Color Tour VII

Well. It' been a while. 

We're in Effingham, IL, at the junction of I-57 and I-70, having driven down from Trufant, MI, yesterday. Today we'll be in Chandler, OK.

We gassed up at a place near Kalamazoo, MI, where the gas was $3.099 yesterday; didn't pick it for that reason, just noticed the price as we were filling up. That was the lowest we've seen; it's about $3.29 in southern Illinois. 

Temperatures were higher than anticipated ... about 75 degrees yesterday afternoon around Vandalia. There was a little color around Trufant ... yellows and golds on trees in town ... but there really wasn't much fall color in lower Michigan. It got a little better as we went toward Lake Michigan and then petered out as we got down toward Gary, IN.

The pictures above are sort of chronological. The bottom is an early morning picture (day before yesterday) of Portage Creek, near Curtis, MI. I took a sunset shot at the same place in December and posted it on the blog Dec. 11. Beautiful, placid stream, much warmed yesterday than in December!

Near that point was a tree in the process of turning color. I've been fascinated by oaks and maples that look like Jack Frost has been individually painting each leaf, sometimes in abstract designs.

As we got to where we could see the Mackinac Bridge, there was an ore boat going west through the straits. Brought back memories of when I was a night clerk at the Bayfield Inn in Bayfield, WI, and would see these huge boats in Lake Superior.

We spent a little time yesterday morning at a flea market on the edge of Trufant and, while Sandy enjoyed the displays, I poked around in the adjacent woods. There was a nice array of colored trees across a nearby field.

In the strip of woods bordering the flea market, there were a few of the old, upturned stumps that Trufant is famous for ("The Stump Fence Capital of the USA"). When the original settlers in the Pinery ... the huge white pine forests of the upper Midwest ... were clearing land, they cut the pines, uprooted the stumps and stood them on edge along the sides of their fields. The intertwining roots were an impenetrable barrier to livestock. I liked the sculptured look and patina on this old giant.

And there were quite a few large mushrooms in the dark, damp undergrowth of the fence line. tv