Monday, 2/15

 Guess I can cross that one off the bucket list.

First of all, I had a very nice three day weekend, thanks for asking. I didn't get to ski or snowshoe (too cold, and still not enough snow here in the city) but I did get to do one thing I kind of thought I'd never actually get to do.

I got to walk inside DSS&A dock #6, the legendary downtown Marquette ore dock.

The bitterly freezing temperatures, lack of major snow, and strange wind patterns have done something that rarely happens—freeze the ice in Lower Harbor and not have it break up due to wave action. As a result the harbor has a foot of ice on it, and people have been going out in droves to skate and bike on what is normally open water, and to just walk around places you could never in decades reach by foot.

For Loraine and me, that was walking through the ore dock yesterday afternoon.

Oh, we were joined by lots of others...

 

But the sights in there were ones I never thought I'd see.

 

We also walked out to the remains of the old Cleveland/Spear dock, the oldest existing pilings in the harbor, where a history geek needed to get his picture taken

 

Since Ripley's Rock was right there, why not?

And like I said, we weren't alone...

 

Everybody seems to be taking advantage of a situation that may not occur again in the lifetimes of some, and it turned a day with temperatures around zero and wind chills 20 degrees below that into a day that most of us will never forget.

(jim@wmqt.com)