While winter was brisk and dragging, spring was warm and wonderful, but summer's getting really exciting! Temperatures are up, the days are longer and the land is lush with the vivid hues of nature in its finest glory. Summer is also a time of vacations, weekends out of town, road trips.........and road trips are what I crave to experience during this warm season. One road trip in particular that warms my heart - the annual trip to Upper Peninsula, Michigan, with my wife and her parents. Once a year, somewhere between May and August, we pack up the car and jump in for a long weekend visiting family in the Keweenaw Peninsula - "the northern most part of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.....the site of the first copper boom in the United States." Wikipedia

Not only does it give us the valuable opportunity to catch up and renew our bonds with family, it gives Rick and I the sweet chance to snap some landscape, nature or random pictures in a land far different from the hustle and bustle of Chicago's urban jungle. Here are some of our favorites from our recent trip. The majority revolve around Quincy Mine - historically significant copper mines in Hancock, Michigan, that ceased operations in 1945. The site is now a popular Keweenaw tourist attraction.