Vickie's Ramblings: Biking, coal plants, and more ice.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Biking, coal plants, and more ice.

After spending an hour or so walking around downtown Marquette this morning in warm spring sunshine, I decided I needed another day here. This town is quite enchanting; it reminds me a whole lot of Port Townsend, WA. Same beautiful old stone buildings, same two-level town (waterside and up the hill), same counter-culture + tourists feel, same big old ugly polluting industry at one end of town. And at least two espresso places and two brewpubs.

Strangely, there are not one but TWO coal burning power plants here, one at either end of town. One of them, Presque Isle, Wikepedia says generates 90% of the electricity for the entire UP and 12% of Wisconsin's. The other one, Shiras, aka Marquette Municipal , I guess is just for Marquette? I don't get it. Anyway, I guess I won't move to Marquette after all.

This afternoon I rented a bike and spent several hours riding the paved trail along the waterfront. It runs at least 10 miles or so, possibly more. It was very windy and the clouds came in and I got cold, so turned around. But I did make it out to beautiful Presque Isle park, where I had lunch sitting in sunshine on the rocks along the lake. watching the bobbing ice floes.

There are lots of snowmobile/mountainbike trails through the woods here, and I even dared to ride a quarter mile or so of singletrack. Would have liked to go further but I didn't think it was wise given that (a) nobody in the world knows where I am (b) I have no spare tube, no pump, and a rear tire with no tread remaining, and (c) I'm old. But I don't think (c) would've stopped me.

Marquette City Hall

This is for my friend Susan Lahti. In a town I drove through yesterday, hard to say which one....I only know that I was looking for a latte and they didn't have any!