Michigan - The bet, final thoughts, and souvenirs

(Teri) Even though this wasn’t an international trip, we decided to go ahead and make “the bet.”

Mark’s guess for the first bird seen once we got to our airbnb was a Canada Warbler, and mine was a Blackburnian Warbler. 

We ended up having to call a draw.  My bird was heard first but Mark’s bird was seen first.  Since we both won, we of course went to our (now) favorite Mexican food restaurant when we got home (Mamacitas).

Final thoughts:  This was a wonderful trip.  It was very nice to get out of the Texas heat. 

I think there will be many Airbnb’s in our future.  Originally, we had planned on pulling our travel trailer but with the expense of fuel, and the increased difficulty in finding available overnight RV spots, we decided to just fly and rent a car.  It turned out to be the right choice.

It was also a lot of fun to get in a factory tour.  I have really missed that part of our travels.

I was very happy to find a few magnets to add to my collection.

 

 

 

Michigan - Our Last Day

Our flight out of Detroit was set to leave at 8:15 pm, so we had plenty of time to explore on our way back. Unfortunately the day started gray and rainy, so any thoughts of looking at the Kirtland's Warblers one more time were out the window, and we headed south toward Detroit. 

Since we had extra time, we decided to stop at a couple of touristy looking places that we came across. One was The Cheesehouse in Pinconning, Michigan. 

We went in and took a quick look around finding that they not only sold dozens of varieties of cheese but also smoked fish, candy, and jellies. Next door looked like the cheese factory and we walked over hoping to get a glimpse of the operation, but no luck.  We didn't buy anything since we were flying and had limited room.

From the Cheesehouse we headed just down the road to Northwoods Wholesale Outlet, which was a huge outdoor store with unbelievable amounts of fishing tackle, boat gear, outdoor clothing, food, outdoor furniture, etc.  Kind of a Cabela's on steroids. 

By this time the rain had stopped, so we made a quick birding stop at Nayanquing Point State Wildlife Area, a marshy area right on Lake Huron. We explored a few gravel roads and ended up at a wooden observation platform overlooking a beautiful marsh.  It was certainly the type of area that we'd like to explore on a nice sunny morning, but not so much today. I did get a couple of images of the swallows. 

Barn Swallow

Tree Swallow

We also spotted a Muskrat swimming quickly through the water. 

Muskrat

We'd talked about visiting the Henry Ford Museum on our very first day, but decided instead to head to the cabin. Since we had time today, we drove to the Henry Ford Museum complex in Dearborn. 

We arrived around 2:00, and were shocked to find a packed parking lot and dozens of school buses lined up along the curb in front of the museum. The end-of-school tours had caught us again!  We did find a parking place and headed into the ticket area to find it nearly empty. It turned out that all of the school tours were leaving, as were most of the other visitors as the facility closes at 5:00 pm.  We were told that we would not have time to see much so we opted for the last tour to the Rouge Factory where F-150's were assembled by the thousands every week. 

Construction on "The Rouge" was begun in 1917 and completed in 1928. At the time it was the largest integrated factory in the world and had its own steel mill, lumber mill, and power plant. It was totally self-contained, requiring only basic raw materials. It has been remodeled and reconstructed a number of times, most recently in 2014 to accommodate the new aluminum bodied Ford trucks. The factory now has many environmentally friendly features like a 10 acre Living Roof, planted with plants and filtering rainwater that is collected for use in factory. They even have birds nesting on it!

The factory tour started out with a video about the history of the factory, and then a second very high-tech presentation about the new Ford F-150, including 3-D projections of incredibly detailed images onto a "blank" truck body. Very Hollywood!

We then entered a series of elevated walkways looking down onto the production floor, where unfortunately pictures were prohibited!! Every F-150 built is now a custom truck, so each truck on the line was a different color, with different options. The delivery of the correct components, wiring harnesses, computers, engines, etc. was amazing. Every truck that we saw being produced was a crew-cab (four full doors) short-bed truck so they must be very popular.  They complete a truck every 57 seconds, and work two, 10-hour shifts each day. They have a second F-150 plant outside of Kansas City, Missouri.

The tour finished and we got back to our car around 5:00 pm and headed to the airport. We turned in our rental, went through security and  arrived at our gate at 6:00 pm, which we felt was reasonable for our 8:15 flight. Until they moved it to 9:00, then 9:45, and finally 10:30. We landed in San Antonio a bit after midnight, headed to the La Quinta where we'd parked the car, and checked in for a good nights sleep. 

Next time: The "bet", final thoughts, and souvenirs

Michigan - The Sunset Coast

Today we headed west to the Sunset Coast, which follows the shoreline of Lake Michigan. 

Our first stop was Fisherman's Island State Park, which isn't located on an island, but does look out toward Fisherman's Island. This park offered tent and RV camping, and was busier than most of the parks we'd visited previously, but still pretty quiet. 

The park is 2678 acres and includes approximately 5 miles of sandy Lake Michigan shoreline. 

Once again we were impressed by the beautiful white sand beaches along the Great Lakes. 

Very clear water.

The entrance road passed through some mature forest, and then followed the shoreline. 

We saw a few birds on our way in, including a Black-capped Chickadee. They look identical to our Carolina Chickadees in Texas, but sing a different song and don't occur in Texas at all. 

Black-capped Chickadee

We also enjoyed seeing Yellow-rumped Warblers in their bright breeding plumage. These birds overwinter in Texas, but are in their much duller non-breeding plumage when we have them

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Once the road began following the shoreline, we started seeing different birds. There were several Bald Eagles, including this youngster. Bald Eagles take four years to obtain their classic black-and-white pattern, and as they grow up they have a variety of brown and pale plumages. This one was probably two years old. 

Bald Eagle

After driving to the end of the road, we walked about 3/4 mile down the beach to a point. There we found a couple of the endangered Great Lakes population Piping Plovers, and a nest site protected inside of a wire cage. We didn't run into anyone monitoring the nests, but obviously someone has been taking care of things!

Piping Plover

Piping Plover on protected nest

From Fisherman's Island we made a quick stop at Sportsman's Park, a site that we'd visited a couple of days prior, and then headed on toward Jordan River National Fish Hatchery. 

Our GPS gave us two options for reaching the hatchery, one the "normal" route along major paved roads, and the other a sketchy looking back way on dirt roads. We decided to take the roads less traveled, not sure if they would actually get us there. We were rewarded with a beautiful drive on nearly deserted gravel roads through beautiful forests and marshes. 

We pulled over in several places to enjoy the scenery and birds, and in one marshy place came across this large beaver-felled tree. These beavers mean business!!

The gravel roads eventually brought us right into the back gate of the fish hatchery and we got out to explore. 

It was Sunday and we only saw one hatchery worker at a distance, but many of the buildings were open and we got to look around a bit. 

They had a couple of native plant gardens that sure could have used the attention of a couple of hard-working volunteers!

We had a bit of a sobering moment at the Jordan River NFH as this was to be our summer volunteering gig in 2020. All of the paperwork had been signed and we were scheduled to arrive in May, but COVID brought all of that to a halt and eventually resulted in us pulling the plug on full-time RV volunteering.

As we stood there in the glorious cool weather, surrounded by green grass and forests and singing birds we couldn't help but feel some regret. It looks like it would have been an amazing place to spend a summer or two. 

We returned to our Cozy Cabin for an afternoon rest, and then headed to our now favorite Michigan State Park, Hartwick Pines, for a final evening at their feeders. The birds were cooperative and I got some great shots. 

Pileated Woodpecker male

Rose-breasted Grosbeak male

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Scarlet Tanager male

White-breasted Nuthatch

Eastern Phoebe with dragonfly

Next time: Our last day and, we found a factory tour.

Michigan - The Sunrise Coast

Michigan tourism materials refer to The Sunrise Coast and the Sunset Coast to differentiate the coast of Lake Huron (The Sunrise Coast) from Lake Michigan (The Sunset Coast).  Today we decided to explore the Lake Huron coast, so we headed north almost to the Mackinac Bridge, and then turned east. 

Our first stop wasn't on the coast, but an area named Dingman Marsh.  This area was made up of quiet rural roads through a wonderful natural marshy area. There was no traffic on the roads, allowing us to drive along slowly until we heard or saw birds, and then jump out to view and photograph them. In particularly good spots we would walk a couple of hundred yards up the road, and then back to the car. This is one of our favorite types of birding, as you can cover quite a bit of ground but still enjoy the solitude of nature. 

We got excellent looks at several varieties of warblers. Most common were Chestnut-sided Warblers, who really like the short Alder trees that grow in the marsh. 

Chestnut-sided Warbler

Less flashy but still a nice bird was a Northern Waterthrush that was singing, but very difficult to locate in the trees. Eagle-eye Teri picked it out and we finally got to see it well. 

Northern Waterthrush

There was a large pond that we accessed by following a wooded trail, and we found a few Common Loons there. 

We'd been hearing Common Loons in different places during our trip (one of the classic bird sounds of movies) but hadn't seen any yet.  Unfortunately getting a well exposed picture on this beautiful black and white bird on a pond in bright sunlight proved difficult!

Common Loon

From Dingman Marsh we drove the short distance to Gordan Turner Park, which is right on Lake Huron. They also have a marshy area and a boardwalk and we spent a bit of time enjoying the views of Lake Huron and finding more birds. 

We found more baby birds on the marsh and in the lake as well. 

Canada Geese with goslings - Pretty close to Canada!

Mute Swans with cygnets

Yesterday we posted a picture of a Trumpeter Swan, which is a native species. Mute Swans, on the other hand, were introduced from Europe and are the subject of much controversy.  Many people like to see them and are in favor of leaving them alone, but most wildlife agencies recognize them as an invasive species that competes with native swans. So there are efforts to control and/or eradicate Mute Swans from many areas of the North America. Easier said than done!!

One of the reasons that the forests of the northern US and Canada are such popular breeding grounds for migratory birds is the almost limitless supply of insects in spring and summer. We were prepared for Blackflies and Mosquitos and whatever we came across, but up to this point hadn't really been bothered by many insects. That changed here, and there was an enormous hatch of midges, which thankfully don't bite but love to get into your eyes, ears, hair (well, Teri's hair anyway...) and are just super annoying.  Here is a picture I took of midges swarming around a tree. 

Midges

The back of Mark's shirt after

we got out of the midges swarm.

From here we headed to Cheboygan State Park, just on the other side of the city of Cheboygan. 

My father was born and raised in Cheboygan, Michigan and it was fun to finally visit the area, though it has changed greatly since his boyhood. Many of the Michigan State Parks were surprisingly small, with little infrastructure and in many cases no staff at all. I think that in this area they serve primarily to provide beach access to Lake Huron, which has beautiful tan sandy beaches. 

Chilly water.

We didn't see many birds in this park, but did spot a few sandpipers out on the sandy beach. 

Semipalmated Sandpiper

Spotted Sandpiper

There are sandy dunes just up from the beach, and most of the dunes have some sort of grass growing on them. In a misguided attempt to take a shortcut, we decided to walk up through the dunes. It turns our that every tuft of grass was covered by midges, and as soon as we walked in there we were swarmed. We finally worked our way back out to the beach, but I think that we both swallowed a few bugs!

We got back to the car and continued our clockwise route along Sunrise Coast. 

Next stop was Thompson's Harbor State Park, another practically deserted state park with a couple of bathrooms and a trailhead or two. We never saw another soul in the park, visitor or staff. 

By now it was afternoon and the birds were quieting down, but we did enjoy a Brown Thrasher singing loudly from a treetop. They are in the same family as Mockingbirds, and while they aren't quite as talented, they still sing very well. 

Brown Thrasher

Our final stop before leaving the coast and turning for home was Besser Natural Area. 

Not a state park, but still primarily an access point to the beach. There was a nice wooded trail on the site, and we enjoyed a walk in the woods.  

There was a small area of huge Eastern White Pines that had never been logged, and the remains of an old homestead, Our final bird of the tour was a male American Redstart, it his Halloween colors of orange and black. Way up in a tree...

American Redstart male

It had been a long day by the time we returned to our Cozy Cabin, but we were happy to have experienced much of the Sunrise Coast. 

Next time: This is what could have been!