Northern Lights on Steroids
The past week started out with a North Country Trail hike on the Baraga Plains to the west of Alberta. We accessed the trail from a two-track off of the Baraga Plains Road and headed westward on the Peter Wolfe Chapter’s segment 55. Even after the warm weather a couple of week’s earlier, we encountered significant snow on the trail.
While firm enough to keep you on the surface in many places, we did so much post-holing that we decided to bail out at the first logging road we encountered. After hiking back to our vehicles we drove farther west to another access road that would put us on segment 54 from where we headed eastward. The sandy conditions coupled with the woods being to the north of the trail resulted in a much easier hiking experience.
We came across several patches of wintergreen where some in our party picked berries for tea and the pleasurable experience of the raw berries on the palate.
While hiking 5.6 miles overall, we covered a total of three miles on the NCT toward our #hike100NCT.
After enjoying coffee at that completion of the hike that Michael had brought, Julie, Jennifer, and I made a stop at nearby Ogemaw Falls.
If you would like to see it in motion, I have it on a Facebook reel at this link.
While we were in Finland in March we missed a significant northern lights event, but on Sunday night into Monday morning there was yet another huge display that went on for hours. The sky was full of curtains and pulsing colorful light in all directions, including to the south. I spent at least two hours watching the amazing display from our deck on the lake. It was quite an experience!
They were so bright that I was actually able to catch some video of them as well! I have two different shots that you can find on these links to Twitter and Instagram.
The big news this past week was that our Chassell Township MDNR SPARK grant proposal scored in tier 2 of the ten tiers of the 462 SPARK grant proposals submitted. The 21 proposals in tier 1 were already funded and we are one of the ten proposals in tier 2. More good news would come this week as we would receive the EGLE permit covering the three components of our project requiring permitting which will add to our scoring when we have the opportunity to add additional information in May.
On Tuesday we went down to the farm to meet with Michael Paling from the American Bird Conservancy to hike out to where we had completed our habitat project a couple of years ago so we could put up a listening device which will be used to monitor bird calls over the next couple of months.
If you would like to learn more about our project, you can check out a story about it on a Discovering episode at this link:
I got in a couple of 2200 yard swims this past week, but I also got out for my first run since injuring my leg in that ski crash in Finland back in March. Wednesday was the Keweenaw Running Group’s annual plogging event where we run and pick up trash (in conjunction with Earth Day), so it was a mellow way to get back in the groove!
This past week I also attended a webinar on capital asset management and planning put on by MSU Extension and the Michigan Department of Treasury in preparation for our planning commission effort to develop a 6-year capital improvement plan. I also attended a Redevelopment Ready Community Summit session on Thursday evening put on by the Keweenaw Economic Development Alliance and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation on local government funding with property taxes and real estate development.
The balance of the week was spent getting our Airbnb property ready for the season which started last night.
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