Home Sweet Houghton

The City of Houghton, Michigan wants your thoughts on what can be done to improve the downtown area – what kind of stores should be added, what other improvements would make it better, what makes you head downtown to do business – or doesn’t.  They’ve packaged it all in a brief survey, and they’re looking [...]

Congratulations to Michigan Tech, which has just been listed one of the Princeton Review’s Best 371 Colleges.  The story on the subject from Michigan Tech News said the university was recognized for having exemplary fire safety (they rank that?), quality of life and “green” policies and procedures, and that students praised both the school’s academics [...]

Forgive the silence, we’ve just spent almost three weeks visiting cherished friends and favorite spots in St. Louis and the Ozarks.  Immersed in all that heat, humidity and Cardinals baseball it was hard to think much about our very different life in the Upper Peninsula, where the air conditioning sits blessedly idle for most of [...]

Houghton and the Keweenaw Peninsula have a reputation for being a winter paradise, but that shouldn’t be taken to mean that things slow down in the summer.  It seems that just as the warm weather arrives the outdoor festivals kick in: there are two this weekend alone, and that doesn’t include the huge Bridgefest shindig [...]

Big news greeted me today when I pulled our weekend edition of the local newspaper, the Daily Mining Gazette, from the mailbox: The Mine Shaft, a bowling/arcade/restaurant/go-kart/mini-golf/etc. complex that shuttered mere months after our arrival, will be back by the end of the summer.
This is fantastic news because, as the new owners of the complex [...]

Image by UpNorth Memories – Donald (Don) Harrison via Flickr

If you had told me a couple of years ago that I would be leaving my very comfortable and happy life in St. Louis and moving to Michigan’s rugged and scenic Upper Peninsula I never would have believed you.  Even less would I have guessed that [...]