Downtown Crystal Falls

Beautful pictures of a beautiful town. Didn't know there were any left like that.

Awesome. This is the America all too often overlooked.

That's in the UP, right, Peter?

I love the UP, that area that should belong to Wisconsin, but somehow got put with Michigan because of some treaty. It is such a gorgeous area, with towns like Crystal Falls, and lots of pristine wilderness.

Carol

Crystal Falls is in Iron County in the southwestern part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The UP is in fact much more more like Wisconsin than it is like lower Michigan. Besides we're directly attached to Wisconsin (Crystal Falls is about 7 or 8 miles from the border via direct line). Crystal Falls is a very beautiful city.

Looks like small-town America, very nice. From the car window, that is. I've driven through a lot of these small towns on road trips and they're nice places to visit but I don't want to live there.

Why not, LC?

It looks like a great place to live.

Dear Peter,
What lovely pictures. I remember towns like that. The remarkable thing is the lack of telephone wires strung willy nilly, the clean, the sidewalks, the way the light shines down the road. You have captured peace in a photograph.

LC, I know why you would not want to live there. You could not be invisible. The thing about small towns is that everyone knows you, either they are your kin, related to you by marriage or they went to school with you in 1928. Sometimes the family trees go straight up without a leaf looking like it would be a branch if it could.

I do not say these things with derision. The people here are kind and simple people, salt of the earth people. They make this world go around day to day doing the things they do.

Love,
Betty

Dear Peter,
I would like to add that the photo called, "Another View" could win prizes. It is really another world lovely.

Love,
Betty

Phil wrote:

Why not, LC?

I like the amenities of a large city. Not that I use them that much, lol, but when I want them, they're there. Zoos, museums, upscale shopping districts, festivals, etc.

Betty Fasig wrote:

LC, I know why you would not want to live there. You could not be invisible. The thing about small towns is that everyone knows you, either they are your kin, related to you by marriage or they went to school with you in 1928.

Betty, large cities are made up of small communities, and what you described can be common among certain populations there, too. Much of my dad's family moved to the same area in the Bronx from Europe about 70 years ago. After living there for decades, many of them moved to the same area in Miami.

One can live isolated in a small town, we read about incidents in the news that happen in them all the time.

Gordon, do you have Irfanview? It's a great little resizing program that you can download for free. That way you wouldn't have to post such large pics, causing the board to scroll horizontally. Assuming, of course, that posting high-res photos isn't your goal.

I grew up in the Chicago area, and then lived in suburbs for ten years after I had children and before we moved to small town Wisconsin over 30 years ago.

I never felt the closeness to people in the suburbs that I do in the small towns. Like, Betty says, people are related, have been here for generations, but welcome new people.

And we do have festivals. Next weekend is the annual Cow Chip Throw Festival with parade with lots of tractors, bands, wooden cows spewing cow chips, and I'm going to ride in the Red Cross vehicle. There is a 5k run, craft booths, a petting zoo, and music. I understand this festival is going to be featured on the travel channel in October. I'll let you know the date.

Carol

LC wrote:

Gordon, do you have Irfanview? It's a great little resizing program that you can download for free. That way you wouldn't have to post such large pics, causing the board to scroll horizontally. Assuming, of course, that posting high-res photos isn't your goal.

No, I can resize in Photoshop, but that takes time. The board does not scroll horozontally on my machine, by the way. Crystal Falls, by the way, is only about 70 miles from Marquette, Michigan, which is more than 10 times its size and only about 30 miles from Iron Mountain, Michigan, which is about 4 times as big as Crystal Falls. So we do have access to many of the things they have in big cities, we just have to travel a little further to get to them.