Winter Biking

A self-portrait showing what I did every day this winter: gear up for honorable battle against the elements!

(Now that spring is finally here, I instead use a nice light roadbike with a light shirt. Oh, how nice it is!)

Snowy bikes

Snow and a great culture of biking collide during the first big snowstorm of the year (don't worry, we had many more afterwards!).

Sarah's Giant Snowshoes

In honor of the ridiculously prolonged winter we've been having...

Advantages: They practically float on air, much less snow.

Disadvantages: How does she stand in those things?!

Sky Lines

Looking up through the long-gone roof of the Quincy #5 boiler house.

Incidentally, the same place as this shot.

Tamarack

One from the deep archives.

This is a photo from one arm of the Tamarack #3's gigantic rock pile, looking towards another arm of this massive rockpile. My friend Mike, better known as the Copper Country Explorer, is taking a photo looking out over the Tamarack swamps.

We did this exploration in July of 2009. This rockpile is still one of the most impressive ones I've seen.

Birds

Some pretty birds, apparently also acting as paintball targets, on the cement ruins at the Champion Mill in Freda, Michigan.

I've always wondered about the uses of ruins in the Keweenaw. The graffiti seems to be a "just for fun" sort of thing, as compared to the way that graffiti is used for communication purposes in more urban areas.

Similarly, paintball and airsoft are common uses. This makes sense, despite the fact that I really dislike the results.

The main thing which bothers me is that I'm interested in these ruins for their own sake -- and graffiti, paintball, airsoft, and people wandering around and kicking bits over don't help make it any easier to visit and enjoy these wonderful sites!

Miner's Castle

One from the back catalog: Miner's Castle, along Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan's beautiful Upper Peninsula.