Flashback Friday: Tahquamenon Falls State Park in the fall

The light filtering of taking this picture of a picture using my phone adds a bit of a rustic feel to the photo. I like it.

Keeping with my theme I started a few weeks ago, I've decided to add yet another flashback post of a former trip. This time, it's beautiful Tahquamenon Falls near Newberry.

The falls are beautiful at all times
of the year, especially autumn.

I've been to the falls twice in my life, once in the late '90s with my family and again in Oct. 2004 with the CSB. I haven't been back since, something perhaps I'll convince my future wife to do after we're married next year.

There are two sets of falls at Taquamenon: the upper and the lower. If I remember correctly, we visited both on a hike that fall Saturday. The trip was a weekend one, although it started slightly later for me; a football game that Friday night delayed my travels with the group, and I ended up leaving near 10:30 p.m. that night. We arrived in the morning when everyone was waking up after we took a power nap ourselves, my leader and I.

The falls themselves are a spectacular view, especially for having so few in Michigan and only one in the Lower Peninsula. Brown in color, the colors of fall added to their beauty as they flowed down the Taquamenon River.

Not many can visit the falls without an accompanying trip to Whitefish Point, home of the Whitefish Point Lighthouse and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.

The lighthouse, one of the more iconic along the Great Lakes, has metal supports running up the tower. It's the oldest active light on Lake Superior, the greatest Great Lake of them all.

If you thought Lake Superior was cold during the summer, dip your toes in during October. Brrr.

And the shipwreck museum is worth the visit if there. With the Great Lakes being a hotspot for shipwrecks throughout the times white people have traveled the lakes, there are artifacts from several wrecks, the prize being the bell recovered from the bridge of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The ship, which sank in 1975, was one of the largest at the time to sail the Great Lakes. It sank during a storm on Nov. 10, 1975, and has become folklore and a national curiosity ever since.

It's been too long since making the trip up to Newberry to view these great falls. Things have changed since the Duck Lake fire took place earlier this summer when the blaze forced the park to close. It seems the area is slowly recovering, based on reports I've read earlier this summer.

I'm looking forward to returning to the falls. Anything special I need to take note of if/when going a younger me wouldn't have appreciated?