Still No Power, Bluff Road Collapsing, Plein Air Artists & Free Ice Cream

We still have no power here on Bluff Road, but that’s how it usually goes. All day long, other OMPers have been posting happy “Power’s back on!” notes on Facebook, but our little section of Bluff is always last.

But I’m always glad to see their posts – not only because I’m happy they got their power back, but because that means we’re one step closer to getting ours back.

Today’s silver lining is that I was forced to clean out my fridge and freezer (this is a good thing). It usually takes a disaster – like losing power – for me to tackle this project.

So, this is Day 2 of me posting from my phone – again, not my best work! Here’s a little photographic journey of today around the OMP…

The recent storm knocked out another part of Bluff Road, this time on the south end of the road. The lane is not officially closed, although there are a couple of traffic cones there marking the spot. Tread carefully.

If you noticed a variety of artists with their easels set up around the OMP today, they’re part of the plein air group hosted by Paint Grand Traverse. We spotted them on Bay Street, Old Mission Road, Blue Water Road, Center Road on Carpenter Hill (she was very brave with cars whizzing by her), and of course, at Old Mission Flowers.

Owner Ginny Coulter loves having them paint the garden each year, and posted on Facebook earlier, “It’s so fun to have the Plein Air Artists in my garden today. The weather couldn’t have been nicer.”

Here’s one of the painters in the garden, and we spotted two others set up in the Ogdensburg Cemetery, painting the garden from across the road. Also, Ginny’s gladiolus are gorgeous right now.

Right after I took those photos – around 3:30 p.m. – I received an email from Consumers Energy noting that because of the long power outage, they had worked a deal with Bardon’s to offer free ice cream to their customers without power. Of course, we immediately sped into Bardon’s and took them up on their offer!

Consumers had a table set up there, and I was so excited about the ice cream that I didn’t think to ask who would be a good person to interview about the OMP power issues, why we lose power so often, and the process of getting us up and running again. But I will look into that and find someone to interview for a story.

I did, however, get a picture of the Consumers crew at Bardon’s. Thanks for the ice cream!

Oh, and here is a picture of last night’s “eat everything we could” dinner. You can see brats and wings – not pictured is burgers, bacon and more wings. Thanks to our son, Will, for grilling everything up.