2019 - New Year

Jon, my "god-send", and I going down the old ravine to the icy beach on January 1, 2019. Yes, I'm the Q-tip. Clicking on photos enlarges them.

The two islands are re-emerging from the water. Does that mean the water level is on the way back down? Time will tell. When I bought the land here the edge of the water was about a hundred yards further out. Water levels on the Great Lakes are cyclical, although I'm not sure anyone agrees on what the cycle actually is, what determines the cycle. Those "sticks: in the second photo used to be small trees when the islands were very small mounds of stones and sand surrounded by beach land and not water.

Look at the icicles attached to this exposed root. Isn't that 'cool'.

 (no pun intended)

 The first photo below shows my beach well that supplies well water to the pole barn. I took the following photos this morning. I should have taken them during our beach walk on January first before the recent snowfall when the view was more clear.

 In the second photo you can see where I scraped snow away from the other beach well, the one we didn't know was even there until beach erosion exposed it. The third and fourth photos show the partially exposed second previously hidden beach well. There's a story there I don't know - yet. Are both wells connected to the pipes that carry water uphill to the pole barn. Was the second higher and newer beach well built because the beach gradually covered the original beach well. Maybe one of my older neighbors knows the story.

Tracy, my other "god-send", looking for what we call Sandusky Stones which are virtually identical to the more famous Petoskey Stones. Sandusky/Petosky stones are petrified corals left behind from a time when warm tropical seas cover the area where we live now in Michigan. We have dozens of them now. This year one of our goals is to polish the small and medium sized stones with our new rock polisher.  What fun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petoskey_stone

A sampling of our Sandusky Stone collection.

Sliver-sized moon with the morning star. Timeless.