Potawatomi State Park
Stumbled Upon a Slipper
On an early spring day hike we discovered this Lady Slipper Orchid blooming among the ferns at Potawatomi State Park on the shore of Sturgeon Bay in southern Door County, Wisconsin.
These flowers show up for a short time in the early spring. Of course, to catch them during their short blooming cycle, you first have to find them. When visiting the park, I asked one of the rangers if they had spotted any and they mentioned a couple of possible locations. Unfortunately, we didn’t find many but we were pleased to, at least, find a few.
This morning I got up early to see if I could catch a sunrise image but the sky would not cooperate. So, since I had a little time, I looked at some of the images I’d captured earlier and hadn’t taken the time to process. This is one of those shots from June of 2019.
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Flock of Fungi
Our area received a lot of rain late summer to autumn. That provided favorable conditions for mushrooms. These are a just a few of the fungi bounty we discovered on a walk through Potawatomi Park near Sturgeon Bay, WI a few weeks ago.
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Crooked Spine Pine II
This is another view of my Crooked Spine Pine – a true quirk of nature. (See earlier post: Crooked Spine Pine – 2013)
Like Jack’s magic bean stalk, this pine tree is growing in a spiral at Potawatomi State Park in northeast Wisconsin.
It reminds me of a natural example of a rule of composition known as the Golden Mean, Phi, or Divine Proportion. It was made poplar by Leonardo Fibonacci around 1200 A.D. You can learn more about it in an excellent article from Digital Photography School.
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Crooked Spine Pine – 2013
FINALLY – We found it!! As you can see, this is a very unique tree. This tree has eluded me for years. Let me explain…
In 2006, while hiking on a trail through the woods, we came across this tree. It was in the middle of the trail, so we weren’t the only ones who’ve seen it. But I’m guessing most people didn’t look at it from the angle I photographed it, so they wouldn’t realize the cool curve of its growth.
I took a few photos of it. Sometime after that, I posted my best photo of the “Crooked Spine Pine” on Flickr. (That was before I had this blog.) It turned out to be one of the most popular photos I’ve ever posted. A number of people questioned its authenticity – accusing me of “photoshopping” it.
Back when I took the original photo, in 2006, I had a simple 5-megapixel camera. The photo of this tree was unique, but it really wasn’t a great image, technically speaking. Since then I’ve upgraded considerably.
For the last several years, I’ve been trying to find this tree again – to get better photos. However, I wasn’t sure exactly where it was. I thought it was at Potawatomi State Park, near Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. We spent a number of visits, hiking the trails looking for the tree. After having no success, I began to think maybe it was on a trail at Peninsula State Park, farther up Door County, near Sister Bay, WI. We had hiked trails and took photos at both parks. We also had to consider the possibility that the tree was no longer there – blown over in a storm or claimed by disease or insects.
We began to keep better track of what trails we had hiked on and in the process, we’ve hiked a lot of trails and even enlisted the help of friends, in search of this one tree. Recently, my wife and I spent a day hiking the trails at Peninsula State Park totaling about seven-and-a-half hours. No luck. So, maybe it wasn’t at Peninsula, but at Potawatomi.
Last Friday, Sara (my wife) and I decided to spend the day together. It was a nice day so we decided to hike the trails at Potawatomi State Park. We hiked the Hemlock Trail – about a two mile loop. While hiking, I noticed a spur off the trail and thought we should check that out some time. Hemlock turned back and we came along another spur that I thought might be the other end of the spur we passed earlier. We decided to head up that little stretch to see what was there and, low and behold, there was the tree.
In our search over the years, no doubt we had hiked the Hemlock Trail before, but never took that little detour. We were joyful to have finally located it, took photos, marked it on a trail map, took GPS coordinates. We will not have any problems finding it in the future. If you’d like to see it for yourself, hike the Hemlock Trail and take the bike trail in the northern part of the loop.
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All of the photos I post are available for purchase. If you’d like to buy one, click on the blue “Buy this Online” bar below for a variety of print and frame options or contact me for digital purchase and licensing options.