I was in Michigan in July—family stuff—visit my 98-year old aunt and (younger) cousins, and Lou's family reunion. We started in Grand Rapids and drove to a cabin in the mountains outside Traverse City (which has only very slightly larger population [15,515] than Los Osos, but seems vast due to old buildings like an opera house and an art museum). I should call not those things outside the city mountains, they are not that tall. But they seemed like mountains due to the pine trees from my Big Bear-SoCal perspective. And it wasn't a cabin either, but a six bedroom house with a two bedroom guest house, too, and right on a lake. But who wants to stay in a house in the hills? Not quite vacationy enough.
The Traverse City area is the largest producer of tart cherries in the United States. Michael Moore founded the Traverse City Film Festival. An X-Files episode in season four was filmed there. And so, so, very relatable to us in SLO County, USA Today named it as one of the top ten cities for local wine.
(So we were in a "house" on High Lake, but really, "high" compared to what? Or maybe it is one of those other highs, there was a lot of wine, which led to this long delay in posting.)
We also did some traveling to the Upper Peninsula. Munising. Big Foot and pasties, oh, delicious pasties!
(You can click on the images to make them larger.)
Then we went some other places. We wound up going through Newberry, Michigan population 1,519 in 2010. We stopped at a realty office to get addresses, in a pipe dream sort of way, to look at properties for sale. We stopped at Rahilly's IGA market to get some sodas. And I found, sitting casually on an upper shelf - Trenary Toast!!!
I had only found this mail order, and there it was IN PERSON, like it was a common box of Hostess Zingers or something! (The reason that this is sewer related, is that Paavo Ogren, our sewer guru, our Obi-Wan Kenobi, told me about this stuff.) I bought a bunch of bags. My favorite flavor is cardamom, but it was the one least liked by the fam. Oh well, more for me!
I think I shrieked, and the photo is blurry, we were going pretty fast. Lou's son driving was kind enough to encourage me to go back and have a look! So I did while the rest of our party went over to the river to enjoy the natural beauty; of an actual flowing thing, and, it is very leafy and green in Michigan. I casually walked up to the sewer plant gate to view this other flowing thing. How could I photograph in this place? Well, I just walked in.
No one noticed me. So I am bringing you what this place looked like on July 20, 2018.
Yes, it smelled.....
When this truck pulled in, I figured I was cooked if I was caught, so below is the one parting shot - just to prove that I was actually there. I am waving. I hope I am not discovered and prosecuted because I posted this. (Can they extradite me back to Michigan?)
So here is where the wine came in. We were back at the cabin. Everyone was playing Pinochle or something (I am not a card player). I was downloading all of my camera cards onto my laptop and somehow, as one card must have had two folders of photos, and I had a glass or two of wine, I downloaded photos from only one of the folders.
Next, I was going to write this Newberry sewer post, but alas, photos missing.........
Which card had the poop? Overwriting my sewer photos?—NO! I took no more photos.
I figured I'd get some photo place to recover the images, but thought, that is going to be verrrry expensive; so many cards! Then I thought, I'll just buy new camera cards and figure how to retrieve the lost pix later. July became November.........(insert 1940s vintage image of calendar with pages flipping). Then I found THAT was going to be verrrry expensive if I could even find more than two cards (I usually use seven.)
$39.99 to download recovery software was the cheapest way to go (the free ones were not that great). I need those cards for the trip in December. Well, with recovery, I found some other old images on those cards too:
Ernest Hemingway's bathroom in his house in San Francisco de Paula,
outside Havana, Cuba!
A photo I took of Richard Otto's Baywood newspaper from the 1950s!
I also stumbled on this fun stuff in researching Newberry's WWTF - sewer geeks might find this interesting!
https://www.cmdgroup.com/building-types/water-treatment/michigan/projects/
https://www.cmdgroup.com/building-types/water-treatment/michigan/projects/1000604847/
Newberry Waste Water Treatment Plant was founded in 1965, and is located at 307 E Mcmillan Ave in Newberry. Additional information is available at or by contacting William Glime at (906) 293-5681. (I love that name Glime!)
Newberry Michigan - http://www.villageofnewberry.com/
But check out this last one - look familiar? But it needs a bit of updating!
https://www.cmdgroup.com/building-types/water-treatment/california/projects/1000213240/
