How to Avoid Being Eaten by a Bear

Here's my trick to avoid 

being eaten

by a 

BEAR:

A Slice of Summer...

This video is filmed on 

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

A little slice of summer for you:

Listen to the waves....

Walk with Me...

This video takes you along on my Great Lakes Walk with a boot-on-the-trail perspective!

This should give you a sense of the variation of the shorelines of the five Great Lakes.

In this video, you'll see bits of each lake and the finale at Niagara Falls, ON, Canada.

The Evolution of a Book Cover

You might wonder how a book cover comes about...what revisions it goes through...

how it reaches the version you see on the bookshelves.

For my books, it always begins with a trip to the lake and me standing in the freezing water.

 (Why we never seem to plan this for 
the warmer months is a mystery...) 

Sometimes things go awry.

 Eventually, we get a strong image that evokes

things like:

Great Lakes, Adventure, Long Journey, 
Why is that Woman Standing in the Lake...

 And then we begin the process of working with that image to make the best cover:

An early version had me standing on the right side of the cover.

Then we switched me to the left side and got rid of the pier pylon in the foreground:

That seemed to work, and we arrived at the cover as you see here in the last image.

My editor will tweak the colors a bit before sending it to the printer, but that's pretty much the cover you'll see on the bookshelves.

This book will have a pre-release to select indie bookstores in April, and will be available wherever books are sold in June.

Sign up for updates at the top of the sidebar to find out where the book will be available!

The War of 1812...and the Great Lakes?

While hiking the shores of the Great Lakes in 2012, 

I kept passing through areas affected by the War of 1812.

This war took place two centuries prior to my adventure.

While on my journeys, I am always looking to explore and learn more about the history of this region and these inland seas.

Sign at the River Raisin Battlefield in Monroe, MI

Monument to American soliders killed at or after the Battle at the River Raisin

Perry Memorial, Put-in-Bay, Lake Erie

Perry Memorial on South Bass Island

Monument to Major-General Brock

A monument to Brock's faithful horse, Alfred

In my upcoming book, 

A 1000-MILE GREAT LAKES WALK,

I'll not only take you along the shores of 

the five Great Lakes, 

I'll also illuminate the story of the War of 1812

and how it impacted the region.

And so much more will happen along the way...

 Many people don't realize that the British hoped to take and hold some of the unsettled land in the Great Lakes region. They took forts at Detroit and Mackinac Island, burned the fort in Chicago (Fort Dearborn), and waged war on Lake Erie.

The invincible British navy was first, well, "vinced," on Lake Erie.

The American commander, Commodore Perry, was the first to defeat and capture an entire British squadron of ships. 








And along the Canadian side of 
the Niagara River, there are monuments to another pivotal battle in the War of 1812.

And, of course, a statue to the British commander's faithful horse, Alfred.