I'm Back!!!

Yes, I survived my trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  So those of you participating in a "dead pool", betting on my demise, you lose.  It was truly one of the greatest experiences of my life. By all reports, I hit the fall color change right at its peak, had somewhat decent weather, experienced sunshine and snow, saw beautiful waterfalls, and met some very nice people.  I hit it hard while there snapping about 1200 pics in less than 36 hours.  And I'm going to post them all..........................O.K, I won't, but you'll wish I did.  I will post more on my trip over the next several days.  For now, here's a pic of the scene I woke up to Sunday morning.  I camped out in the Lake Superior State Forest on a lake called Canoe Lake.  These are unmanned camping sites, meaning there is no one, and I mean no one, on site.  All you find there is some cleared out spots,  a fire pit, a picnic table, a small box with registration envelopes for you to pay(it's all on your honor), and a drop tube to put your money and registration in.  I found out later that where I camped, there was not another living soul(human) within 15 square miles of me, maybe just another dumb person or two from Illinois or somewhere on another lake within the State Forest. My van was my castle with an inflatable mattress and lots of blankets  It worked just fine for just needing to catch some shut eye.  It was dark by 8:30 and I really wanted to do some nighttime photography with the clear skies and all, great for catching star trails.  But it was just too cold.  So I cranked the heat up in the van, did some downloading of pics into my laptop, read a little,shut the van off, and closed my eyes.  Woke up around 1:00 a.m pretty cold (found out it got down to 19 degrees Saturday night) and beautiful snow coming down.  Fired up the van again for about 15-20 minutes until I was once again toasty warm, shut down the van, climbed under the covers and was in deep slumber again until about 6:00 a.m. No sunrise around there until after 7:00 a.m. which really surprised me.  Once sunrise hit, though, it was a beautiful site.  It also warmed up to, oh, I'd say, all of 25 degrees.  After a photoshoot, I ate some stale donuts in my van and slammed down some lukewarm coffee from my thermos and hit the road to attempt to find my way out of there.  Note:  Upper Michigan is not real keen on putting signs up on their roadways, but then again, I think 90% of the time I was driving on a snowmobile trail.  Here's a pic of my Sunday morning.  The clouds you see were not rain clouds.  You guessed it.  More snow was coming a few hours later.  You really need to doubleclick on it to experience at all the view I had: