(Photos: Close up leaves, Mid-forest bench, Stone structures, Pareidolic Tree)
Traveling through Michigan, I had decided to find a state park to wander around for a few hours and see what I could see.
This was a couple weeks ago, before the snow and ice came by.
Viewing the fall colors in Michigan is one of those things that is a must do for people living in the region - though I never had at this point in my life.
Truthfully, I don't know if you could really count this anyways.
It seems that it's better to go a couple weeks earlier than I did and actually explore the upper peninsula of the state, but I was unenlightened to these facts -- and it was still fun on a bun 😊
There was definitely a lot of cool stuff to see, including these nifty little rest areas in the forest.
They honestly missed some pretty big opportunities to put them in more scenic places, because the benches seemed to always be in the least scenic areas.
They actually make a better photo op than a scenic view. There's one where if you sit on the bench, the main thing that you will see is a telephone pole.
Was kind of cracking up about that the whole time.
Anyways, there was also a couple of old stone structures from a homestead in the 1800's along this route.
A fireplace and root cellar, respectively.
For those of you who would be interested in the story behind it, there was a nice little sign with information about the homestead.
I'm not really sure about the history of Michigan, but this appears to be another story of immigration during the great potato famine in Ireland.
This site makes me think about how people used to live. It probably wouldn't have been uncommon at all to have just a simple home in the middle of the woods, where you have to forage for the supplies that you need just to survive.
Sure you'd trade with others to supplement the things that you can't produce well on your property, but there wasn't such a thing as shipping lines bringing food from all over the world.
It's incredible how far this world has come in the past couple hundred of years.
Anyways, I've found myself on another tangent.
Right before leaving, I ran across this tree
and it's haunting.
It looks like a twisted, contorted face of some kind. Kind of reminds me of the Ents from LOTR.
It was just immediate as soon as I saw it while I was walking -- it doesn't seem quite so obvious in the picture to me, but it's definitely there.
Kind of funny how we associate things to looking like people or faces. The way our brains are programmed is so interesting!
Anyways, thanks for coming by --