Sunset Theater

Saturday dawned blue and beautiful, filled with November haze and blessed with temperatures warmer than we’ve got any right to expect this time of year. It was a great day for a walk, and out at the W. K. Kellogg Experimental Forest southeast of Gull Lake in Kalamazoo County, people were seizing the opportunity.
I was [...]

Unless You’re a Deer Hunter

I have a theory and I’m about to prove it. But first, how many of you are deer hunters? Raise your hand.
Very good. Kindly exclude yourselves from the following poll.
As for the rest of you, how many are huge fans of November?
Hmmm…okay, let’s try that again: if you love the month of November, raise your [...]

Tom Turkey

Let me introduce you to a friend of mine. This is Tom, and he’s a real turkey.
I know that’s not a very nice thing to say about someone, but in Tom’s case, truer words were never spoken. Tom is the resident turkey of the small animal farm at Bowen’s Mills. He’s also about as nice [...]

Swan Song of the Leaves

This is the time of the last of the leaves. As I write, a deep low pressure center is moving out of northeast Minnesota into Ontario, dragging with it a steamy plume of unseasonably warm, moist air and high winds across the Great Lakes region. It is the inevitable leaf-stripper of late October that denudes [...]

Battlefield at Bowen’s Mills

Call me superstitious, but I feel unlucky whenever a cannon is pointed directly at me. So I felt glad when they turned this one downfield, where the Southern army was massing it’s forces—all twenty of them, from what I could judge. Granted, it wasn’t much of a massing, but it’s hard to muster up Confederate [...]

Wall Lake

Wall Lake is located in southern Hope Township in Barry County. This private lake, with no known public access, is located in the town of Delton.
The 530 acre Michigan lake is centrally located along side of M43, between Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek.
This lake is highly desirable for its water activities of boating, skiing, [...]

Guernsey Lake

Guernsey Lake is located in Hope Township in central Barry County. This Michigan lake boasts of 218 acres with a reported depth of up to 28 feet. The lake is largely developed with a mix of year round and seasonal homes.
Guernsey Lake is a private lake with no known public access. The lake is divided [...]

Cartier Lake

Cartier Lake is located along the Rutland and Hastings township lines in Barry County. This Michigan lake has some 70 acres of surface waters, with a reported depth of 24 feet. Conveniently located northeast of Hastings, this sparsely populated lake is best known for its fishing.
Fishermen can take Hammond Road to the public access boat [...]

Algonquin Lake

Algonquin Lake is located in Rutland Township in central Barry County. This is a popular man made Michigan lake of 240 acres, with reported depths of 45 feet. It is a private lake with no known public access.
On the southwest side of the lake, one will notice the dam with the overflowing waters spilling down [...]

Cloverdale Lake

Cloverdale Lake is a Michigan lake located in central Hope Township in Barry County. It has public access and a semi developed shoreline. The water’s surface area is 50 acres and the maximum reported depth is 50 feet.
Hope Township maintains a small local park on the southeastern side of the lake, just off  M43. A [...]

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