Museum and Riverwalk

October 8, 2012

It has been an entire month since I published my last blog.  I'd like to say I have been too busy to write, but the fact is, I've been too lazy!  Jim and I have had adventures and seen many things in the past month, but in our "down" time, I have actually been relaxing.  I think I have finally accepted the "retired" aspect to my life. 

To catch up on all the stuff we've seen and done, I'll start in early September.  I left off on our trip to the Pictured Rock National Lakeshore on the 6th of September.  On Saturday, the 8th, we went to a local museum, the Iron County Historical Museum, in Caspian, Michigan.  What a great museum!  Jim and I agree that this is one of the best museums we've been to.

Home of composer Carrie Jacobs-Bond

Schoolhouse

The displays are built around the history of this area, concentrating on the mining boom in the late 1800's, early 1900's, as well as small town living in that era.  The entire museum encompasses several acres and contains buildings that were brought from other locations in order to be restored and saved for posterity.

Chairs and a Phonograph

We were treated to displays of high school memorabilia, from graduating class photos to band uniforms from the 1930's, mine paraphenalia, from hard hats to lanterns to the actual mine shaft itself.

Miner's hard hats

The shaft housing

There is an old schoolhouse, tavern, printing shop and home on the premises in addition to all of the other types of displays you might find in other museums:  rock collections, old furniture, clothing, home appliances.

The print shop

The best part for us was that none of this stuff is under glass.  It is within arm's reach.  This museum had the largest collections of stereopticons I have ever seen!   I picked one up and looked through it (don't tell anyone please!) to see what the attraction was....great 3-D.  Wonder how they did that?  When we moved to tour the outside buildings, we were interrupted by a rain storm, so never did get to finish seeing all of the out buildings.  But the time we did spend there was a wonderful trip back in time.

On the following day, we again stayed local.  For the month or so since we'd been here, we kept passing this area on our way to and from other destinations, so we finally drove over to the bridge and Riverwalk on the Paint River, just down river from our RV park.

Hwy 69 Bridge over the Paint River

View up river

 The township of Crystal Falls, where we are staying, has a beautiful city park right on the Paint River, where they also built a short river walk, just north of the Highway 69 bridge.  Jim and I wandered down there on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon and took the short walk.  The views of the bridge and the river were well worth the trip.







 Jim also stopped to play on the swings....silly Jim!