We spent the first night of our holiday at St. Ignace in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan – by plan. Probably this first day will be the most planned day on our trip because it was my 75th birthday and I wanted a Bessies Pastie for my birthday supper. You can learn why by reading this earlier post.

The second day of my birthday celebration (if we don’t count all the pre-birthday celebration days) was spent driving the length of the UP, that included eating lunch at my favorite cafe.

The Bailey Lunch Cafe chose to locate on the shores of Lake Superior on this mid-August early afternoon. We had a table that overlooked a small bay east of Marquette and the sky was blue in the direction we were looking. Not so blue behind us as we had experienced periodic cloud sneezes that spattered our windshield with mist on the late morning portion of our drive.

There are a lot of pull-offs along this stretch of road but we had been to this one before – I have a photo of a wind-swept tree that is next to the dirt drive that swings from the main road and back. I don’t think there are any conveniences here – just beauty and wonder.

We had a gourmet lunch of Honey Crisp apple slices, a selection of cheeses including smoked gouda  (my favorite with apples), a Parmesan and ranch cheese ball, multi-grain club crackers, sweet black cherries and a soft drink with two straws glasses. And we talked about this and that and what a great lunch we were having.

After we cleaned up, Jim headed for the bed for a little rest while I took my camera outside, and we both rejoiced that each was doing exactly what we wanted to do in that time and place.

I love the mystique of Lake Superior, its breadth and depth, its power, its secrets. Today there was a special magic of interaction of light and water that made the surface seem iridescence.

The only post-processing I did on this photo was to give the grass some strength in the composition.

Tomorrow we will follow US 2 through northern Wisconsin and into Minnesota and there is no telling where the roving Bailey Cafe will be when we get hungry sometime around noon.