Use this site to easily find a fireworks display near you

Michiganfireworks.com is THE place to find fireworks displays in Michigan. There are currently 446 different displays listed. You can search by 'Date' and by 'City' via a drop-down menu system. Meg Geddes is the gal who created the site and she puts a ton of work into putting all of this information together. Check it out at Michiganfireworks.com.

Don't forget to visit the Anatomy of a Yooper exhibit

This past January I wrote about The Anatomy of a Yooper exhibit at the Marquette County History Museum that began running in April. The exhibit is still open and is featuring traditional U.P. food (I'm thinking pasties) at an open house this Thursday from 7 to 9pm. The exhibit showcases how Yoopers coped with the harsh Upper Peninsula winters and how the conditions in the U.P. created hardened workers with a great work ethic. Numerous pictures and Yooper gear abound in this interesting exhibit.

A great book to read that tells how Upper Peninsula residents made it through the tough conditions is -

So Cold A Sky, Upper Michigan Weather Stories

This book is one of the 2007 Michigan Notable Books.

The Air Zoo adds Michigan Space Science Center

The Michigan Space Science Center opened at the Air Zoo this past Saturday. Admission to the exhibit is included in the general admission to the Air Zoo ($19.50 for adults). Many items from the now defunct Michigan Space and Science Center that was located in Jackson are housed in this new 17,000 square foot attraction. The Jackson location closed in 2003 and it is nice to see most of the exhibits find a new home. I remember visiting the Michigan Space and Science Center as a kid and eating freeze-dried ice cream like the astronauts. The novelty of the ice cream almost made up for the crummy taste. Almost.

Anyway, the Michigan Space Science Center exhibit includes -

• Lunar Leap – Hopping craters like an Apollo astronaut, guests will be able to get the feel of lunar gravity—1/6 of the Earth’s.
• Space Sick – Erratically swirling circles make the viewer feel dizzily space sick. A rocking platform adds to the disorientation. Visitors will understand the feeling that many astronauts feel during their first few days in weightlessness.
• Gyro – Visitors will experiment with large locked and un-locked gyroscopes to see how they work and why they are important for guiding rockets and spacecraft.
• Action vs. Reaction – Guests will be able to learn about action/reaction by loading tennis balls into the chamber of an air cannon, which will be mounted to a cart on a track. When the cannon is fired, the action of the ball being shot out of the back causes the cannon to roll forward (reaction). By varying the pressure, visitors will see the relationship between action and reaction.
• Also in the exhibit are a number of original space artifacts such as a Saturn V rocket engine, full-size replica of a Gemini space capsule, a Gemini crew-training simulator, Russian Cosmonaut suit (from Alexandr Kaleri, the last commander of the MIR space station) and Ann Arbor astronaut Jack Lousma’s space suit.

Visit www.airzoo.org for more information.

The Free Press has a neat video series on the Great Lakes

At Freep.com you can view a neat video series on the Great Lakes put together by columnist Mike Wendland. There are currently two videos up - Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. The Lake Superior video begins with the Soo Locks. Other highlights of this video are - Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, a commercial Whitefish (yum! visit ScalawagsWhitefish.com for a location near you) operation, and the U.P. Pasty.

View the Lake Superior video

The Lake Michigan video features - Petoskey stones (official state stone), trillium (official state flower), Sleeping Bear Dunes, and ends with one of Lake Michigan's famous sunsets.

View the Lake Michigan video

Visit our new Mackinac Bridge page

I just put up a page at Squidoo.com about the Mackinac Bridge. In case you didn't know, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the completion and opening of the bridge. Numerous events are being held this year in honor of the Mackinac Bridge's 50th and there is some pretty neat stuff at the page I created. At the new page you can view a current picture of the bridge and see what the current bridge conditions are for crossing the Mighty Mac. Information about how much tolls cost, great pictures of the bridge, odd facts, and 8mm footage of the old car ferry service that was rendered obsolete when the bridge opened on November 1, 1957.

You will also find links to other great resources on the web that are all about the famous Mackinac Bridge.

I think it is pretty neat. Hope you do, too. Check it out.