Kaleva Day

  I'm calling this post Kaleva Day, even though I was there for an event known as Kaleva Days. That's because my pictures mostly aren't about the event, but are an ecclectic assortment of things around town. I participated in the vendor event and did pretty well. Another part of the event was a classic car show. There were lots more cars, this is just a few.

One man was walking around with a white German Shepherd, which reminded me of Ester's dog, Jade. This one's name was Powder.

I wanted to swing by the Bottle House. I thought sure I'd blogged about that before, but I guess not. This was completed in 1940 and was made out of 60,000 pop bottles. The man who owned the bottling plant built it, but he died before his family could move in. His name was John Makinen.

This totem pole is for my writer friend Diana whose muse is a duck named Drake. The totem symbols come from the Kalevala, an epic Finn tale and the source of the town's name. In the Kalevala legend "the Duck is the Messenger that helped Vainamoinen discover his true powers."

There is also a museum in the old rail station. I'll just have to go back! The Manistee and North Eastern RR ran from Manistee to Traverse City, and was one of the many logging boom lines. Link below to other posts that mention it.

I'll just end with a nice planter. It was a good day and there is no other news.

See Local Finnish Heritage See Manistee and North Eastern RR

Blue Sky and Sunshine

 
I'll tell you what. If blue sky and sunshine in November can't make you happy, I can't do anything for you.

I walked to the post office today, and just took pictures along the way.



This is really two trees, but I like how it looks like one.



Small town, America. It's what I know best. I had errands to do in town too.





Sky above the Catholic church, now closed, sadly.



The shadows were lengthening as I came home. No matter that it was only three in the afternoon. We're on days of short daylight.



Accountability report:
Wrote two chapters in Dead Mule Swamp Druggist. Only one or two to go.
Did a bunch of stupid recordkeeping stuff.
Mailed out two book orders.

	See Scottville in the Snow
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Sparkle in the Park

 
On the way home last night, Ramona swung through Sparkle in the Park in Bear Lake. This is a very small town that decorates the entire park with lights every Christmas.



But this is, to my way of thinking, exactly what small town life is all about. Instead of some huge corporate light display that is supposed to knock your socks off, this is a community involvement project.



The village does some of the edgings, but the park is divided into sections and various businesses and organizations each decorate one. The bright gold and white lights kind of "blew out" in the camera, but it sure was colorful.

Of course, I was partial to the one with the tent, by the Boy Scout Troop.



One that was quite simple, but very effective was the sleigh and reindeer out on a point of land, reflecting in the water.



People in town come to see how their friends, family and colleagues decorated their spaces. People driving by on the highway can enjoy it (the park is very visible from US 31), and those who wish to can drive through and take a closer look.

Small town fun at its best.

	See Yellow, Red, Orange for a view in winter near where the reindeer lights are
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Exploring Hesperia's Parks

 
I'll probably show you a few more things from Stan Hywet another day, but I did something interesting this morning that I want to share.

There is a small town about 45 minutes from me that has quite a few parks, and I wanted to research them to use in my newspaper column. So I went there and collected information for a couple of hours before the rain started. I had to come back to get to work anyway.

They just added a "history trail" to the central park in town. I read about that in the Oceana County weekly paper, and that's what kicked off my interest. Hesperia has fewer than 1000 residents so I hadn't thought of it as a big recreation location, but they actually have quite a lot going on. The main park is Webster Park. It's nicely decorated.



They've just added 13 interpretive panels along the perimeter sidewalk. It was pretty interesting reading. This isn't one of those signs, just part of the entrance gate that I liked.



The primary natural feature of the town is the White River, and the dam which has supplied power for various industries since about 1867. Now it provides recreational fishing grounds.



There was a short trail beside the lake above the dam. I just liked these two stump terrariums.



Caught pictures of two interesting birds. There were a couple dozen killdeer on the mud flats along the lake. I don't think I've ever seen so many killdeer in one place. It seemed odd. Perhaps there was some invertebrate they found particularly tasty.



I did get a very bad picture of a kingfisher. It's not worth showing you. I did, however, catch the footloose robin. Quite a few of them actually. The town was decorated with plywood trees which had been painted by school classes. I liked this one.



I need to go back on a day with bluer sky to get nicer pictures.

	See more White River See Killdeer
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Local Finnish Heritage

 
At one of my work sites this week I pictured an old barn.



Note that the front quarter closest to the camera is built of squared logs. I encounter old log buildings with some regularity, but this one was a bit of a surprise. It shouldn't have been, really. There are lots of Finns who settled in the area. In fact, there is an entire town, Kaleva, in Manistee County created by Finnish people in 1900. Every street name is Finn. But that's about 20 miles from this barn.

Still, many people from Finland came to the area, not just to Kaleva. There are a good number of Finnish names in the phone book.

How do I know this farm was homesteaded by Finns? Because of an historical tour Marie and I took in St. Louis County Minnesota. That area was also settled by people with Nordic heritage, and Germans too. People from each of those countries had specific ways they fitted the log corners of their cabins.



This method, with the dovetailed joints, is the Finnish corner. It's the first time I've seen one locally. Pretty cool. Makes me wonder if those two walls were part of the original cabin where the family lived for a while, and then expanded to build a house, and made this structure into the barn.

The link below is to a picture of one such corner in Minnesota.

	See Finnish corner
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Peacock, First and Last

 
The very first place I went today had a handsome peacock.



The sunlight really caught his feathers in this shot.



The (next to) last place I went was on Peacock Trail. Yes it passes through the village of Peacock where I've taken you before.



A nice set of bookends for the day's assignments.

	See Renewed Spirits Ranch See A Tour of Peacock
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FLT - DEC Horse Campground to Trout Pond Trail

 
Marie's brother Larry drove down from Syracuse to hike with us for the day. He brought us genuine rain and cold. It never got above 45 degrees all day, but we were going to have fun anyway, gosh darn it!



Some road miles brought us to the village of Corbett where we crossed the East Branch of the Delaware River. They have a suspension bridge, built in 1926 and patterned after the Brooklyn Bridge. It is one lane, and I do mean one lane. You'll notice that the rain didn't keep the anglers out of the river.



Still wet, still cold...



We were supposed to leave the road and go over a mountain on trail, but we couldn't find the trail. We did find an interesting rock quarry. Do you remember when I visited Marie last year that we went to a place called Opus 40? I didn't show you very many pictures of it, but we couldn't help but laugh when we saw this. We named it Opus One-Half.



The best part of it was the plastic covering over the top. Did someone say "lunch stop?" We were dry, we had "art," we had comfortable seating, we had food.



We did the rest of the day on roads, after touring a large dairy farm. The worker was very proud of all the cows, even though he wasn't even the owner.



We returned to the campsite after a prolonged dinner in a dry, warm restaurant to find the tent luffing in the wind, but still secure and it hadn't leaked. We were happy enough! We decided that the campsites by the lake were in the local wind tunnel. With three of us in the tent it wasn't in danger of blowing away, but it flapped and snapped all night long.

Miles that counted:9.8. Miles actually walked counting looking for the trail: 12. (We actually walked this piece backwards for a complex reason I won't bore you with.)

	See Delaware River to DEC Horse Campground
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Scottville in the Snow

 
After not having much in the way of winter, we sure are getting some now! This is Scottville as I passed through at 9:30 this morning. It was 18 degrees.



And look what I caught on the bank sign. It says "GREAT."

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