Michigan Rock Redux

Thanks to A. for the use of a scanner - I finally can post the image of the rock shaped like the lower peninsula. Here it is in all its plywood and masking tape glory. Since MLive took away my link from the earlier post, here's the text too.



Harris Diehl, of Broomfield Township, Mich., found this rock, in the shape of Michigan's Lower Penninsula, while in his field. Diehl was "just pickin' stone" in one of his family's fields in Isabella County when he stumbled across an unusual rock. Diehl brought it home and decided it could make a good educational display.
The Associated Press


---BROOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) -- Harris Diehl was "just pickin' stone" in one of his family's fields in Isabella County when he stumbled across an unusual rock.

"It looked enough like Michigan so you could recognize it right away," said Diehl, a property manager and sometime developer.

The flat rock is, indeed, shaped like the mitten of the Lower Peninsula. There's the Thumb over to the east, an indentation that looks like Grand Traverse Bay up to the northwest and the curve of the Lake Michigan shoreline south of Ludington is almost duplicated on the piece of glacial stone.

Diehl brought it home and decided it could make a good educational display.

"Rick kind of took over," Diehl said. "He's the artist."

Rick is Diehl's son-in-law Rick Huzzey, a process operator for Dow Corning Corp. in Midland and an amateur artist. With the mini-Michigan bolted and sealed to a sturdy piece of three-quarter-inch marine-grade plywood, Huzzey began the job.

"Here's Hartwick Pines," Huzzey said, pointing to a representation of the famous stand of virgin white pine near Grayling. Painted along the shoreline are "most of the lighthouses" that draw tourists and guide Great Lakes shipping.

Like a map in an atlas, he's painted in the products for which Michigan is famous.

Holland has its tulips. Around Traverse City and the Leelanau Peninsula, he painted grapes and cherries; a couple of sugar beets decorate the Thumb, the state's prime sugar-growing region.

Michigan's manufacturing and retail base isn't forgotten, either. In the Saginaw Valley, Huzzey painted the logos of Dow Chemical Co. and Dow Corning.

In southeastern Michigan, there are the logos of Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG and General Motors. The Grand Rapids region is designated with the logo of regional retail giant Meijer.

"All of the major roads in Michigan are there," Huzzey said.

And pointing to a gold star just a little west of the center of the peninsula, he smiled.

"That's our house," he said.

But the Lower Peninsula isn't the entire state, and Diehl began scouring the fields for a companion rock that could represent the Upper Peninsula.

That wasn't easy.

He was searching for a rock that not only had the right shape, but the right color. He finally settled on a chunk of stone that's shaped like the portion of the U.P. east of Marquette.

That's now bolted to the plywood and decorated as well. Diehl added a representation of the Mackinac Bridge, complete with tiny cars, to complete the project.

Around the edges are painted the state flag, fish, stone and other state symbols. Currently, the 250-pound-or-so representation in Michigan stone and plywood hangs in Huzzey's shed, but the family wants more people to see it and learn from it.

"We would like to display the rock in libraries in small communities," Diehl said. "Maybe senior citizen centers."

Even though it's heavy and hard to hang on a wall, the men point to the fact that it's solid on the wall of the shed. Eventually, they'd like to find a permanent home for it in a park, museum or library.

"It's a little bit of everything about Michigan," Huzzey said.