Au-gust-tumn

What a weird Summer it's been.  Michigan is one of the very few states that didn't make it to 100 degrees (F).  We had a couple of spells of suffocatingly humid and hot weather (one of which ended only a couple of weeks ago)...  And now all of a sudden it feels like October.  And it's not even September yet!  Normally September feels like August.  But the past week the temperatures at night have fallen into the 40s.  Now, as everyone knows in Michigan there's no smooth transition between seasons - instead you get wild swings back and forth between Winter and Summer (there's about 3 "false Falls" normally), but this one has lasted a while.  If only we weren't all still wiped out from Covid, we might enjoy it.

COVID!

 

Jami was feeling distinctly peaky last week so ordered a COVID test and tested positive.  As far as we know, this is the first time anyone in our household has had it.  And now we've all got it and are feeling like death warmed over.  Sylvester has not volunteered to pamper us, alas.

East to Lake Huron

Bored of all the swimming available near Flint I was jonesing for some WAVES. Remembering the waves on Lake Huron when we stayed at that A-Frame house between Christmas and New Year a couple of years ago, I plotted a course East along I-69 to just North of Port Huron. We didn't find what we were supposed to find (it turned out to be a campground without a beach) but just down the road was a local beach. It was a lot like the A-Frame beach (which is a lot further North) except that you couldn't walk anywhere either side of it, because it was privately owned. Boo! However, Frederick and I spent a happy hour just bobbing around in the waves of startlingly clear blue water (with nice sandy bottom and NO POND WEED).

I don't know if you could rent these adorable little houses and I didn't know whom to ask...

Smoke vs. Steam

Truly the dog days are upon us.  For a while there it was actually fairly pleasant temperatures (high 70s) but that was because the heat was being blocked by smoke from the uncontrolled Canadian wildfires.  It was like being back in LA again with the haze on the horizon.  However, that's now gone away and we have the worst kind of headache weather - squinty and cloudy, hot and oh-so-humid.  It looked like the bugs were dying off at least, but then we had a sudden massive downpour yesterday and today I was savagely bitten by one of those nasty triangular little black flies that proliferate in Michigan summers.  Roll on Autumn, say I.  Still Frederick and I continue to swim, although not in such a diverse range of places as in days of yore as neither of us has the patience for plowing through pondweed in the way we used to (plus Big Seven lake has been closed because of "bacteria" since mid July, and apparently Bluebell Beach has PFAS or some such), so it's mostly Sand Lake (next to the campsite in Seven Lakes park) or Holly Rec, with occasional visits to Metamora Hadley.  No pictures, though, because I haven't been inspired recently.