Healing Our Waters Coalition » Activities

Peninsula State Park Camping Trip

Jordan Lubetkin — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:44:12 +0000

This story comes to us from Patti in Clarendon Hills, Ill.

Door County, Wisconsin is a beautiful place to visit with incredible weather during the month of August. Typically, we are a family who would stay in a local resort, say the Newport or the Highpoint Inn, but not this particular year. We decided that we would purchase a larger tent to house my husband, myself, and our 3 daughters, ages 1-1/2, 5-1/2, and 9-1/2.

It was quite the adventure. We drove from our house in Clarendon Hills, Illinois approximately 4-1/2 hours, okay let’s make that 5 hours with all of the bathroom breaks. Upon our arrival at Peninsula State Park, we were thinking of how lucky we were that the restrooms and showers were only 3 campsites away, especially when we would be venturing out in the wee hours of the night to pay our visit. So, we set up camp, went out for dinner, roasted smores over the open fire my husband so proudly built using his Boy Scout skills. It was a great first day and we were all pretty tired.

When we all finally passed out, about midnight by now, I woke up to a sound that almost sounded like animals laughing. In fact, I thought it sounded like monkeys due to the fact we saw a small furry animal hanging out on a branch in the tree earlier. It looked nocturnal, so I thought perhaps he was awake. No such luck. We were all awake by now when suddenly a family of raccoons was upon our tent scratching to get in. We screamed, we yelled, we turned on the flashlights, but much to our surprise one of the little buggers wedged his nail inside the zipper pull and managed to open the zipper by my 9-1/2 year old daughter’s head. We were able to scare them away for a few minutes with enough time to get the kids back to sleep.

There was no way I was going to fall back to sleep as I lay there awake shaking of fear that they would be returning. Within at least 15 minutes, they came down what we identified later as their natural predatory path only to haunt us again. The upside of this visit was that they just came to raid the campsite’s picnic table where we may have left a few scraps of smores along with some empty cans of pop or beer. They managed to climb inside of a box we had filled and had a field day tossing the cans out which had to have woken many other nearby campers.

To say the least, I did not sleep a wink as I stayed “on guard” in case of another attack. The next night was much more comfortable as we lay in the nice cozy beds of a hotel. I guess I wasn’t cut out to fight the wild in the middle of the night. All the same, it was one of the most memorable trips we have taken to Door County.

Thanks, Patti, for that story! Glad to see that you survived multiple visits from the family of raccoons.

You, too, can submit your story for a chance to win prizes!

You can also help in the effort to restore the Great Lakes and protect our drinking water, our economy, our public health and our way of life. Get involved today!

Bear on The Pictured Rocks National Lake shore in the U.P. of Michigan

Jordan Lubetkin — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 03:10:50 +0000

This story comes to us from Robert in Muskegon, Mich. The title says it all, though Robert has also enclosed some pictures of the event described below.

Last fall, my wife and I visited the Pictured Rocks National Lake shore of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was late October, and the morning was chilly and rainy. We decided to attempt a lake shore hike which promised beached shipwrecks and a haunting light house. We were dressed warmly underneath our rain ponchos as we began our journey across the sandy, and sometimes rocky, beach. The waves were crashing against the shore, and the wind was determined to get us wet and cold despite our efforts otherwise.

As we hiked, we noticed several sets of bear tracks, some much smaller than others, indicating a mother with her cub, all though it was hard to determine when, as the rain and wind was minutes from completely erasing the paw prints. Once at the light house, poised atop a small cliff, we carefully searched around the abandoned stead for any other signs of bear. After taking many pictures we decided to make our way back.

As we retraced our original hike, the sky cleared enough to let the sun occasionally shine through the clouds, warming and drying us. At first we just walked around ignorant of our surroundings, taking pictures here and there. Then, completely on accident, we noticed that there were fresh bear tracks in the sand, meaning that a bear had been following us up along the cliff just out of sight, returning to the beach when we climbed up to the light house!

We decided to follow the tracks; my wife searched along the beach, as I wandered up the hill amongst the brush and trees, and ultimately out of site. My wife realized that she was alone, and switched to follow my tracks hesitantly up the hill. I couldn’t resist; even though she moved with nervous anticipation, I made a low growling noise, imitating the bear we were looking for. I had to resist laughing and giving myself up as she franticly called my name, her eyes shifting from the brush to the beach, as if trying to navigate an escape. I then growled even louder, which resulted in her running; screaming and crying for me down the beach.

Wow, I had no idea my bear imitation was that convincing, feeling terrible, I immediately went after her to reveal my joke and offer my apologies and comfort. One thing is for certain, she has a much better appreciation for my joke in retrospect than she did at that very moment!

Thanks, Robert, for that tale.

It’s not too late to enter the Great Lakes story and photo contest. You, too, can enter for a chance to win prizes.

You can also participate in the effort to restore the Great Lakes. Get involved today to protect our lakes, our public health, our economy, our drinking water, and our way of life.

Experience of My Life

Jordan Lubetkin — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 21:54:42 +0000

This story comes to us from Kathy in Lowell, Mich. It is entered in our camping category, adult division. Kathy relates a story that, as she put it, was “the experience of my life.” I think you’ll see why! She writes:

We camped at Grand Haven for many years.

We ride our bikes up and down the boardwalk when we are staying at the campground.

July 2, 2004 I had the experience of my life.

I was riding my bike on the board walk and came upon a city truck parked right in front of me. I had to make a decision of which side I would go around the truck. I chose the channel side. I was going around the truck and did not allow enough room for the side mirror. I bumped the side of the truck with my bike and both my bike and I went into the channel. Scared to death I yelled, “Oh my God.” Everything happened so fast. I was then looking up and saw sunlight. I knew I had to swim to the top of the water if I was going to survive.

I started to swim the best I could toward the top of the water.

My dear husband, who didn’t give it a second thought, threw his bike down and dove in after I went in. He was there at the very minute I started to try and swim up. He pushed me to the side wall where there was a ladder to grab on to.

The boardwalk filled up with concerned onlookers, coaxing me to climb up the ladder. I could not. My shoulder and legs tangled with the bike and were not cooperating.

There were police cars, emergency units, and an ambulance above me on the boardwalk. I could not make it to the top. The Coast Guard then pulled up beneath me and got me into their boat. I was taken down the channel with their sirens and flashing lights to the boat launch where the ambulance was waiting for me.

I entered the hospital and the nurses were there to meet me. They said, “We’ve been waiting for you Mrs. Kneivel.”

Praise God. I only ended up with a dislocated shoulder and two badly bruised legs.

Divers pulled my bike out of the channel. There were many onlookers and the story went like this:

“Did she make it?”

“No. They just found the bike.”

I made the paper and the local radio station.

I received many items and comments during my recovery. I received swimmies and the newspaper clippings. I came home one day and one of my grandsons had made a sign and posted it to the front porch. It read, “Kathy Kneivel.”

People still say things when I am riding my bike by my house and it is by the river.

My other grandson made a remark as I was writing this story. He said, “She dodged the mirror and fell off the pier.”

Thanks, Kathy, for that tale. Glad to see you made it! You, too, can enter the Great Lakes story and photo contest for a chance to win prizes.

You can also participate in the effort to restore the Great Lakes—which are seriously threatened by sewage contamination and invasive species. Get involved today to help protect our lakes, our drinking water, our public health, our economy, and our way of life.

Taking a swim can be hazardous to your health

dgolowenski — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 14:23:03 +0000

To swim or not to swim, that is a question? Sadly, bathers throughout the Great Lakes all too frequently have to ask themselves whether their favorite beach poses a health hazard.

In 2006, for example, 181 notifications for contamination were issued at 52 Ohio beaches along the Lake Erie shoreline. Among the 52 beaches, 42, or 81 percent, had at least one advisory during the 2006 swimming months of June, July and August. Fortunately, most advisories were of short duration. Still, counting 6,076 beach days among the state’s 52 monitored Lake Erie beaches, warnings were issued on 731 days, or about 12 percent of the time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported.

Of Michigan’s 211 beaches monitored in 2006, notifications took place at 42, or 20 percent of the total. On the other hand, only 2 percent of the state’s total beach days, 478 of 19,651, required the posting of warnings. While what is known might not sound like much of a crisis, plenty remains unknown. Among the Michigan’s 971 recognized beaches, 760 went unmonitored in 2006. In fact, the number of beaches monitored actually declined for three straight years, from 219 in 2004, to 214 in 2005 and to 211 in 2006. So, whether swimmers are taking dips when it would be healthier to stay out of the water remains a mystery at about 78 percent of Michigan’s beaches.

The National Resources Defense Council has issued a downloadable report, entitled Beach Buddies and Beach Bums, on the best and worst beaches on the Great Lakes in 2006. The full report, which is available in a PDF file, can be downloaded here.

The most common cause of beach contamination is high bacteria counts. Typically, the bacteria arrive in overflow from nearby storm sewers and sanitation sewers after heavy rains. Another source of fecal bacteria, including e. coli, are heavy concentrations of birds, including gulls and cormorants.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can help in the effort to restore the Great Lakes—so our kids and grandkids can swim without fear of getting sick. Get involved today to help protect our lakes, our drinking water, our public health, our economy, and our way of life.

Camping at the Beach

Jordan Lubetkin — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 20:31:41 +0000

This story comes to us from Bonnie in Rockford, Michigan. Bonnie is 6 and is entering in the camping category. In submitting her story, she writes: “This story is about a girl who loves camping by the beach.” Well said. Here’s her story.

Once upon a time there was a girl named Bonnie. She went camping at Hoffmaster State Park. Bonnie and her family set up a tent, had a campfire, slept on an air mattress, and went to the beach. The beach was close by. She loved to swim at the beach. The waves were really big. Bonnie and her brother jumped in the waves, dived in the waves, and practically ran away from the waves. Bonnie invited her cousins to come to Hoffmaster State Park. They played in the sand, made sand holes, swam in the water, and went to the sandbar. They had so much fun camping by the beach. The End.

Thanks, Bonnie. In a nutshell, that’s what the Great Lakes are all about: family fun and memories. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can help protect this great resource, click here.

It’s also not too late to enter your own story.

A $5 Trip to Au Sable River

Jordan Lubetkin — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:18:48 +0000

This entry in our story contest’s camping category comes by way of Randy in Columbus, Ohio. It’s a humorous look of a camping trip that experiences some surprises along the way.

You can enter the contest too.

Many among my friends and family find my love for camping to be frivolous, if not downright weird. A fine thing for scouts and church youth groups, perhaps, but an adult sensibility clearly holds that sleeping on the ground, skipping daily showers and cooking from a small propane stove is a silly way to spend precious vacation time.

It’s true, camping involves some self-denial, perhaps even a little discomfort, and a bit of planning. Bad weather, always a spoiler for any outing, is more acutely experienced when one’s shelter is small and nylon. Yet there are benefits, both tangible and intangible, to sleeping in a tent in a remote area and carrying in most of what you need.

Or so I argued to a fishing buddy, in persuading him to camp during a trip to Michigan’s famed Au Sable River in June. I agreed to bring all the gear and food in the back of my car. We could get a campsite in the Huron National Forest, within 50 yards of the banks of the Au Sable, for $5 a week, I argued, and save money by bringing our own food. The friend agreed to a 4-day trip to Michigan’s North Country (despite some grumbled predictions about backaches, respiratory distress and other discomforts).

After bouncing over a couple of miles of Michigan “two-track,” we pitched our tent in a secluded spot within a 3-minute walk of a fishing access point. It was late afternoon by the time we arrived, but after setting up camp we headed straight to the river. The Au Sable was flowing wide between its tree-lined banks, its waters moving gracefully on the journey to Lake Huron. We fished until after 10 p.m., stopping once to watch a mink make its way along the far bank. Then a barred owl inquired: Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?

Indeed, who would cook for us? We would, on a propane stove, by the light of our headlamps. And we would discover that I’d forgotten all the eating utensils. Surprisingly, my friend didn’t complain. We built a campfire, and used hunks of bread to sop up a pot of chili. I wondered how we would eat spaghetti without forks. As it turned out, I’d forgotten the spaghetti, too.

The weekend went on like that. Our close proximity to the river allowed us to be on the water as early as possible each day, and we could stay until the owls bid us goodnight well after dark.

On the final night, we stood in the middle of the river we had come to think of as our own, and watched as thousands of cream-colored caddis flies emerged above the flowing water. The dark shadow of a nighthawk passed over us, snatching caddis from the air. To have all this, a short walk from your sleeping bag, was a heck of a deal for five bucks, I offered.

My friend agreed.

You can enter the story contest here.

Or, get involved in the effort to restore the Great Lakes. It’s quick and easy. And, it will make a difference.

Struggle for a Healthy Great Lakes

dgolowenski — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 02:23:39 +0000

The Great Lakes have been around for 12,000 years or so, a hiccup in geological time. Still magnificent but far from pristine, the lakes have been altered dramatically in the last 150 years by settlers who scythed the forests, gouged out the minerals, exiled the indigenous peoples, drained vast wetlands, planted chemically dependent corn and beans, straightened and dredged feeder rivers, dug canals that let in invaders. Too, they and those who followed flushed their untreated and toxic effluent into a freshwater cistern mistakenly thought large enough to absorb it all.

The location of some of North America’s greatest cities — Toronto, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland — also provides the setting for some of humanity’s great ecological blunders: the extinction of the blue pike of Lake Erie and the Atlantic salmon of Lake Ontario; the wipeout of the eastern elk and the passenger pigeon; the poisoning of birds to near-extirpation; the tainting of subsistence fish species with mercury and other chemicals; the introduction of non-native life forms that have significantly altered the food web and threaten to push some native species into oblivion. Where thousands of Huron and Eries once lived on abundant fish and game, millions of commuters now compete for space among tracts of sprawl and monoculture.

Wildness can still be touched north of Superior and every time a fall nor’easter kicks up 20-foot waves that roll across breakwaters and cast white spray into the shoreline air. Glimpses come, too, with the circling of a lone eagle, with the migratory rivers of waterfowl, with a climb up giant sand dunes, with the leap of a fighting muskellunge and with a hike through evergreen forests to splendid, hiding waterfalls.

Despite the fact that much of today’s Great Lakes shoreline and surrounds would be unrecognizable to yesterday’s Native Americans residents and European explorers, the great watershed clings to its past both despite human exploitation and because of human intervention. The fishing remains superior in Erie and the landscape eerily primal near Superior. Each of the lakes has its unique charm and special niches. Some of the hemisphere’s finest birding, camping, boating, hiking, hunting and fishing remain mostly because a portion of the public has refused to let the region’s signature natural resource go to waste. The struggle is far from over, however, and surrender would have devastating consequences for those who depend on the Great Lakes as a refuge from the world we have built for ourselves.

Birds Might Get a Break

dgolowenski — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:26:42 +0000

Neither wind, nor rain, nor tall buildings, nor radio towers keep bird species from their appointed rounds with migratory destiny. Untold numbers of birds, however, pay a significant toll — their lives — while moving north and south along their air routes across the hemispheres. Skyscrapers and signal towers each year claim the lives of millions of birds.

Just as troublesome is loss of habitat to agriculture and development. Because long journeys are physiologically stressful to birds, the migrants require resting places to recharge and are having a tougher time finding them.

The Nature Conservancy, aligned with Ducks Unlimited and other conservation groups, is in the process of trying to identify stopover sites along the western shore of Lake Erie. The goal is to set aside as much important bird habitat as is economically feasible.

Hundreds of thousands of travel-weary, neotropical birds typically cross western Lake Erie in the spring and fall, making the Magee Marsh/Crane Creek area in Ohio and Point Pelee in Ontario two of North America’s premier birding destinations. It’s also estimated that as many as 75 percent of North America’s migrating black ducks stop for a breather in the area.