Post Most Viewed in 2010

Loreen Niewenhuis is an author, adventurer, and Great Lakes speaker. She has completed a trilogy of 1,000-mile adventures exploring the Great Lakes and has written three books about the Great Lakes [A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach *a Heartland Indie Bestseller*, A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes Walk *winner of the Great Lakes Great Reads Award*, and A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes Island Adventure]. To learn more about her work, or to book her as a speaker, go to http://LakeTrek.com

Thank you all for reading my blog. It has now surpassed 150,000 page views!

Here is the most viewed post from 2010:

Lake Michigan Rocks!

I've always been a rock hound, and my Lake Trek gave me a golden opportunity to collect rocks from the entire shoreline of Lake Michigan.

The series of four 'waves' of glaciers that formed our Great Lakes dragged rocks from as far away as within the Arctic Circle and deposited them in our lake. You won't find this wide a variety of color and mineral composition anywhere else in the world.

In the video below, I've placed my collection of Lake Michigan rocks on a map of the lake.

Slate and Oil...

Shale on the shores of Lake Huron

The Great Lakes Basin has a bowl of shale underneath it, nested between other layers (sandstone, limestone, etc.).  

Sometimes the edge of this layer is exposed along the shoreline like near Alpena on Lake Huron and north of Traverse City on Lake Michigan. 

This stone naturally traps oil and natural gas within it, and there are places along the shoreline where oil is seeping out of these rock layers and into the lakes. 

This is a natural process that has been going on around the Great Lakes for thousands of years.

Oil seeps out from the shale layer

The patters are beautiful and colorful...

There are companies that want to frack this layer of shale in Michigan to extract the resources trapped there. 

The companies say that fracking is safe, but they will not disclose everything added to the fracking fluid. 

...as the oil/water mixture merges with the lake.

And the used fracking fluid is so toxic it is disposed of by pumping it deep underground, far underneath the water table.  

In this way, millions of gallons of fresh water are poisoned and removed from use forever.

Lake Michigan Rocks!

I've always been a rock hound, and my Lake Trek gave me a golden opportunity to collect rocks from the entire shoreline of Lake Michigan.

The series of four 'waves' of glaciers that formed our Great Lakes dragged rocks from as far away as within the Arctic Circle and deposited them in our lake. You won't find this wide a variety of color and mineral composition anywhere else in the world.

In the video below, I've placed my collection of Lake Michigan rocks on a map of the lake.