After the magnificent show we had on Friday night with the Northern Lights, I knew Saturday was going to be pretty hard to top it. Despite that fact, we decided to head out and do some exploring anyway. Actually, I had a plan for the day, but @mrsbozz had other plans so we worked together and made them both work.
It was a relatively rainy morning on Saturday, so we headed out to run some errands and then do some exploring of the north east portion of Michigan's lower peninsula. If it hadn't been such a gloomy morning, there are some sink holes near Onaway State Park (where we were camping) that I would have liked to check out.
Apparently something in the area with the limestone makes them occur naturally and they have a walking path through the area so you can view them. There's even a sign on the side of the main road directing you to the "sinkhole viewing area". Perhaps another time we will take the 2.5 mile hike around the trail.
Instead, we headed down to the larger down of Alepna and stopped at some stores to pick up some items for one of the families in our district. As a school social worker my wife wears a number of hats and in this case it was providing clothes and food to a family that needed it.
It took us a good hour to get from our campsite to Alpena, then by the time we finished shopping we were hungry for lunch.
We stopped at a regional restaurant named Mancino's and I got this Italian "grinder". It's basically a toasted submarine sandwich. We also got some breadsticks and @mrsbozz got a pizza bowl. The sandwich was fantastic and I just had to include it in this post for @mypathtofire.
We left Alpena and headed another 45 minutes or so up the coast of Lake Huron to the small town of Rogers City, MI. Although it is a small town, it has a very big reputation which I alluded to in the preview of this post.
What you are looking at is the viewing platform over Calcite Quarry outside Rogers City, MI. It's the largest carbonate mine in the world clocking in at 7 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide. It's pretty impressive. If you get a chance, take a look at the satellite photos of Michigan and you will definitely notice it in the north east corner of the lower peninsula.
Here's another selfie of @mrsbozz and I at the mine. She didn't want to get out of the truck.
Apparently that same limestone that caused the sinkholes I talked about earlier is also a prime source for mineable items such as calcite, and dolomite. If you are a fan of Minecraft, you are probably getting a little excited just reading about all of this.
The mine has been in operation for more than 85 years and you can find more information in this wiki if you want to read about it.
There isn't much to do at the viewing site, but it was still cool to see it. I'm glad I was able to snap some photos to share with you.
After leaving the calcite mine viewing site we took a short drive through the small town of Rogers City. I had read about this sausage shop on the Internet, so I decided to stop in and take a look. they had a large variety of homemade bratwurst available to purchase. I grabbed three packages of a couple different varieties and then we were on our way again.
I can't say why they have an elephant as their mascot in the front of the store. I didn't see any elephant bratwurst in the store. In fact, I think the most exotic bratwurst they had was one of the chicken flavors I picked up.
I haven't tried any of them yet, but I am looking forward to it. There was a also a bakery in town that I was going to checkout, but it was now well afternoon on Saturday and they had closed up shop for the day around 12:30 PM.
Just north of Rogers City there was another state park campground that we wanted to check out, so we made a pass through that to see if it was somewhere we might like to camp in the future. It was empty except for a handful of campers who were braving the wet and cold weekend. Very similar to our park back in Onaway, MI.
Upon returning to our campground, we settled in for the evening and got a fire going in the pit. I have to give @a4xjeeper credit for the wood that I bought from him. It was good and dry and it burned well. My only complaint is I wish the pieces had been a little bigger. I spent a lot of time going back and forth between the fire pit and my truck adding more wood.
Upon returning to our campground, we settled in for the evening and got a fire going in the pit. I have to give @a4xjeeper credit for the wood that I bought from him. It was good and dry and it burned well. My only complaint is I wish the pieces had been a little bigger. I spent a lot of time going back and forth between the fire pit and my truck adding more wood.
With the fire burning nice and warm, we sat and waited for the sun to set in case the northern lights decided to come out again. If you read my post earlier in the week, you already know that they did. What we weren't expecting was the spectacular sunset that we got before the lights came out.
I've just gotta say, if this past weekend was any indication of how the rest of our summer is going to go, it's going to be off the hook! I mean, just look at that sunset. Talk about freaking awesome!
I can't wait to share more of my adventures with you this year.
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