It isn’t like I sit around salivating waiting for the annual Black Iron Days event at our beautiful Harwick Pines State Park but when we are at Houghton Lake the last weekend in August, we usually try to get there and this year I think it helped sway our decision to travel north at all this weekend. We did get to Black Iron Days and it rained like heck the whole time we were there but I’ve also been there in brutally hot weather so this was pretty darn nice.

When I posted this pic, I thought I would remember exactly what this device was used for (there was a sign and everything) but then there were a whole bunch more Big Red Wheels and now I can’t remember. It definitely has something to do with the Great Lake State logging industry back in the 1800s. I think it also has something to do with snow. I’m sure it has been repainted since then 🐽

Here are the Twinz of Terror standing in front of another Big Red Wheel perusing some lovely key/jacket/cap hook holders in the form of an arrow. The Uncly Uncle: Where will it fit in my house? Will The Beautiful Gay like it? Given that she might not, how should I present it to her? In the end, he bought it, she *loved* it, I don’t know where they are going to put it in their house and the guy who made it did a bunch of double-takes and then said something like, “Oh you are twins!” Yes indeed.

It wasn’t all Big Red Wheels. This dugout canoe in progress was probably one of my fave things of the day. I loved the vendor and the heat from the faaaar (although it really wasn’t cold, just wet). What you may not be able to process from this pic is that the faaaar is pretty much out at the stern (closest to me) because that part of the dugout was *outside* the tent and *in* the rain.

Some log marks (in the logging museum). They are kind of like cattle brands. When a bunch of logs are floated down a river by a number of different companies, they get sorted out by their log marks. Yes, sometimes people steal each others logs. A couple of us read Barkskins ([E.] Annie Proulx) this summer. If you are interested in logging history it is a good *fictional* book about the industry (with lots of pot-boiling stuff to make a story about cutting down trees interesting). Also it’s a pretty darn good book.

We actually hit the Black Iron Days event in time to watch the sawmill operate. They run the sawmill operation two or three times a year with volunteers manning the musheens, which are obviously meticulously restored.

When the big steam engine thing got going, it was noisy as all getout and smoked like crazy and sometimes there were sparks too but I didn’t get a pic of the sparks, just the smoke.

We watched this saw chew through a couple of logs. It is silent now.

And then us intrepid hikers got LOST on the PAVED trail and ended up at the wrong parking lot…

I cannot figger how a bunch of HIKERS could get lost on a little paved mini-trail but we did. It was okay. One of us ended up hiking more than he probably should have but we are all okay. And then we went out to eat at that bowling alley up in Roscommon. It was wonderful and lived up to everything we had been told about it.

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