Bear with Me

I do love watching the Bear River downtown. It is a very relaxing place to hang out and doesn't usually get too noisy except when the salmon are running and there are a lot of fisherman here. A quiet, green place with water is a great place to read a book. A century ago though, this was a very different place. There were at least 3 different mills on this section of the river and 3 different dams to create energy. It was a busy place with lots of workers and industry. In fact, if you walk the trail along the side of the river, you can still see remnants of walls and pipes coming out of the ground here and there. What a difference a century makes!

A River Runs Through it.

Another shot of the river that runs right through the middle of town. You would think you were far away from civilization and out in the middle of nowhere, when actually you are directly in the middle of Petoskey! The river runs through Petoskey and there are 4 bridges, one of which you must cross to get from one side to the other. This is the section of town that was heavily industrialized at the turn of the last century, but now has returned to a woodsy state. There are trails on either side where you can find parts of old structures in the paths; pipes and paving stones, crumbling walls and chunks of unidentifiable things. It is an interesting walk through history.