Trick or Treat

It didn't rain or snow but it was cold.

Halloween Cancellations

Schools across the UP have closed due to the flu. Many Halloween events have also been cancelled. It's sad. The kids wait all month for trick or treat.

Just wanted to remind you that the kids can still visit my Haunted House. They are safe. None of the ghosts, goblins, or other creatures can escape from the computer. You can't get the flu when you visit the Yooperville Haunted House.

There are thirteen (13)rooms. Collect them all.

Sheldon Avenue Houghton

Watch the video.. click above. It's a nice glimpse of downtown Houghton.

Houghton is back to normal. Sheldon sports a bricked road and new street lights. Was it worth it? You tell me. We'll see how it holds up. In the next few years, Houghton will see additional Cruise Ships, a new look downtown will be a big help to draw in those tourists.

Watch the video and tell me what you think. Drive down Sheldon and tell me what you think. (It reminded me a little of driving on the grating on the Portage Lake Lift Bridge.)

Halloween Events

The owners of the spook house located on 602 "DeRanged" Street say it's more than your average haunted house. One local Manistique couple has completely transformed their yard into a Halloween town, which draws hundreds of Trick-or-Treaters each year. Oct 31st.


Houghton, MTU, Safehouse is an annual event where houses in all three residence halls decorate their hallways in a spooky or fun manner, and members from the local community can wander through our halls and enjoy a short 'Halloween tour' of Michigan Tech. Oct. 31 5:00 -8:00


Iron Mountain:Kids Halloween Parade
October 30, 2009
Midtown Mall- Saturday, Oct. 31. Registration 12:30 p.m. and parade at 1 p.m.
Halloween Costume Carnival
October 31, 2009
Country Kitchen in the Midtown Mall on Saturday, Oct. 31 from 1 p.m. to 3p.m.



Morturary of Madness October 30 and 31st
Corner of Arbutus and US-2 (across from Hardees) in Manistique
Start:7:00 PM End:9:00 PM

Halloween Party Oct 30
Location:Stambaugh Legion Post 21
8:00 PM 12:00 AM

Halloween Happenings at the YMCA - OCT. 31
YMCA of Marquette County
11:00 AM 1:00 PM

Palmer Firefighters Association Haunted House October 31
Richmond Township Hall, Smith St, Palmer
4:00 PM 7:00 PM

Keweenaw Bay Halloween party--
The Keweenaw Bay Arnheim Halloween party will be on Friday, Oct. 30 at the KB Firehall. Doors open at 6 p.m. with costume judging at 7 p.m. Bring a dish to pass, and please register your child for a candy bag before Oct. 30.

Baraga County Memorial Hospital

Work on the new Baraga County Memorial Hospital will begin again in the spring. The site has been cleared and prepared for construction. A new hospital will have it's pros and cons but all change does.

The new hospital will be economical and environmentally improved. It is designed toward outpatient services. The new building will have offices for 10 physicians inside of the building. It will also having 15 beds in the medical surgical unit, with seven of them being private. The current hospital has 24 beds, but the hospital only staffs for 15. None of the 24 bed are private. The current unit was the converted obstetrical that was built 40 years ago. All four of my children were born in that hospital!

The new hospital will have a newly-designed emergency room and after-hours walk-in clinic, a much needed service. The current building, which was constructed in 1969, doesn't meet the current needs of Baraga County.


BCMH supports 186 jobs with 133 of them full-time. The new location will drop the amount of jobs to 157, with 120 of them full-time. That's the biggest "con" for the community, maybe the only con.

It should be lighter

The clocks should have turned back an hour last night. The sun should be out, it should be light right now. I'm tired of the dark mornings. I like to go to work when the sun is shining.

The sun rises at about 8:30 and sets at 6:30 with twilight giving us about another hour of light a day. That's on a sunny day. If it's a cloud covered day, forget the twilight. We should have 11 hours of visible day light. That isn't going to change with a time change and every day will get about 3 minutes less of sunlight.

Does it sound like I'm due for a vacation? Overdue for one I'm thinking.

Unemployment

Aren't we the lucky ones. Baraga County again topped Michigan's highest unemployment list for September.

Baraga County is one of three counties in the western U.P. where unemployment grew in September, going from 23.8 percent to 24.3 percent. Smaller counties have more volatile rates, with events such as the impending move of Terex Handlers having a bigger proportional effect.

Does it sound better to say that the non-seasonally adjusted rate in the six-county area was 13 percent, down two-tenths of a point from August.

The lowest rate our area is Houghton County, where unemployment fell five-tenths of a percentage point to 10.2. (Thank you Michigan Tech) Iron County is next with 11.7, Keweenaw 11.9, Gogebic 13.3, and Ontonagon 13.8.

Every county in the U.P. had unemployment rates significantly higher than those of a year ago, though the 4 percent increase was still lower than the state's 6.3 percent.
The lowest unemployment rate in the Upper Peninsula was 6.1 percent in Mackinac County.

I find it hard to believe that the U.P.'s September rate of 11.5 percent was two points higher than the national rate, but well below Michigan's 14.8 percent.

People, especially young people, are moving out and moving on. It's not a pretty picture. All I can say is that we wish you well and come back, we'll leave the light on for you!

School Closings

Several of our UP Schools have closed for a few days due to high absenteeism. The flu bug has hit with a vengeance. I haven't heard of any serious cases but the fun has just begun.

What's it like where you live?

Snowboard Haven

The Keweenaw County Trails and Recreation Committee and the Copper Country Trails Club envision a terrain park, a man-made area outside where people can use snowboards while using jumps and spins and enjoy the snow in a different manner.

This type of park is ideal for young people to use especially with downhill skiing at nearby Mount Bohemia. They hope to bring in snowboarders to the area who also use Mount Bohemia. A terrain park would be lit and would have longer hours than Mount Bohemia.

The park would be placed between Cabin 3 and Cabin 5 at the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge. It is designed to be about 30 yards wide, north-facing and maintained by the Copper Harbor Trails Club.

The recreation committee hoped to get funding form the Board of Commissioners but
he Keweenaw County Board did not vote on the issue.

The terrain park would feature a beginner run and an advanced run to accommodate all users. It would be available for kids after school.

Once they receive funding, the crew can have the terrain park completed in less than 30 days. The park would be free of charge and will be groomed with existing equipment.

The terrain park is in need of funding. Members of the community committed some funding for the project. Approximately $3,400 is still needed.

On the down side

We are on the downside but I'm not really sure what was on the upside. Summer was no more than a month long and fall, that was part of summer.

Dave put all the deck chairs away, even the outdoor heater is tucked in a corner of the garage for the winter. The flower pots are gone and most of my gardens are cleared and bare. The fountain is no longer struggling to operate pumping water through ice. It won't see the light of day until late April or maybe May.

The leaves haven't even all fallen. The are sticking to the trees as if taped or attached with hot glue. It's been the strangest summer/fall that I can remember. We sure haven't seen any global warming.

The Halloween decorations are out and even the ghost complain about the cold. Monday managed to reach 60° for a short time in the afternoon. The weatherman has forecast a cold rainy week to come. I suppose we should be thankful he doesn't say cold and snowy.

Jay Johnson

This may not be a UP story but than maybe it is. Jay Johnson was a Bessemer, MI native. A Yooper!!

Former U.S. Rep Jay Johnson, a longtime Green Bay TV news anchor, died Saturday at his suburban Washington, D.C., home of an apparent heart attack.

Mr. Johnson, 66, had a 32-year journalism career that included work as news anchor at WFRV-TV from 1980 to 1986 and WLUK-TV from 1987 to his election to Congress in 1996.

In 2000, Jay Johnson was appointed director of the U.S. Mint by President Bill Clinton and served two years. In 1988 he received the Outstanding Citizen of the Year Award from Washington Lodge 21 of the Green Bay Masons for his work with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and the Family Violence Center.

When Jay Johnson was director of the US Mint, Dave and I had a chance to visit his office with a old friend of Jay's. Jay took us to lunch in the Congressional Dining room in the Capitol Building. That is something that I will never forget and it shows what a special Yooper Jay was.

We'll keep him and his family in our prayers.

End of an Era

Yesterday it was an annual event, today it's gone.

Rally America officials informed Lake Superior Performance Rally organizers that the 2010 event would not be on its national schedule. It will be run as a regional event sanctioned by the Rally America organization.

It's all about money and not much revenue can be generated with this type of road rally. Rallies like LSPR are money-losing proposition, since there is no way to charge admission, and the organization has lost money five consecutive years. The RA rallycross events will take place on a closed-loop one-mile course at New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, N.J., and feature cars racing against each other in heats, instead of against the clock like they do in events like LSPR.

Rally America hopes to bring together champions from the four regional series together at LSPR 2010 in a sort of 'race of champions' format. The event, which has roots dating back to the 'Press On Regardless' rally in the 1940s, should still draw a good field because of its history and its ties to the community and Michigan Tech.

So.. having said that.. We'll have something next year but it will be more like watching the minor leagues instead of the pros.

Performance Rally

This is the weekend for the 2009 Lake Superior Performance Rally. The race has been a fall event in the Copper Country for as long as I can remember. They begin the race in the back woods of Baraga and end in Copper Harbor.

The event features a wide variety of stages as can be found on the Rally America circuit and its location and timing provide a completely unpredictable landscape.
The race has everything, from very technical to Delaware which is just fast and wide open. The event's signature stages are the only ones in the entire series to take place on asphalt - a pair of runs up Brockway Mountain Drive.

Drivers come from across the country to participate. Locals like Nunnenmacher and Rossi's with their 2007 Subaru STI in the Super Production class. They'll face strong competition, the defending LSPR champions, Ken Block of Rancho Santa Fe, CA, and co-driver Alessandro Gelsomino of Los Angeles. Also Travis Pastrana of Annapolis, Md., who finished third in last year's LSPR.

Mason Moyle, a 16-year-old Houghton High School student, is just getting his feet wet in rally racing. This is his first year behind the wheel, but the young driver is already seeing some success. Moyle was first in his class in the Ojibwe Forest Rally in Bemidji, Minn., in August.

The event goes throughout southern Houghton County and the Ottawa National Forest until late Friday night before attacking the Keweenaw Peninsula Saturday. The victory celebration will be in Copper Harbor at about 6 p.m. Saturday.

On going road construction,,

It was not a good day for us. We needed to go though Marquette to Munising. There was road work on the intersection of 41 and 28 in Harvey. We sat for 1/2 hour or more waiting... just waiting. The traffic must have been backed up beyond the prison entrance.

They are still working on the corner in Michigamme. The good news is that it isn't slowing the traffic much. We zipped right on through.

In other areas there seems to be a lot of barrels, miles of barrels with no apparent road work. Rain after dark makes for difficult driving on the Mackinaw Bridge. It's much nicer crossing in the day when you can see Mackinaw Island and maybe a few boats.

As for color.. we still have color. It's a very strange year.

Jobs..

Michigan's unemployment rate is over 15% so it is always good to hear of new jobs. It great news to hear that a tire recycling plant will hire about 50 people in the Niagara area. Even though Niagara is in Wisconsin, the border community employees many people from Michigan.

The new recycling plant will occupy 10 acres of the 47 acres available in a former paper mill which closed in August of 2007. The city is in the process of negotiating with New Page to buy the rest of that land.


The plant shreds tires and reuses it for everything from power to playground mats. Lets turn in those old tires, they have better uses than lawn ornaments.

Yet another color update..

We still have beautiful color in the UP. The color is about 90% away from Lake Superior and only 60% near the Lake. The trick is selecting a nice day to go on a color tour. Our temperatures don't climb much above 45 and early morning could see the ground glistening with snow.

... and no, we are not happy about it.

Signs that winter is on the way

What's a little snow and cold. The snow will be gone by noon. It's Sunday, stay in bed until the snow melts.

Fall has fallen

The weatherman isn't being very nice to us. We don't even have full color yet, many of the leaves are still green, and snow is in the forecast. For the next week, our weather will be unseasonably cold and snowy. Do you believe that!

Did I tell you about the record crop of apples... Apples are everywhere! Every apple tree is weighted down with apples. This is a wild apple tree on the side of the road. More than likely all the apples will go to the deer or they will go to waste.

Apple pies will be on the menu tomorrow.. apple pie, apple cake, apple butter, apple sauce, caramel apples.

Just for you..

Dave keeps asking me why I want to take pictures. The color change will happen again next year and the year after that. He get impatient with me for wanting to stop. He doesn't understand that the pictures are for you, my visitors. They are for those of you that miss the UP Fall color and for those who have never seen it.

The first picture shows the Huron Mountains in the background. I suppose I should have walked into the field for a better picture but I would have been trespassing and we wouldn't want to get chased by a cow or something.

Chassell Park

In my search for color, we stopped at the Chassell Park in downtown Chassell.

Color Update

This is Houghton/Hancock. There isn't much color but it's beginning.

Haunted Yooperville

TheHaunted Halloween site is now open. Our four year old grandsons think it's pretty neat. Kim will probably shake he head and wonder why I haven't deleted it but it still entertains the kids so it still exists.

The pages were made about 14 years ago before such sites as Facebook and Blogspot were around to occupy all our time.

I hope you take the tour. There are 13 pages. You can find them by clicking on the house or if you want to cheat, go to the bottom of a page and use the next button. Even a 4 year old can do it but we have two 4 year olds and they do tend to fight over what page to look at.

Fall Color

Click here to view these pictures larger

This was a test. I was looking at my share sight in Shutterfly and noticed that I could post photos directly to my Blog or Facebook. I just had to try it and, as you can see, it works great. Since my Blog posts to Facebook, you might be reading this in either place.

It is also an old picture. It the sun would come out I'd go out and take a few new pictures. We've had heavy sporadically today with no end in sight.

Color Update

This short video from Pure Michigan.

There still isn't much color in my neighborhood but you don't need to travel to far to find it. The Ishpeming area is at about 50% color. The heavy rain that is expected could bring some of those leaves down.

The Copper Country seem to be at 20 to 30% color. Check out the Portage Lake Lift Bridge Web Cam. Note that the hill in the back ground don't show much color.

Color is late, very late.

Overnight Freeze

What a difference a night makes. We woke to a freeze. It was 25° outside with a heavy frost. I needed a heavy jacket before I went out the door.

Many people hadn't picked their tomatoes or cucumbers because it wasn't supposed to get so cold. They lost them.

At noon there was still ice on a bucket of water sitting on our deck. It felt warm out because the sun was out but the bucket wasn't in the sun.

I guess it's time. It is October after all.