Gratiot County Dutch Windmill

Last weekend I had ventured up to the Maple River State Game Area to do some photography.  On my way home, I traveled couple back roads to avoid trying to get back on US-127 on a busy Sunday afternoon.  Just south of the game area, as I was driving down State Road right before you hit the Clinton County line, I noticed what appeared to be a Dutch windmill to the west.  It appeared to be out in a field pretty far off the main road.  When I got home, I looked at the satellite maps and saw that it actually resided on a public road.

When Valerie and I drove back from the cabin this weekend, I diverted our trip down Wilson Road to see if we could get closer to the windmill.  We were able to drive right along the yard where it stands.  We met the daughter of the man that built it as we were admiring this unique sight.  He started the construction in 1976 after a family trip to see the windmill in Holland, Michigan.  She said he finally completed it in 2008.  She said her family is not Dutch and that this project was started pretty much on a whim.

The windmill is just north of the Gratiot-Clinton County line on the Gratiot County side.  You can visit it by going north on US-127 and turning left (west) onto Wilson Road.  Bellingar Meat Packing is also on this road, so just turn where you see the signs to turn for that.  Follow Wilson Road for a couple of miles until it makes a jog to the right (north).  You need to turn left (south) at this junction onto the gravel road.  Follow the narrow gravel road for just a short distance around two bends and you will drive right past the windmill.  This is a public road, but the property is obviously private.  We were lucky that the daughter was there and she let us walk up close to it.  It is very large, so you can still get a good look at it from the road.  The GPS coordinates are 43.133955, -84.600148.

Pineapple Squirrel

This squirrel found a discarded top to a pineapple in our compost pile.  He struggled to haul it to the top of a nearby tree to nibble away at it.  He dropped it a couple times and had to climb all the way down to grab it and then scurry back up to the top.

Concrete Horseshoe

Two concrete pillars stand along one of the trails at Riverbend Natural Area.  Both have a horseshoe protruding from the top of the pillar, encased in concrete.  They both also have a piece of barbed wire attached to them, so I speculate that the pillars once served as the supports for a gate that had a fence attached.

Ice Bubble Dome

I photographed this strange dome of frozen bubbles in a parking lot where the warmer temperatures last week had melted a section of ice.  Somehow the water churned up into bubbles that froze in this configuration.

Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum

On our way back from Detroit last week, Valerie and I stopped at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.  It was a very odd little place jammed into the backside of a strip mall on Orchard Lake Road in the Novi area.  Museum is hardly the word to use to describe the place; it was more of a menagerie of antique coin operated machines nestled between more modern arcade games.  Everything ran off of quarters, so the proprietor makes plenty of money off of this place.  Some of the older rides and machines were very interesting.  I have posted a few of the unique or plain odd pieces here.  Check out the videos under a few of the photos to see the machines in action, especially the "Spanish Inquisition" and the creepy skeleton display.

Toynebee Tiles

When Valerie and I traveled to Chicago on the first of our annual Thanksgiving trips, we happened upon an interesting piece of American conspiracy theory art in the middle of the street.  For the past couple of decades these colorful tiles, called Toynbee tiles after the English philosopher named in the tiles, have sprung up in major cities in the United States and a few far flung international locations.  By pure chance, I had read about these tiles before I ever had seen one.  In my work I get a lot of conspiracy theories that constituents want vetted and I saw the information on the Toynbee tiles whilst reading about some other long since forgotten nutty theory.  The photo above is of the tile at the intersection of Jackson Boulevard and Michigan Avenue in Chicago.  One day short of a full year later in November 2006, I found another Toynbee tile (below photo) at the intersection of 8th and Market Streets in St. Louis, Missouri.

People have speculated about the meaning of the tiles and who has placed these all over the place.  While looking for something to watch the other night on Netflix, I saw a documentary about the tiles, called Resurrect Dead.  The makers of the documentary spent many years trying to piece the clues together and they believe that they have found the person that makes the tiles and a little more about the weird conspiracy theory he espouses.  Whenever we travel to big cities, I always keep my eyes peeled for these strange tiles.