Hi Pam!
Thank you for allowing me to be the guest blogger on Legendary Lighthouses. This time I will talk about a couple of the lighthouses on Lake Michigan.
Did you know that the state of Michigan has more lighthouses dotting the shores than any other state in the USA? If I were to guess I would have said California, or Florida or maybe even Maine. Before I had visited the Great Lakes I thought of American lighthouses as being either on the east or west coast.
Several years ago my husband and I took a driving vacation up the the shores of Lake Michigan and I was delighted to see the wide variety of lighthouses. We visited 7 lighthouses on that trip and each of them had their own distinct features. Here are two of my favorites.
My favorite lighthouse was the one in Holland, Michigan. It is nicknamed Big Red and is a three story bright red building that is very unique in appearance. Although we could not get right up to Big Red, I was able to photograph it from across the harbor. I got some great shots from the sand dunes and was able to capture the lighthouse framed by colorful fall leaves.
The three-story Holland Harbor light is on Black Lake and was built in 1907. It is covered with red steel to protect it from the heavy pounding it gets during rough weather. The current light tower was added to the top of one gable in 1936. Big Red sits on a pier that runs along the south bank of the channel connecting Lake Macatawa to Lake Michigan.
The lighthouse in South Haven 
is on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth to the Black River. The current 35 foot tower has been operating in South haven since 1903, when it replaced a wooden frame tower that was built in 1872.
The day we visited South Haven was a clear, but chilly fall day. As you can see in the photo the waves were beating up against the pier. It was a cold walk down the long pier to see the lighthouse up close, I can imagine how the lighthouse keepers must have felt when they would come to service the lighthouse in the winter months.
Mary Beth Granger is a lighthouse enthusiast, blogger, Zazzle artist and photographer. Stop by her blog at Lighthouse Musings or her Zazzle store at http://www.zazzle.com/lighthouseenthusiast
Hi Pam
ReplyDeleteThank you for allowing me to be a guest blogger.
In June of this year I visited lighthouses in Maryland. They have some really cool and unusual lighthouses. I especially like their screw-pile style lighthouses and I was able to climb into two of them. I've written about them in my Lighthouse Musings blog.
Take care
Mary Beth