How We Whiled Away Saturday Afternoon

Saturday we were bored and decided to go on a self guided tour of West Branch, a town about 5o or so miles from here. It was billed as sort of a "ghost tour," but um, not so much. It was more heavy with the historical slant. Which, I guess you could argue, you are going where people used to live who did in fact die, so who's to say they aren't still hanging about haunting and such? We invited Al to come too, but she hates us and decided to stay home plopped in front of the tv. One of these days when she starts acting all butt hurt saying we didn't include her in family time, I'm gonna smack her down.


This was the first stop of our tour, the Ogemaw Historical Museum. Unfortunately, it was closed. Annie was disappointed because evidently there's some ghost story surrounding the place about a little girl, and some of her creepy doll collection is still housed there.

This used to be some big cattle ranch, they used to drive cattle from where Terry grew up, over 60 miles or so away. They used to herd the cattle right through the center of the town, it was quite a hullabaloo.

These are from an old ski run that used to be a popular place back in the 40's and 50's. Charlton Heston hung out there, or at least once so they could get a pic of him there. You can't really tell how steep it is from these pics. I suspect it's a popular party spot now, the hill looks like it would make a hella cool sled run, and well, there's that little peace sign at the bottom of the hill. It matches very well with the ode to "Weed" that's up top, but we didn't get a pic of that. :)

An artesian well type thingy, the water really pours out of it fast. I guess they kept trying to cap it way back when, but the well or whatever wasn't having any of that and the force of the water just kept blasting whatever they put on there off. It was really really cold too. We were tempted to fill up our water bottles all pioneer like, (okay, maybe pioneers didn't travel with plastic water bottles) but the guidebook advised against such foolishness. And I need to color my hair again, I can see some definite root action going on there. There was a spring or something on the tour before this stop, but there were people actually shooting up into the air in front of their shacklike house right in that area, so we skipped stopping.

We had been roaming miles and miles of sandy old logging trails in the middle of the woods, like waaaay back in the woods, like if you put the windows down you could hear the faint strains of inbred people playing that banjo music from Deliverance, and just as we were in sight of the blessed paved road that signals civilization, this deer popped out in front of us. She had a purty white tail. At least it perked Annie up. I think she was becoming concerned that we were never going to make it back, she's a sheltered kid.

This is the picture we would have gotten a couple of weeks ago if we hadn't been lazy slacker parents and had actually driven her up there. Still didn't get to see those dang train tracks going into the lake though.

Lonely little graves at the Damon cemetary. They don't know who is buried there because the carvings in the wood wore away a long time ago. The people who maintain the cemetery put up metal crosses so at least the resting places will still be marked. This part of the cemetery is actually away from the rest, back in the woods. There are a few more stones back there, but it seems pretty random placement. I'm suspecting there's a lot more graves back there that just aren't marked anymore. We of course told Annie about that and she immediately hopped onto a stump so as not to piss any dead people off by accidentally walking on them.

This is what remains of the original settlement of Damon, and we sure as heck weren't going to be able to assuage our growing thirst (Annie had sucked down the rest of our water back in the forest portion of the trip) hereabouts. So we took a vote (everyone with a uterus got one), and we decided that the tour was about four stops too long. We headed back to civilization and the land of yummy fountain giant Diet Cokes. I was just glad to see pavement again.