Raj and I are off for the weekend to visit friends at the beach – or “to the shore” as they say on the Eastern seaboard.
And shore may be more accurate than beach this year as Lake Michigan - like all the Great Lakes - is near all time record high water levels. As a result even the largest beaches at the State parks are smaller this year and places with smaller beaches to start with have virtually no beach at all. The water laps at the very base of the bluff and erodes it away.
The stairway to beach access at Orchard Beach State Park near Manistee remains closed for the season. High water levels in Lake Michigan caused erosion and eliminated the beach area.
Orchard Beach during happier times
Where you could once easily walk for miles along the beach you will now run into impediments that will make it unnavigable on foot.
Millennials will of course be in a panic, thinking the world is coming to an end. Old-timers like Raj and me know that like nearly everything else in life this too shall pass. We learned this in the early 80’s, the last time lake levels were nearly this high. A particularly fierce August storm hammered the bluff at our Lake Huron cabin so badly that when morning came – bright, windy, sunny and cool – the lower half of our stone and concrete stairs leading down the 40 foot bluff to the beach had become unmoored and tumbled into the lake. Worse, the boat Raj had painstakingly built the year before was also ripped from where it had been winched a quarter of the way up the bluff and tied to a tree. Gone, except for the transom that was still tied to the tree. But that’s another story altogether.
Back to the history-began-the-day-I-was-born kids: of course they believe it is global warming, what else could it be? Poor dears never heard of sun spots and I know they’ll be sorry they insisted on getting rid of fossil fuels in order to save the planet when the next little ice age arrives. The focus of their urgency will quickly shift to the need to save themselves. Perhaps they’ll end up emigrating someplace warmer, like Mexico.
But I digress…the point is I’m gone. On a vacation of sorts. Not even taking my computer. I’m scheduling this posting to go up Saturday morning and will also have an open thread scheduled for Sunday morning. So do behave, that way you do. I may check in via my phone, but probably not.
Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll see you all back here on Monday. Unless I decide to run away from home permanently.
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