A second Northwoods summer trip...and rockhounding!

Well, if you didn't already guess it, the picture above is not from Arkansas--it is sunset along the Lake Superior shoreline on the Keweenaw Peninsula, roughly an hour north of where Hope, I, and now Kenny went to university...but more on that later.

Since our return from our July Northwoods trip, much of our remaining time was spent getting Beth ready for her next stage in life--her university time!  Below is a picture of us unpacking her into her dorm room:

The image below is of the outside of her dormitory on the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville campus, Pomfret Hall:

We'll have more pictures of her college life as this year unfolds; wasn't much to see with her unpacking and we had to immediately return to Monticello to get Stephen ready for his first day of 10th grade.  I also was leaving for another quick (week-long) trip to the Northwoods.  If you recall, earlier in the summer we lent my parents our old Toyota Sienna minivan while theirs was getting repaired.  By mid-August, they no longer needed the vehicle, so I rode up with Kenny in his car to Rhinelander (he was himself heading back to Michigan Tech for his senior year) and then spent a few days with my folks.  

Below, you can see the southern buttermilk biscuits and venison sausage gravy I made for them one day for breakfast (mom enjoyed them!):

Mom and I also took advantage of a quiet day to drive around the small communities she grew up in north of Rhinelander, and we did some antiquing, including at the place below which has quite a few animal mounts:

I spent parts of two days with Kenny up in the Keweenaw Peninsula doing some rockhounding.  We took advantage of our time to drive to the top of scenic Brockway Mountain, just outside of Copper Harbor:

We spent most of our time in the Keweenaw combing some beaches for neat rocks.  A weather system had been pushing through, so the winds were pretty strong to start out, and the waves on Lake Superior were pretty impressive: 

We wore light jackets, but it wasn't really that cold--we were just trying to stay comfortable in the occasional scattered rain showers and strong breeze.  Below, Kenny stands on a rock formation jutting into the lake north of Copper Harbor:

Kenny loves to rockhound when he gets the chance--and so do I--so I had brought up my metal detector, and we scoured the rocky beaches for things like float copper (found a few small pieces), pretty rounded rocks, and one more exotic stone...what some people call "yooperlites"!  Below, Kenny looks forward to our rock hunt:

Yooperlites are unique because they contain minerals that "fluoresce" or glow bright colors under ultraviolet (UV) light.  These rocks don't look any different than the other beach rocks, and the UV light really only works when it is dark out, so we waited until the sunset (and got lots of nice sunset pictures, thanks to clearing skies and smoke from Canadian wildfires):

In the dusky pictures above and below, you can see Kenny using a special UV flashlight to try to find yooperlites.  We found none higher up on the beach--probably already found by others--but we did have some limited success closer to the waterline (yes, Kenny took his socks and shoes off and got in the cold Lake Superior water!):

Below are the yooperlite rocks we found--well, Kenny really found all of them, because he was more willing to get his feet wet:

The picture above shows these yooperlites in normal light, and the image below is with the lights turned off and the UV flashlight only:

Pretty cool, huh?  These glowed orange; I think they may also glow yellow and perhaps some other colors.  These aren't big pebbles, but it sure was a fun adventure to find them!

We got back to Kenny's apartment pretty late that evening, so the next morning I decided to start heading back to Rhinelander fairly early (and Kenny slept in some more).  En route to Rhinelander, I decided to stop and measure some big trees right along the highway, including this 50 inch diameter eastern white pine:

I stopped at a second location to investigate what looked to be some interested tree specimens on a steep, rocky hill...but when I got through the thick young trees along the parking area, the pines weren't that big...but I did find the spoil pile from an old, now abandoned copper mine (below):

Knowing that these old mining operations were usually pretty inefficient and missed a lot of native copper, I got my metal detector out of the van and started scanning the tailings--to immediate success!  The rock below has a fairly large knob of native (virtually pure) copper (in front of my middle finger):

I found a fair number of decent sized nuggets of native copper in the couple hours I spent kicking around this tailings pile...and a lot of mosquitos!  

I am now back in Monticello, preparing for a whole string of work-related deadlines.  It is still 100+ degrees out here most days, but it was really nice to spend some days in the north, as a few trees are starting to change leaf colors (probably due to the drought they've been having).