My GPP and I were up and out on Friday morning at the crack of about 10am. This was a vacation after all. Our first stop was before we got to the UP at an historic site called Hartwick Pines State Park near Grayling, MI. This was the location of an 1800s logging camp and had a fascinating museum, not huge but full of good information. It turns out that my GPP and I have a similar approach to museums. We read everything. I found it very nice to be able to take my time and read as much as I like with no one rushing me along. Scattered around the site were many pieces of antique logging equipment with helpful hints of how they had been used. What fascinated me most, though, were the many photographs of the logging process as it was actually done back in the day. A picture of masses of huge logs being floated down river with men standing on them using pikes to keep them from jamming up, and, as the caption said, even getting into the still ice crusted water to keep those logs moving gave me chills. Of course before the logs got to the river they had to be hauled out of the forest and one picture still haunts me. It showed two very strong looking horses harnessed to an over sized sled loaded with huge (two feet or more in diameter, and cut in 12 ft. lengths) logs stacked twice as high as the horses, ready to be hauled to the river, I assume the drivers knew what they were doing and the horses could haul the load but I'm still wondering what happened if they hit a slippery down hill slope. Being a lumberjack was not an easy job, but as I would discover on this trip, this wasn't the worst or scariest job around. Stay tuned for mile deep mines and sinking ships.
I took this picture of my GPP beside this big wheel, part of log hauling equipment, because he told me he has a picture taken at the same site when he was about five years old. I'm sorry I don't have that picture to share.
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