Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The other side of the lake

Most of our Lake Michigan paddling takes place on the western shore of this Great Lake. It's lovely to be on the eastern shore, which tends to have steeper beaches and therefore more breaking waves during the summer. (We get our fair share of those in the fall.)

Approaching the lighthouse from the side it was designed to be seen from.

Today we paddled from Stony Creek up to the Little Sable Lighthouse. The shore is lined with summer cottages ranging from the sweet to the ostentatious. We battled a headwind all the way up, so we stopped for lunch on what appeared to be public land. It turned out to be private but not yet built upon, and the Florida resident who owns it motored over in his ATV to make sure we were OK. (It was pretty wavy.)

Yes, we're fine. In fact, we like the waves. Would you please dispose of the garbage we collected from the water?

He kindly took away the garbage we had collected from the water. (We think there's so much of it because of the July 4 weekend. What a way to celebrate your indepenence!)
We returned just in time to catch headwinds all the way back, too. Here's what we collected on the way back.

We went fishing for trash and came back with quite a haul!

Most of it is chip bags and candy wrappers. If fewer foods were sold in single-serving packages and people ate more whole foods and fewer convenience foods, perhaps there would be considerably less garbage in the water.

1 comment:

Lyn Stone said...

That's the first time I've ever seen you decks covered. Usually it's just a paddle.