This gorgeous waterfall once was the source of power for the Schoolcraft Blast Furnace, a part of northern Michigan’s 19th Century iron boom. A question about the geology of the area led to a lively conversation that involved three rangers at the Munising Falls Visitor Center who told us that the value of the iron mined in Michigan in the 19th Century exceeded the value of the gold extracted during the California Gold Rush. We were fascinated with the Recipe for Pig Iron and curious as to how it was developed. Of note it’s iron in the rocks that yields that orange color behind the falls and that supplied the raw material that became railroad track and fed westward expansion 150 years ago. Today it’s a lovely hike to a beautiful falls.
Ever since its debut on Broadway the two of us have wanted to see “Wicked the Musical”. Today we realized that dream. In the Apollo Victoria Theater in London’s West End we were witness to the incredible prequel to The Wizard of Oz, the story of the Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.
London’s National Portrait Gallery’s temporary exhibition, “Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens” presents an amazing collection of portraits, jewelry, personal effects, books, costumes, and more to illustrate not only the lives of the six women who married the second Tudor king, but the effort across five centuries to keep their memory alive.
The purpose of our trek to Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham in the southwest of London was to see a recently recovered bronze bust of the Emperor Caligula but we discovered so much more in the recently restored 18th Century “little Gothic castle” built by Horace Walpole.
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