Residence Time     6/22/18

River Park Campground, Menominee, Michigan

 

Today was moving day once again.  It’s a really good thing we take our house with us.  Makes moving much easier!  😊  We’re headed into the UP, aka Upper Peninsula, Michigan.  The residents there like to call themselves Yoopers.  And they eat these things called “pasties” (pronounced PASS-tees)  which are hand-held meat pies.  We learned this on a previous visit years ago.

 

We drove 120 miles in 2 ½ hours and learned some interesting things along the way.  And Blaine saw a helicopter going down the road!  Well, it was on a trailer, but still, when’s the last time you saw that?  Sadly, I was looking out the wrong window at the time.  ☹

So I was looking up the size of Lake Michigan, just passing time, and I came across this statistic that stated: Residence Time – 99 years.  What in the world does that mean?  Do you know?

It turns out, it’s the amount of time water remains in a lake before moving on.  Scientific gobbledygook on how they measure that that I certainly don’t understand!  Sometimes I wonder if everyone just assumes if a person with “Dr.” in front of their name, makes a really good argument, they must be right.  Who could possibly know how long water stays in a lake before moving on???

Be that as it may, this is what I uncovered –

Superior = residence time: 191 years, average depth: 483’, deepest point: 1,333’

Michigan = residence time: 99 years, average depth: 279’, deepest point: 923’

Huron = residence time:  22 years, average depth: 195’, deepest point: 750’

Erie = residence time: 2.6 years, average depth: 62’, deepest point: 210’

Ontario = residence time: 6 years, average depth: 283’, deepest point: 802’

 

So all these statistics got me wondering . . . . is the residence time and depth of the water what makes the difference in the way the lakes look?  Being from Ohio, I can tell you that Lake Erie looks NOTHING like Lake Michigan, and even Lake Michigan seems to me to pale in comparison with Lake Superior.

Here are 10 ‘fun’ facts about Lake Superior –

1. It’s the largest freshwater lake in the world by area and holds 10% of the world’s surface fresh water. (The total for all the lakes combined is 21%.)
2. The length of the Lake Superior Circle Tour (yes, it’s been done before, including a motorcycle that did it verifiably and legally in 21 hours.) is 1,300 miles. The circle wasn’t completed until 1960 when a section of the Trans-Canada Highway near Wawa was finished.  The first official tour was done in 1960 by a Thunder Bay bus company.
3. The Lake is 31,700 square miles.
4. It holds 3 quadrillion gallons of water. That’s enough to cover both North and South America under a foot of water!!  Or another way to look at it:  If the world’s population of 7 billion people drank ½ gallon of water every day, it would take them 2,348 years.  Whoa!!  That’s a lot!  No, I didn’t figure that out and as smart as Blaine is, he didn’t either.  It’s those crazy Google people who know all this stuff.
5. Over 300 streams and rivers empty into Lake Superior.
6. Waves of over 40’ have been recorded on the Lake!
7. The ‘Graveyard of the Great Lakes’ is the dangerous stretch of water between Munising and Whitefish Point, as hundreds of ships (including the infamous Edmund Fitzgerald) have been lost here. It’s estimated that 6,000 ships and 30,000 lives have been lost in the Great Lakes.
8. Sudden changes in winds or barometric pressure around the Lake can produce seiches, a phenomenon which results in water levels rising or falling as much as six feet along the coast in a short period of time.
9. The average temperature is 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
10. The population around the Lake is approximately 600,000.

 

And I thought it was just pretty . . . .

And here’s why ~  according to seagrant.umn.edu, “When sunlight enters the water, it is mostly blue light that is left for us to see.  Covering even larger areas, like Lake Superior, water can look exceptionally blue because the surface is also reflecting the color of the sky.”

 

Back to the road . . . .

 

Munising Tourist Park, Munising, Michigan (Upper Peninsula)

 

What a gorgeous setting we have for the next few days!  We’re sort of in the top-middle of the UP, near Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore Park , and right on Lake Superior!  It’s every bit as spectacular as I remember!

The site delegations here are strange.  Some, like ours, are huge, while others, like our one neighbor is teeny.  And we all pay the same amount.  Doesn’t seem quite fair somehow.  We’ve noticed that tent camping is big here, and there are groups camping together, so maybe that’s why.  We happen to be parked in a potential “group tent” area, while our neighbors unfortunately are not.

Of course, we went to the beach (such as it is – – it’s really narrow!) to take in the view and fresh air!