Hell, Michigan, home to Screams Ice Cream Parlor and this weekend, the Hell Music Festival, an annual fundraiser for UM Children's Hospital. 
Our melting cone of brown goop would have made great ammo for a game of Monkey Poo Toss. 
Cementhead.
Ten bands played from 11am to 11pm. We left to attend our first-ever co-ed baby shower and missed the evening acts. Below, one of the first bands of the day covers Jane Says.
We spent a quick couple of days this week in southwestern Colorado on business and had the good fortune of squeezing in a visit to the ancient cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park. It is, in all honesty, one of the most incredible places we've ever seen. Seriously.
Words cannot fully describe the magnitude of Mesa Verde. Since not being able to describe something has never stopped us before, we'll give it a try. After entering the park, the road winds upward for several miles through numerous hairpin turns (dented guardrails everywhere, presumably due to motorhomes the size of submarines driving on a road no wider than two mules). When the road crests onto the high plateau, the terrain flattens and is bisected by numerous canyons and deep gorges in parallel, north to south, as if sliced into the earth by a colossal prehistoric butter knife.
These canyons are home to several hundred cliff dwellings, built and occupied by "Ancestral Puebloans" during the 11th and 12th century AD. For decades, the term "Anasazi" was widely used to reference these aboriginal peoples, but in certain translations (that apparently rile the gods of political correctness), Anasazi means "ancient enemies." So in an effort to not offend, the new term is "Ancestral Puebloans." Whatever. All we know is whoever built these amazing and complex structures from stone and brick nearly 1,000 years ago were, regardless of their current name, an amazing and complex people.
We arrived early in the morning and hiked on the first guided tour of the day into the Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in the western hemisphere. Good thing, too. By the time we finished the tour an hour later, a caravan of buses full of tourists from Europe and Japan pulled into the parking lot.
Here's what they would learn about American history during their visit: the dwellings were abandoned in the 12th century and for six hundred years saw no human life, until 1880's when cowboys on horseback travelled through the area. Why the dwellings were abandoned is sometimes cited as one of the great mysteries of history; the theories include political upheaval, drought/crop failure, problems with rival tribes, and southward migration to the lush Rio Grande valley. We have our own theory- more on that later.
What makes Mesa Verde so unique is how pristine the ruins are. Unlike many other crumbling historical sites scattered across the west- ghost towns, army forts, pony express stations, mining camps, Spanish missions, etc., Mesa Verde shows little sign of degradation. It's a testament to the craftsmanship of the builders, and the protection the desolate canyons provided from looters and the erosive elements of nature.
Every square foot of the Cliff Palace had purpose and design. Over 150 individual housing units (the site resembles a massive apartment complex) hover above five kivas (recessed circular areas used for communal or sacred ceremonies). Primitive ventilation systems kept the rooms cool in the summer and pushed out campfire smoke in the winter. In other dwellings at Mesa Verde, archaeologists have found notches carved into walls where sunlight would mark the solstices. Here you see where the women would sit and grind corn into flour, in partitioned areas with metate stones and spillage barriers.
A most incredible facet to 12th century life in the cliff dwellings is while the people resided in the cliffs, they hunted and farmed on the high plateau. Carved into the soft sandstone cliff sides above the villages were countless toe and finger holes used to climb in and out of the canyon. While the residents were no doubt very good at scrambling the rock faces, we can only imagine how many ancestral Puebloans fell into the canyon abyss when rain or ice made the climbing routes treacherous and deadly.
Which brings us back to why, in our educated opinion, the dwellings were abandoned: the residents grew tired of the endless rock climbing accidents. Living below a cliff was probably a lot of fun- until you broke both your ankles one icy morning on your way to hunt a deer. Even the most agile and experienced climbers, at some point, lose balance or grip- ingredients for disaster, of course. Sooner or later, the luster of living on the side of a cliff would wear off, and you too would elect to move out of the canyon to a nice pit house on stable ground. Yeah the view might not be as nice but at least you wouldn't have to worry about stepping over the ledge when getting up in the middle of the night to use the lavatory. You won't see this theory, by the way, in any history books.
The toe and finger holds used by the ancestral Puebloans were replaced by steps and ladders in the 1930's. Here you see how the path climbs up a slot canyon. Had the technology advanced towards these safer routes of travel in the 12th century, the residents may have never left their handsome cliff houses overlooking spectacular Navajo Canyon.
What a perfect Fourth of July weekend on the Huron Chain of Lakes! It was warm but not hot, no thunderstorms, and everybody was out having a good time (as seen here, on Baseline Lake). Our only complaint was the small crowd of drunks who camped in our neighbor's backyard last night and shot off bottle rockets and M-80's until 3:30 am. Heeewww. They're sleeping off their hangovers right now but as soon as we get this posting finished, we've got some chainsawing and weedwacking to do along the fenceline!
Here's a RR collection of random images from the weekend:
Friday evening sun vs. cloud, Baseline Lake.
Traffic jam on the Huron River, above Whitewood Lake, Saturday afternoon.
Double-decker poonton boat with rock band jamming from the bow. As we passed, we heard this chorus:
Good Times, Bad Times, you know I had my share; When my woman left home for a brown eyed man, Well, I still don't seem to care. Sixteen, I fell in love with a girl as sweet as could be, Only took a couple of days 'til she was rid of me. She swore that she would be all mine and love me till the end, But when I whispered in her ear, I lost another friend, oooh.
After the sun lowered and the sky darkened into night, the Portage Lake fireworks show began.
Let freedom ring!
Taking fireworks pictures requires patience and timing. If you wait until the firework explodes, you're too late- the picture will be smoke and darkness. If you jump the gun and take the shot too soon, you'll photograph the sparkler trail as the pyrotechnic climbs altitude. It took us a good twenty attempts before we figured out the correct sync of things.
The folks who organize the Portage Lake fireworks do a great job every year and this year was no exception. Near the end, they added a series of fiery explosions with sonic booms that were so loud, the glass windshield on our boat rattled and car alarms triggered at nearby houses. It was the sound of freedom- and probably very similar to the last thing the Taliban fighters see and hear when a MC 130 Combat Talon lights up their mountain hideouts along the Pakistan border!
Summertime in Michigan means four-wheeling at Silver Lake State Park.
But we need to get there first. Five miles away from the dunes, Drew's jeep ran out of gas. Thankfully, one of the asparagus farms gave us a gallon of petro and saved the day.
Hop in the backseat as we enter Silver Lake State Park.
Up the big hill we went, like twenty-five times. Unsucessful we were, like twenty-four times. Here we totter, high-centered on the dune, hoping gravity doesn't flip us like a big turtle.
Luckily, another good samritan came along and yanked us off our precarious pearch.
Our tire tracks plow deeper and deeper....
Time to let more air out of the tires.
Drew basks in the moment of victory.
Next sand ridge over, dirt bikers conduct their own gravity tests.
Tom Petty and his awesome cadre of musicians known as the Hearbreakers played the Palace of Auburn Hills last night. As always, he put on a great show. The setlist included many favorites not played on recent tours:
You Wreck Me
You Don't Know How It Feels
I Won't Back Down
Even the Losers
Saving Grace
Mary Jane
Sweet William
End of the Line
The Waiting
Straight into Darkness
Spike
Face in the Crowd
Learning to Fly
Don't Come Around Here No More
Refugee
Running Down a Dream
Mystic Eyes
American Girl
Here's a RR short clip from the Petty show, for your enjoyment:
This week was a very big week at RR: we canoed the Huron for the first time in '08 (had a great high-flow run but neglected to take pics- we deeply apologize but we we're simply having too good a time to bother with the camera). And we found a new (and very good) source of postcards at secret place whose location we will not reveal under any circumstance. We will, however, show you some century-old postcards from Detroit, back when "pleasant" and "beautiful" were honest descriptions of the city.
Check out this "Aero View" (that's how it's described on back) from the 1920's. The big building in the middle is the (soon-to-reopen) Book Cadillac Hotel, with detailed little cars motoring down Michigan Avenue. Heading east (right) is the wedge shaped Lafayette Building, the Fort Shelby Hotel, and the Dime Building. On the Detroit River, notice the flotilla of ships spewing smoke off the Rivertown freight docks, a reminder that Detroit was once an international seaport hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean.
Many of the buildings seen above no longer exist. Like the Hotel Tuller on Bagley Street. On back, it reads 800 rooms- 800 baths. Popular Rates, Detroit's Most Popular Hotel. Beautiful Air-conditioned Lobby- Large Popular Priced Cafeteria. Coffee shop and Cocktail Lounge. Free Parking 5:30 P.M. to 9 A.M. Specializing in Tourist Groups. By the 1970's, Hotel Tuller had devolved into another squalid downtown flop house occupied mostly by derelicts and was shuttered for good in 1976. In 1992, it was demolished and remains a gravel lot to this day. Click here if you want to see the vacant lot that was once the "popular" Hotel Tuller.
Next door was another hotel that is no more: the Hotel Statler (click on the image and you'll see the Hotel Tuller sign on the right side). One of Detroit's leading hotels, centrally located on Grand Circus Park reads the inscription on back. Buit in 1916, the Statler is regarded as the most elegant hotel ever built in Detroit: glass chandeliers and walls of marble hung in splendor in cavernous rooms designed in ornate Georgian architecture. But by the early 1970's, as blight spread through downtown Detroit like a disco-era STD, the Statler fell into disrepair and closed forever. In 2005, six months before Super Bowl XL, the Statler was demolished as part of a quick attempt to clean up downtown before the lens of world focused on Detroit.
One old building that still stands is the Charlevoix Building on Park Avenue. Built in 1906 as a stately hotel, over the decades it housed low-end apartments and union offices. Vacant since the late 1980's, now the only occupants are squatters and vermin. Click here to see how the Charlevoix looks today.
Here's a gem: postmarked May of 1911, the small print on back reads Canal Scene Belle Isle. Canoeing is the leading sport at Belle Isle, Detroit's largest playground. Its 702 acres are threaded by many miles of of canals and lakes, affording an ideal spot in which the light little craft cruise about by thousands. Band concerts are given at the city's expense during summer afternoons and evenings and on such occasions the canoesits are present in great numbers. It's been a long time since canoeists paddled the canals of Belle Isle, much less enjoyed concerts paid by the city.
