Chasing Colors

Overnight storms left about mid morning today, leaving us with a cloudy, dreary, showery day.  That put the skids to our plans to go to Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada, because the main thing we were going to do was an outdoor visit to the "Old Lock" that we saw from the tour boat yesterday.  Just as well, because the toll for the International Bridge and the semi-hassle of entering Canada and then re-entering the US for a short visit wasn't going to be worth it.

In lieu of that, we headed south along the St. Mary's River toward Lake Huron looking for the Fall Colors that this area is famous for.  While it hasn't been cold enough yet, and indeed, is a couple of weeks early, we did find some trees that were seriously thinking that it is getting close to winter!

Some trees were just contemplating the end of summer.

Can you imagine what this hardwood forest is going to look like when all the foliage is in full color?

We took a side road to try to get closer to the river, and this is what we found after 2 miles of dirt road:

The docent at Whitefish Point told us that due to the extreme winter of last year, and the large amount of rainfall so far this year, the level of Lake Superior is a full ten inches higher than normal.  That translates to all the waterways downstream, of course, which is why the dirt road in the photo continued out to the riverbank at some time in the past, but does not do that now.

We spotted a couple more trees that are ahead of their cousins when it comes to getting with the color program!

After a nice leisurely drive, we stopped at Biggby's Coffee Shop for a cup and some free Wifi to plan our trip for the next few weeks.  There are a number of things that we want to see, so we'll see how that works out with our plan to start returning to the West Coast for the holidays. It seems like a long time until Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it's almost the end of September already! Where does the time go?