I’ve been getting dozens of comments per day of the “I’m glad I found your blog, it’s one of the best” variety.  In other words, totally generic. A way to get the email address and webpage of the sender published on my pages (they wish!).

I have great anti-spam widgets which put all these sorts of comments into a separate folder, but I still have to go through it all.  Yesterday I had to review over 150.  A bother. And you just know there’s a software writer out there who made it possible for attention seekers to send bland, generic comments to thousands of blogs with a keystroke. On my site, these spam comments have been accelerating. The search engines are partially to blame. They measure your web presence and assign your importance in search results based on how many times your website is mentioned on the web, even in the comments section of other people’s blogs.

Besides being a bother for blog owners, these spam comments sometimes mask less-than-specific comments sent by real people. So you may have sent something to me and you may not have a website called “f0rtuneteller0nline.not” (slightly altered to thwart their efforts). But your comment may be like his/hers:

Hello there, You’ve done an excellent job. I will definitely digg it and personally suggest to my friends. I’m confident they’ll be benefited from this web site. Regards,

So if you want to get through, please mention something that’s actually on my site.  I apologize to those real people whose encouraging comments didn’t appear. As for my “web strategy” I am not into all the new stuff. I would never send spam comments, tweets or even facebook entries. I’m a dinosaur. I hate iphones. Big flat screen TVs are OK though.

The Inland Seas docked at Suttons Bay, Michigan

Sometimes we need to leave paradise. Right now I’m over 1000 miles away from Acadia; there are some subtle and not-so-subtle differences. Here in the “little finger” region of Michigan,  spring is a little behind where it was at home. The rain is less frequent and the trees are different. Plenty of cottonwoods and willows surround my sister’s home on the shore of Lake Michigan. Of course the ocean is not an ocean at all and the tides are not tides.

To get here I came through Ontario. Crossing the border is always a hassle. I couldn’t find my passport until I looked in the glovebox where it had been since last November. A bad idea. Canada is a wonderful country, we really lucked out with our northern neighbor. But gas, food and hotels are more expensive and getting through without leftover loonies (Canadian dollars) is a challenge. I would not recommend driving through Toronto, even on the 401. The 407 is an express route through the city but it costs $10, and yes, you will be billed even if you have US plates. The cameras see you coming and going and the authority has access to state’s registration records. If you want to avoid the $20 be prepared for an average 15-20 mph crawl on the 401 for about 30 miles. Unlike Boston however, the drivers are much more courteous and rarely use their horns.

Michigan is auto-land and to prove this has no tollway–all roads are free.  There are no signs of economic distress in northern Michigan that I could see. In fact the Traverse City area seems to be booming. If you draw a horizontal line from Saginaw Bay across Michigan (like removing the fingers from the mitten) this would roughly separate the northern woods from the flat farmland in the south. Michigan is unusual in that almost all the urban centers are located on former farmland. Many a cornfield have been filled in with housing developments. The farmland is rich and varied. Tall tree lines separate surviving fields. Highway overpasses almost always have “borrow pits”;  wetlands produced by removing the soil to build up the overpass.  This is a sure sign of the “Flatlands”. This time of year the shades of green are intense and the new crops look endless.

Above this line things are more Maine-like. The forests take over and the hills rise. Unlike Maine the hills are small and tend to be sand or gravel. Numerous (non-great) lakes dot the landscape. Landowners along the lakes in Michigan like to create lawns right down the the shore.  I guess this is a Midwestern thing–I prefer the New England approach of hiding houses behind the trees like at our SeaCat’s Rest.

The Leelanau peninsula, Michigan’s little finger,  has a climate well suited to fruit growing. When I was a kid the primary crop was sour (pie) cherries but today the move is to grapes.  There are 22 wineries in the county and a tasting tour is on the list of all visitors. There are as many wine making philosophies as there are wineries. Bernie Rink, Leelanau’s first winery owner has a goal of producing affordable table wines without fluff at his Boskydel Winery. Larry Mawby specializes in sparkling wines. Madonna’s parents produce wines from Italian varieties at their Ciccone Winery.  Organic ice wines are the specialty at Good Neighbor Winery. Many offer well crafted, even suburb wines at prices under $20, from Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Chardonnay, Pinot, Baco Noir, Vidal, Vignoles, Seyval Blanc and other varieties. Some wineries are a bit more hype than product, selling themselves as inns and restaurants with overpriced wine as a draw. But many, like Leelanau Cellars still offer free tastings and a stunning location with reasonably priced wines.