Another Morning Mini-Vacation

I began with a jaunt to Suttons Bay for coffee and donuts but after the Chimosky's Bakery stop (is that clearer now?) detoured onto back roads.

The Artist painted this scene more than once.

 

Dog walk time!

Mullein blossoms up close

Traces of past lives

Uh-oh!

Yes, it's loosestrife

Loosestrife -- the aggressive non-native with the beautiful name and form!

What wild animal was that that crossed the road?

But we can't linger all morning. Sunny needs her breakfast, and the dog momma has to get ready to go to work.

Home again -- 

Wandering on French Immigrant Land

 

Buttercups: genus Ranunculus

I was up and out on the strawberry hunt too early. Bardenhagens have a self-serve farmstand I often visit, but strawberry season is their big summer harvest, and for that they have live people working a larger, temporary stand, it turns out (I've always gotten their strawberries at the farmers market or at NJ's before), as cars line up on the side of the road and people form a long queue, buying by the $55 flat. --But not at 7 a.m. The strawberry stand opens at 9 a.m. 

So there I was with two hours of unexpected leisure. Driving to Suttons Bay, I picked up a coffee and a couple of donuts at Chimoski's and took myself and my dog down to the bay, where a boat was launching into the fog.

Setting out for dreamland....

Then, back west on 204, south on French Road, and east on Lavasser Road, an old favorite haunt the Artist and I visited often. Lavasser is probably (at least this is my best guess) a corruption of the French family name Levasseur, which comes from medieval times. Olivier Levasseur was a 17th-century pirate, born in Calais, who died on Reunion Island, but many with the same name emigrated from France to Canada and the U.S. The little unincorporated village of Lake Leelanau (Provement in earlier times) was predominantly French, and Dick's Pour House is still in the Plamondon family.

Used primarily by farmers in the immediate area, Lavasser Road in Leelanau County is an unpaved byway that extends through swampland, woodland, and past the occasional open field. Primitive plant life such as horsetail is more easily spotted than the road's human history.

Equisetum - horsetail - the bane of northern gardeners

Wetland stretching back from the road

Here an open field

There, behind those old cedars....

I've written about this road before and even about the site in the image just above. Maybe one or two of you remember that former post. If so, you may recall my telling you that an old log cabin used to stand just behind those cedars, which were probably planted on either side of the cabin's door by the old French settlers or a succeeding generation. The late Fred Petroskey, foremost portrait painter of Leelanau County, traced his ancestry on his mother's side back to France, and Fred's grandmother was born in the log cabin on Lavasser Road, the old pioneer dwelling now gone and rotted back into the earth. But I remember when the cedars were younger and enough of the cabin remained that it was possible to imagine a family living there. Living poor, I'm sure, just steps from the swamp, but I wish I knew some of the details of that long-ago life.

There are also some grand old trees here and there along the road.  

Surprisingly, a monumental black cherry.

Not as surprising is this old black willow.

Wetlands with trees are swamps.

Here, a sweeping long view --

From woods to fields again --

Can you see all the subtle colors here?

The old road has dug itself deep in places.

And again, back into the open....

"Thank a farmer" seems appropriate to my morning errand:

Back on Horn Road, I accomplish the morning mission,

along with many other eager customers.

Late Day, Leelanau, August - Which Shot Do You Like Better?

 

Unaltered

 

This shot is from my phone. The color has not been altered, nor the image cropped. Amazing natural Michigan!

But now I can't help cropping to bring the lake closer in to us. The blue of the lake! Clarity of the islands! It was a magic moment.

Cloud Street

 

Revisiting the Past (Again)

 

Looking back or ahead? Hard to tell sometimes, isn't it?

Sunny Juliet and I didn't start out looking for times before she came into the world. We were content in a little park on Lake Leelanau, where morning sun gleamed on glassy waters. 

Would you have led off with this image instead of the rearview mirror?

But we had time before my first appointment of the day, and I felt called south to one of the few remaining (or so it seems) unpaved county roads.

Such magic in these old roads, sinking with time deeper into the earth!

Every now and then, a magic window opens to the distance.

Why this one? Do you wonder?

The apple tree, its branches heavy with fruit, wasn't the reason I stopped here. Do you see the two big old cedars behind it? Once an old log cabin stood here. "That's where Fred's grandmother was born," I told Sunny. "Or was it his mother?" Fred is gone now, along with his mother and grandmother, so there's no one left to ask, but they were immigrants from France, the cabin built in a style no doubt common in French Canada. When my husband and I drove this road thirty and forty years ago -- always very slowly, with many stops -- we would get out here and poke around the remains of the cabin. Now I don't go back to the cedars to see if any logs remain, but I stop and look at the trees and remember. 

Coming out of the woods, back to the present

When we came out of the second stretch of woods, a place I remembered walking a long-ago dog, Sunny let me know she would appreciate a chance to stretch her legs, and we walked a little way in the sun. Not a bright, blazing sun, but we are accustomed to clouds and don't let them keep us under the covers.

Off the Beaten Path