Day 24-July 7, 2010

It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining, the winds were calm and the neighbor's dog came by to play. After an ambitious game of fetch we ventured onto the water and continued our trek up the Keweenaw. All day we were in the presence of regal sandstone cliffs that were only broken by a few quaint little beaches. I made a particularly fantastic find while running up the beach for a pit stop...an enormous white agate. My first official one and the largest in our collection.
As is the case in Lake Superior, the winds changed and we found ouselves in a headwind coming into Grand Traverse Bay. We were more shocked to find inside this bay a most peculiar scene. South if the harbor breakwall, the sand was yellow and full of people as is expected. The north end, however, was pure black sand with sharply steep banks. This sand extended well north of the bay around to Gay. As we rounded this point, storms were well on their way and we needed to land. We were able to pick out a relatively flat bank to run the boat up on. The nearest treeline was a good quarter mile away so we made due with pitching out tent between large dunes if black sand. As we ate our dinner we watched bolts of lightning in the distance. It started to rain as we retreated inside our tent for the night.