Flying from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan

The shot above, of Kettle Point on Lake Huron, is one of many in a series taken in a line running from Pinery Provincial Park in Ontario, across Michigan looking north toward Saginaw (and its Bay), Grand Rapids, various towns on the Grand River, and then the shore of Lake Michigan, all while flying from Boston to Chicago on the way to Atlanta last week.

The woods near Kettle Point, and up the coast into Pinery Park, comprise the largest oak savanna in North America, left unspoiled because the sandy land beneath was bad for farming. The lines running through them are the remains of old shorlines. I won’t say “ancient”, because they aren’t. They’re markers of the rising land and shrinking size of the lake, which is actually a puddle left by the melting glacier that comprised an ice cap that recently came south as far as Long Island and Cape Cod, which were both built along its southern boundary of dirt and rock the glacier had carried there. In fact all the Great Lakes, and nearly every Lake in Canada, is but a dozen thousand years old, at its most elderly edge (this one here).

Kinda puts global warming in perspective. You could stand at any one of those lines at any time in the past 12,000 years, and speak of global warming as a progressive fact.

By the way, fall colors stand out in many of these pictures, if you look closely for them.



4 responses to “Flying from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan”

  1. Doc
    Tre Cool

    Living a bit further north, but did my early study of geology at Oberlin (outside Cleveland).
    Born in Ohio (had family there, visited often)
    Northern Ohio flat, ancient lakebed, pretty good farmland

    Northern Mich, living on Glacial till
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_lakes#Geological_history

    Back to Oberlin
    Aced the course because I referenced Tuzo Wilson ( on sandstone lentils, ancient beaches)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tuzo_Wilson

    Professor Emeritus who graded my papers had worked with Tuzo in the Canadian Rockies (another must visit area)

    Check : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgess_Shale
    and
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderful_Life_%28book%29

    Back to Great Lakes, we are still experiencing isostatic rebound
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

    Evidenced by a series of ancient beaches here and further north
    Our lake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_lake) was once part of Lake Michigan

    Ah … geology – land history

    Happy Thanksgiving to the Searls clan
    Ciao
    Chip

  2. As a Californian who used to live in Saginaw and Grand Rapids but hasn’t been back to Michigan for quite awhile, this is a great sequence.

    By the way, Grand Rapids is Kent County

  3. Doc
    just went through the photostream, adding comments
    Good stuff, from ex-resident of “downstate” Michigan and with daughter living (when not on road) in Chicago

    A bit more “altitude” :
    http://modeshift.org/?p=245

    And I think I posted this before:
    http://looneydunes.blogspot.com/search?q=abrams

  4. Great picture! Lake Huron is my fav of all the great lakes in michigan.

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