was an easy one to make. So, we modified our plans: (1) Extended our stay at the inn — we’re the only ones there, so rooms were available. (2) Changed our reservations for the return ferry — a quick stop at the ferry dock took care of that. (3) Bought some emergency food — the restaurant won’t be open and we might get snowed in.
With all of that as the preamble to Sunday’s activities, we finally continued our winter wanderings around the island.
We’d been told at the ferry dock that a Snowy Owl had been spotted down by the old Anderson potato boat dock. So, with Kathy’s binoculars and my cameras packed up, we drove over to scout around. When we first started coming up to the island in the late 60s, two large “potato boats” were docked here. They had been used by Edward Anderson to haul potatoes from his island farm to Benton Harbor, Michigan. The boats are long gone but the dock of sheet piling, dredged out on one side to provide a harbor and protected on the other side by stone fill, still stretches over 200 yards out into the lake. It was interesting to walk out to the end of this wind-swept structure. We listened to the ice creaking along the rocks but there were no owls in sight.
Leaving the dock, we drove past frozen waterfronts and a Green Bay Packer snowplow on our way to visit the beautiful Stavkirke. This was a project of the Trinity Lutheran Church congregation and the island community in the 1990s. It was built in the style and employing the methods used for similar churches built in Norway hundreds of years ago. We visit this unique structure every summer so it was nice to see it in a winter landscape. When we first arrived we were the only ones there, so we walked quietly around and through this peaceful structure. A copse of birch trees added an extra layer of beauty to the setting.
Having not yet been to the east side of the island, we drove over to Eastside County Park. Hog Island was visible to the southeast. The ice along part of the shore was fairly smooth and covered with a myriad of little white fluffy clumps almost like decorations on a cake. They reminded me of hoarfrost that can sometimes be seen when cold weather freezes water vapor out of the air and deposits it onto plants and trees. A cloud bank spread out over the horizon. This may have been from water vapor freezing in the air above the open water of Lake Michigan.
We headed north and eventually turned up Old Camp Road. Though the winter holidays were over, we stopped along the way to pay our respects to a very young looking Mrs. Claus. It’s reassuring to know that Santa has someone other than elves and reindeer to keep him warm on those long North Pole winter nights! Further up the road we parked and hiked a short trail in the Jackson Harbor Ridges State Natural Area. The trail emerged from the trees on the eastern shore of Jackson Harbor. The docks, boat houses and other structures we had explored the previous day were visible in the distance. The first two years that I came to the island with my sister and her husband (’67 and ’68), we stayed in the Hanson Cottages that occupied the land that is now part of the Ridges.
The sun was going down and the clouds were rolling in when we decided to make a return trip to People’s Park. There would be no pretty sunset, but we wanted to see if we could find a way down to the bottom of the cliff. Walking along the fence line on the edge of the cliff we discovered a stairway cut into the side of the cliff. We went down and finally stood by the huge piles of ice. As you can probably guess, it was very slippery down there so we strapped spikes onto our boots and made our way out onto the ice. Limestone cliffs rose straight up from the shore and broken slabs of ice rose over our heads. I climbed up and walked around on the edges of the shove ice. Had I been younger, I might have tried to climb higher, but I suspect my older, wiser plan to stay close to the shore was the better decision to make. Being a guy, however, I couldn’t resist picking up large slabs of ice and tossing them to watch and hear them shatter. Exercising her equal rights, Kathy also picked up and tossed some ice.
The sky was gray and the ice held a bluish tint. We could see a Coast Guard boat passing in the distance. My stomach reminded me that dinner time was nigh so we returned to the car and headed back to the inn.