Another 500 lbs. of beeswax

With a second trip below the bridge (the scary five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge) to get another 500 pounds of beeswax, I began to think: This is serious. So when passing billboards for the Mystery ? Spot and when tooling past the Weird Michigan Wax Museum and the funky souvenir shops offering "Indian" goods, I made a mental note to stop next time, before crossing the bridge, and visit these places and have a little fun as well as take in the vast watery view from the top of Lake Michigan.

What makes the Mackinac Bridge so scary? Perhaps it's the low slung guard rail between me and whatever's out there.

taking pictures while driving?

The old dogs went with me, and with one being prone to bouts of playing living statues all by herself and toppling over and mimicking that commercial where the old lady's on the floor going "Help! I can't get up!" (Queenie's always had a sly sense of humor), not to mention the occasional incontinence, it makes for an interesting trip. There were a couple of unscheduled stops, pulling over to the side of the road to tend to the old girl, but otherwise it was a few hundred miles of clear sailing through northern Michigan which is, indeed, beautiful.

Starting before sunrise, heading into dawn, the sky was clear. (When I first stepped outside about 5:30 a.m. I was startled by the stars. One of the nicest things about fall is the lengthening and lingering night. At last, darkness.) The horizon was a broad pink and green band, slowly paling. Pockets of mist wafted up from the ponds and creeks, trailing through trees, the pines and cedars and maples, some maples sporting a few red leaves, here and there, and mist hung over a flat and silvery Lake Superior. Somewhere east of Munising the sun popped over the horizon, shedding a harsh light on the day.

Below the bridge, the bare orchards I had passed in January were leafy green and filled with apples. We stopped at one of the many farmstands along highway 31, a place called Bargy's, south of Charlevoix and north of Traverse City, and got a bag of fresh Fujis, a bag of green bean chips, and enjoyed a temptation to buy fresh milk bottled in thick clear glass. But, I'm not much of a milk drinker.

We were at the apiary, Sleeping Bear Farms, shortly after noon, loading 500 pounds of fresh golden beeswax into the van. (I'll skip over how we discussed whether the two boxes would slide around or not and how they eventually did, in the midst of Traverse City traffic, because I'd rather not dwell on the scary stuff.) At the farm, honey extraction was in progress, and I was lucky enough to get a tour of the facility amid the action. Sleeping Bear Farms tends to more than 5,000 hives distributed across six counties, and come August and September there can be tons of honey to harvest. They extract, store, bottle, and ship out from their spot right there in Beulah.

border crossing

Except for freaking out while crossing back over the Big Scary, there's not much more to the second 500 lbs. of beeswax story. I did have some thoughts about my first trip, the first 500 lbs. picked up back in January, and wondered why I had done anything so nutty. But how I could think it was nutty when here I was doing it again, granted, during a more pleasant time of year for driving, but still, what is this beeswax thing all about? Is it serious?

P.S. No one was hurt during the 500 pounds of beeswax sliding incident. Even the apples came through OK.

What am I doing with all this wax? Click here for the answer.

If you're interested: Sleeping Bear Farms.