Mostly Lake Superior - Day 348

  I did hike today. I did fewer miles, and this meant there was no stress about hiking fast enough to finish before dark. I began along the Little Garlic River. The first portion of trail was new to me since I hiked in 2009. At that time, the chapter knew they were going to be able to get this section off road, but it had not yet been built. I love seeing the connections come together.

Before long, the trail crossed the road, and then I was back on trail I've seen a couple of times. It's a beautiful section. I've walked it at conferences as well as on my first hike. I heard a roaring through the trees, so I knew I was getting close to Lake Superior. There it is!

The shoreline near Marquette is gorgeous, even on a gray and snowy day. This is the outer end of Little Presque Isle ("almost an island" is the exact translation). This is volcanic basalt.

After you pass this point of land, the rocks change to Jacobsville Sandstone. This is not only weird, but it's weird to geologists too. Apparently as part of that Mid-Continent Rift system, there are places where the volcanic rock is on top of the sedimentary. The official word is an unconformity. Anyway, where the waves get a toehold in the sandstone cliffs, these narrow bays wash out. This one was even working on making a cave up near the end of the wave action.

Here's a whole wall of the Jacobsville Sandstone. This is a red sandstone with lighter bands due to leaching and bleaching of the iron oxides that create the red color.

At each side of one of those washouts is a point of sandstone on its way to becoming the smooth oval banded rocks that are associated with Lake Superior (these are not agates, just sandstone). I liked this one with waves and ice.

Here are a bunch of volcanic rocks, some with quartz stripes.

And not far away is a Jacobsville Sandstone area that is slowly turning into individual rocks.

Miles today: 8.7. Total miles so far: 4049.7

See Score: Sue 1, Joan 0