- Coming up on Extra Credit, we meet a chef who used food to help fill a community, visit a beef cattle farm and so much more.

Stay tuned.

- [Narrator] This program is made possible in part by Michigan Department of Education, the state of Michigan and by viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Mrs. Pizzo, it's good to see you.

Welcome to Extra Credit, where we meet interesting people, explore new ideas and discover fun places together.

Today's theme is Great Lakes and we'll spend time exploring our state and the Great Lakes together.

First, let's say hi to our co-host.

- Hi, friends, my name is Brionne and I am so excited to hang out with you today.

Hey, did you know that Michigan is surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes?

That's part of the reason we're known as the Great Lakes State.

Let's get things started by hearing from an artist who won a Kids' Clean Water Calendar Contest.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Ward Detwiler, the host of Great Lakes Now and for the second year in a row, I've had the pleasure of judging the Kids' Clean Water Calendar Contest.

This year we had to do the judging remotely, but last year I had the chance to meet some of the young artists.

The contest is sponsored by the Oakland County Water Resource Commissioner's Office and this year's theme was "We can all help keep Oakland County's lakes, rivers, streams and watersheds clean."

The contest invites fourth and fifth grade students to submit entries that showcase ideas on how to keep our waterways and our environment pollution free.

This year, nearly 200 students entered artwork in the contest.

With me now is Aditya Yogesh, a fourth grade student from Barnard Elementary School in Troy and the grand prize winner of the contest.

His winning entry, "Save Water, Save Nature", appears on the cover of the 2021 calendar.

Congratulations, Aditya.

- Thank you, Mr. Detwiler.

- So, can you tell me a little bit about the message that you were trying to capture with your artwork?

- So, my artwork, "Save Water, Save Nature", is about saving water, which in turn saves the nature.

Many water resources, like lakes, rivers and oceans, are constantly polluted by harmful substances, like chemicals and wastes, so one half of my artwork shows how industrial wastes are let into the stream, which pollute the water and kill aquatic creatures.

The other half of my artwork shows clean water and a balanced ecosystem.

- Why do you think it's so important to, you know, share this message with your, you know, both with your fellow students, but also just the world, in general.

- Well, I actually go to visit my grandparents every year in India and I noticed they have a water crisis.

They only get water once in three days and sometimes even every week at peak summer.

And that's when I learned that we should keep our water and we should take care of it responsibly.

- That's actually a really important point that you make there.

You know, we think about, you know, and especially in the calendar contest, the water that's right here in our own backyard, but you get see firsthand some of the challenges that other people across the world have, where we get to be fairly lucky in that, but still very important to manage what we have, so we don't end up in a situation like that.

Thanks so much, Aditya, and thanks to all the talented students in Oakland County who entered the contest.

The Kids' Clean Water Calendars are available to order online at oakgov.com/water, on Facebook at waterresourceOC or in select Oakland County libraries.

And you can check the Water Resources Commissioner's website for locations.

Thanks for joining us at Great Lakes Now and we'll see you out on the lakes.

(upbeat music) - Oh, the reason I chose Mackinaw City is I grew up in Escanaba, Michigan and I wanted to just kind of keep it local.

I'm proud of being from Michigan and the logging history that's here.

For the most part, all the events we do actually evolve from a working day skill that these lumberjacks did.

It's part of Americana, it's part of our history.

(chainsaw buzzing) And it's kind of fun after the show to have someone come up to you and say, "Well, my great grandfather logged here or there," so you kind of feel that connection.

So we're just trying to keep that history alive.

(upbeat music) - How I got into lumberjack sports, my mom was a competitive logger.

In the summertime, she taught some logrolling classes and she started me off logrolling when I was four years old.

Well there's so much that goes into this sport that people don't realize, especially wood chopping.

If you enjoy what you do, you never work a day and I enjoy cutting wood everyday.

(lighthearted music) The performances we do and our lumberjacks, it's just absolutely incredible what they do in an hour's time.

(water splashing) People are absolutely amazed.

(lighthearted music) (upbeat music) - Friends, I heard there's another member from the Dr. Blotch family empire who wants some of our brilliant writing.

Our new challenge involves creating unusual wacky and entertaining weather reports.

Hmm, I wonder what's in store for us.

Let's find out.

(upbeat music) (playful music) - Hi, everybody, this is Cat from 826 Michigan and I'm so excited to welcome you back- (Dr. Blotch clearing throat) - [Dr. Blotch] What's that, Caterpillar?

Do I hear something about a writing challenge?

- Oh, Dr. Blotch, I didn't know you were here and it's almost like you read my mind.

I was just, I was just here, just thinking about this and that.

- [Dr. Blotch] Oh, relax, Cabrin, again, against, oh, and before we go much further, I just want to make it clear, this is Dr. X Blotch of the infamous Doctors Blotch.

I'm the fourth cousin twice removed of your Liberty Street Robot Shop, Blotch extraordinaire.

See, I was coming to you this week because, quite frankly, my dear Catamount, all of the previous Dr. Blotches said they were tired of Megan.

She had so many questions and was so bothersome and they just couldn't do it anymore.

- Oh, wow, well I will not tell her that when she gets back from her imaginary vacation, Dr. Blotch.

- [Dr. Blotch] Just kidding, they've all been watching television shows, mostly about cats.

Big cats, small cats, even people named Cat.

Can you believe that, Catabosom?

I mean, they just didn't feel like talking to anyone.

- Well, I mean, my name is Cat, but how are you, Dr. Blotch?

- [Dr. Blotch] Oh, thank you for asking.

I've been having a bit of a hard time, to be honest.

You know we Blotches, we have a reputation for bluster, but I'm feeling a little out of sorts now that I'm inside all the time.

- I mean, a lot of us have been feeling like that these days, Dr. Blotch, I'm sorry.

- [Dr. Blotch] You know one thing I really miss is, it's outside, do you know about outside, Ketchup?

- Like, like outside, outside?

- [Dr. Blotch] Mm hmm.

- Yeah, I'm a fan of outside.

- Yes, one of my favorite things about outside used to be winter.

Each day a new adventure.

Especially at spring back in '01 when I was living in Michigan, sometimes it would be so cold my teeth would chatter, sometimes so windy my lab coat would fly away in the breeze, sometimes so hot that water, hot water would appear on my skin.

- Do you mean, like, sweat?

- [Dr. Blotch] Yes, it was wild.

Anyway, I really loved receipt of entertaining and unusual weather reports.

I think they really lift my spirits.

The wackier, the better.

I know that Michigan has a reputation for unusual weather, so this shouldn't be too difficult.

Maybe it's raining chocolate milk, snowing gold or there's a dog sneeze tornado, where a giant dog sneezes and sends a gust of wind through the town throwing everything into a tizzy.

Do you know of any writers who might be able to create some weather reports for me?

- Actually, I think I do.

But is there, like, anything specific that you would want?

- [Dr. Blotch] Excellent question, Cataract.

They should report the weather just like their local meteorologist might.

They can start by explaining what the weather's like right now.

Then, they can explain if there will be any changes in the coming hours or even days.

Finally, they should explain if there are some things I should do in preparation for the weather.

For example, if it is hailing letters and numbers, what should I bring to collect the letters so that I can make words, like booger or earwax.

Or if it is going to be 400 degrees, should I slather myself with SPF 1000 sunscreen and make sure that I wear my ultraviolet protective sunglasses if I dare to go outside.

- Okay, let me just make sure I got this right.

So, the writers should include what the weather feels like right now, like for real.

- [Dr. Blotch] Yes, yes, right now.

- And then, how it could change to something in the coming hours and days that would be unusual.

- [Dr. Blotch] Mm hmm.

- And then they should include how you or anyone else should prepare for that.

- [Dr. Blotch] Exactly.

- And if they wanted to, could they just write a story that featured strange weather?

- [Dr. Blotch] Brilliant.

They could even draw a weather map with pictures or symbols to show what's happening.

Or a picture of how a person could survive outside.

Toot-a-loo, Catalog.

- Oh, it's Cat.

Well, we'll get right on that, Dr. Blotch.

(playful music) (upbeat music) - Hey, everyone, my name is Charles Loveland.

I'm the owner of Smokey Oak Farms here, located in Jackson, Michigan.

We're a small beef cattle operation with 25 mama cows and we're gonna talk a little bit about what we feed them, our day to day operations, and we're gonna go meet some of the cattle.

So, here on the farm, we have to bale hay every year, so that we can feed our cows throughout the wintertime.

As you can see, the barn is starting to get pretty full.

We've got round bales, that's these big ones here, and then we have small squares.

So, we'll talk a little bit about what's in this.

So, in these bales, we have a little bit of clover in here, we have some grass, the clover provides protein, we also have some alfalfa in there that is a protein source for the cattle throughout the winter.

And then this yellow stuff that we have here is straw.

It's wheat straw, so it's the plant structure from wheat.

After we've harvested the wheat off, we'll bale up the straw and we use that for bedding for our cattle throughout the winter, too.

Makes a nice dry area for them to lay down in and get out of the cold.

So, during the summer months, our cows are out on pastures.

We're right up into the barn area right now, but as you can see, you got the pastures out there and they're split into different areas and the whole reason why is we'll put the cows out on one of these pastures, once they get it eaten down to the proper length, we'll rotate them off of that pasture and on to another pasture and it gives that first pasture time for it to grow back and be more nutritious for them.

So along with hay and grass and milk for our calves from their mothers, we also supplement them with a grain mixture.

What we have in here is the real long tan looking things, those are oats, the yellow is corn and then these big crumbles are fiber crumbles, so it helps the calves process this.

We also have some minerals and some other supplements in there to help these calves get started.

Once we get them weaned off of their mothers here in another month, month and a half, they'll be solely on this grain, as well as hay throughout the winter.

So, one way we're able to feed these calves without their mothers eating the grain is we have an area called the creep pen.

This is an area where you can see all these calves are in here, but they have a small opening that only the calves can go through, the big cows cannot, as you can see that calf going through it right now.

So this gives us a opportunity to get these calves in here and then we can supplement them with grain.

You can see we have our feeder in here, but it really helps us put pounds on these calves faster and it also helps out the mothers a little bit, especially when the pastures start to get dry and don't have quite the quality of grass out there.

I hope everyone enjoyed the tour of this farm and if you guys are ever interested in coming out, we're always glad to have somebody come out and tour the farm, see the cows, they do like to be pet.

And this is big girl, Fawn, she was the one laying down in the lot by herself.

She's always friendly, loves her scratches.

- Hey, mathematicians, are you ready for our daily math challenge?

I sure am.

Let's check it out.

(upbeat music) (guitar playing Old McDonald Had A Farm) - Hi there, mathketeers.

I'm Mr. Lineberger and today I'm imagining my garden.

As usual, I'm also thinking about math.

When I look at my garden, all the plants and nice, neat rows, it reminds me that sometimes it's a good thing to be able to visualize a math concept.

That means that sometimes I need to see a math idea as a picture to really help me understand it.

When I think about all the goodies I'm gonna pick from my garden, it helps me start to visualize an important math concept, division.

Today we're going to look at some ways to represent division.

Now, it's important to know that what we're doing today is not a very efficient way to solve division problems.

We'll get to that later.

Today's goal is just to be able to have some strategies for representing a division problem, so we can see what division really looks like.

I love growing hot peppers.

I like to blend them together to make some tasty hot sauces.

When I picked peppers this morning, I got this basket with 25 peppers in it.

I know that I need five peppers to make a bottle of hot sauce.

So my division problem is an easy one.

25 divided by five.

I'll bet you can do that in your head.

But let's create a visual representation of it just so we can see what division really looks like.

One way I can do this is with a picture.

I'll draw five empty bottles that will soon be filled with tasty hot sauce.

One, two, three, four, five.

There are my five bottles.

And here's my basket of peppers over here.

You know how when you're dealing cards or counting out pieces of candy to share, you give one to each person until everyone has one, then you start back over at the beginning?

That's what I'll do with my peppers.

Here's one in the first bottle.

Number two goes in the second bottle.

Number three, that goes in the third bottle.

Number four in the fourth bottle.

And number five in the last bottle.

There's more peppers still in the basket, so I'll keep going until they're all gone.

Six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, done.

All the peppers are now in bottles.

I can see that I have five peppers in each bottle.

So the answer to the problem, 25 divided by five equals five.

But remember, the point here is to be able to represent division, not necessarily solve problems this way.

It's too slow.

I could also represent this division problem with a number line.

Number line, appear.

We'll start at the number 25, since that's my total, and in this case, it's the dividend.

Let's label the number line one through 25, like so.

Starting at 25, I'm going to count backwards by fives and I know that each time I do, I'll have enough peppers for a jar of hot sauce.

Here's the first step, hopping backwards by one, two, three, four, five, that puts me at 20 peppers left and one bottle of hot sauce appears, like so.

If only it were that easy.

Jumping backwards five more and I've got a second bottle of sauce.

We'll do the last jumps quickly.

Jump, jump, jump.

A total of five skips to count backwards by five from 25.

And we have five bottles of hot sauce.

Let's do one more representation using base 10 blocks.

I've got 25 blocks here and I want to put them into five groups.

I'll just drop the blocks into groups.

Since we have a small number of blocks, I'll use individual ones.

Later, we'll use some bigger numbers, but for now, just singles.

(upbeat music) And there you have it.

Five groups of five blocks each.

25 divided by five, represented with base 10 blocks.

I might even think about this in terms of a rectangle.

I know this rectangle has an area of 25, so that's a length of five and a height of five.

I could color in the groups to represent this division.

Here's one group of five, let's color that blue.

Another group, that could be green.

A third group will be brown.

A fourth group can be orange.

And the last group can be red.

Voila, 25 divided by five represented in a colorful way.

In addition to making hot sauce, I'm also growing tomatoes, onions and some super hot peppers to make spicy salsa.

These hot ones are so hot, you only need three for a big jar of salsa.

Yesterday I picked 51 peppers.

So, how many jars of spicy salsa can I make?

Our division problem is 51 divided by three.

Let's create some visual representations of that.

We can start with pictures like we did last time.

Here's my 51 super hot peppers.

I'm dividing this set of peppers into groups of three.

So let's just circle groups of three and count them as we go.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and here's the last group, 17.

I've circled 17 groups of three with none left over.

The answer is 17.

And I've represented that with a picture showing 17 groups of three.

We could do the same thing with a number line.

Here's our number line.

It starts at zero and goes all the way out to 51.

We're skip counting by three going backwards.

That's hard for me to do in my head, but when I have a number line in front of me, it's not tricky.

Our first skip goes to 48, then 45, then 42.

Remember, each of these skips is a group of three peppers that I'll need to make a jar of salsa.

So, keep skipping.

39, 36, 33, 30, 27, 24, 21, 18, 15, 12, nine, six, three, zero.

17 skips, 17 jars of salsa.

We have represented the division problem using a number line.

Let's tackle this same problem with base 10 blocks.

I've got five groups of 10 and a single block.

That makes 51.

I'm going to divide them into three groups.

I can give a stick of 10 to each group.

One, two, three.

But now, I need to break up my remaining blocks into singles.

I'll distribute these now.

(upbeat music) And done.

We already know, because we've worked this problem a few times before, that each group will have 17 blocks in it.

And there you have it, 51 divided by three represented by base 10 blocks.

We could also use the area model strategy to help us represent the problem.

I'm gonna draw a rectangle with one side being three and the total area, we know, is 51.

The first number I think of that would be safe to multiply by three is 10.

Three times 10 is 30.

That leaves us with 21 left.

I know that three times seven is 21, that's one of my multiplication facts.

So the length of the side is 17.

I'll draw this out like a grid.

The rectangle is three blocks high by 17 blocks wide.

When I look at this, I see 17 groups of three.

I'll color them in like this.

It's one thing to solve division problems, but it's also just as important to be able to understand what division really looks like.

Today we represented division problems by creating pictures, drawing on number lines, coloring in groups in an area model and by making piles of base 10 blocks.

That's four ways to represent each problem.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Katie from the DNR Outdoor Adventure Center with a neighborhood creature quiz for you.

Our creature is in the class Insecta, or insects, which means that it has three main body segments, a head, thorax, an abdomen, three pairs of legs, meaning that it has six legs in total, which are all attached to the thorax, and it could have zero, two or four wings.

More specifically, it is in the order Lepidoptera, which tells us that it has four wings, these wings are also all attached to the thorax, and it has one pair of antennae, which are attached to the head.

Our creature also goes through metamorphosis.

Basically, metamorphosis is a series of developmental stages that it goes through to become an adult.

Let's look a little closer.

Here is our first stage, an egg laid on the underside of a leaf.

And here is the next stage, a small larva hatched from the egg.

This creature increases its weight by 2,000 times in its larval stage in just 15 to 20 days.

So that's like a human baby going from seven pounds to 14,000 pounds in two weeks.

They eat and eat and eat a special host plant.

You can see how their size changes as they grow.

Here are some larva that have gotten big enough to enter the next stage, where they will pupate.

The last photo here is the pupal stage of this creature.

When our creature emerges into its adult stage, they no longer eat leaves.

Instead, they stand on food sources to taste them with their feet.

Their new food source comes from flowers.

They use their straw-like mouth, called a proboscis to drink nectar from flowers.

Having this as their food source also makes them important pollinators.

When they stand on the flowers, they will collect pollen from them and transfer that pollen to other flowers as they travel around looking for their nectar food source.

Nectar helps to fuel their big journey, migration.

That's right, for the winter, this neighborhood creature spends its time in an entirely different part of the world, Mexico.

Let's take a look at a map of their migration that is happening right now.

This website, Journey North, takes user submitted sightings to make time lapse maps of different creatures' migrations.

If you haven't yet, pretty soon, you'll be seeing this neighborhood creature fluttering by.

As you can see, there has been a recent submission from an area near Southeast Michigan.

Do you have any guesses about who our neighborhood creature is?

Answer in three, two, one.

Our creature is the monarch butterfly.

When monarchs are in their larval stage, or caterpillar stage, they only eat the leaves of milkweed plants.

Without milkweed, monarchs cannot reach their beautiful adult butterfly stage.

You can help.

By planting milkweed and other native plant species in your landscape, you can benefit lots of Michigan wildlife, including the monarch butterfly.

Thanks for joining us.

See you next time.

(upbeat music) (scribbling) (kid laughing) - Welcome to Inpact At Home, where we practice interrupting prolonged sitting with activity.

I'm Jess Buckley and I'm here to help get you moving for the next eight minutes.

You'll be surprised at what these moments of movement can do for you and the rest of your family so you can stay active and healthy at home.

So, go ahead, get up and let's start moving.

For this activity, we're going to be doing a movement flow, but first we're gonna get warmed up.

Starting on our backs, lay all the way down and we're gonna stand up.

Whatever way you want.

Pretty simple.

We're gonna come all the way back down, we're gonna get up again, but this time, you're gonna do it differently.

So maybe you go to the opposite side.

And again, we're gonna do it differently.

So maybe we don't use our hands at all.

Stand all the way up.

All the way back down.

We switch which side we go to.

Just getting up differently every single time.

Maybe we roll to our hands, walk them up that way.

Come all the way back down.

Maybe we don't use our hands at all.

Maybe we come down on one foot and finish laying down.

Beautiful.

I'm feeling warm.

Next one we're gonna do is called a horse stance, we're actually just gonna hold this position for the next 20 seconds, we'll rest a little bit and then we're gonna do it again.

So, feet are super, super wide, toes can be turned out a little bit and we're gonna sit our hips down as low as we can, trying to get the top of our legs parallel to the ground.

And we're gonna stay in this position for the next 20 seconds.

Nice and tall through your chest.

Just like that.

Keep breathing.

We're gonna finish in three, two, and one, stand up.

Awesome job, shake it out.

We got one more of those.

Feet nice and wide, toes turned out, sit your hips down, upper thighs parallel to the floor, chest is up, my butt is underneath me, it's not pushed out and behind.

Staying nice and tall.

Beautiful job, we're almost there, keep holding, keep holding.

Finish in three, two, and one.

Awesome job, shake it out.

Super tired legs, we're gonna do some arm stuff.

First one we're gonna do is a loaded beast to a knee drive.

What is that?

Start on all fours, shoulders over elbows over wrists.

Push your hips back to your heels, come forward, knee to elbow, push it back, come forward, knee to elbow.

We got three more, each side.

Load those hips, knee to elbow.

Push.

Last one, each side.

Last one on the left.

Stand it up, shake it out.

We have another movement pattern, this one is called a Spiderman.

Super exciting.

We're gonna come all the way down, walk our hands out in front, come into a plank position, outside foot is gonna step forward, point your toes away, drop your hips so we're facing our bent knee.

You're gonna come up, take a step forward, open up, drop your hips, come back, step forward, open up, drop your hips.

Just like that.

So, if we want to add to it, it's gonna be the same thing, starting in that plank, open up, instead of dropping your hips, you're gonna keep them lifted, come forward, keep your hips up, keep your hips up, just like that.

So, one more way we can add onto this, you're gonna start in that plank, step forward, keep your hips up, drop into a pushup, come back up, step forward, drop into a pushup, come back up, last one, step forward, drop, come back up.

Little upper body.

Awesome job.

Next animal pattern we're gonna do is a crab.

We're gonna go feet down, hands behind us, kind of close to our butt, push through your hands, hips come up off the ground.

We're gonna move forward, opposite arm, opposite leg, and then we can move backward, still moving opposite arm, opposite leg.

Now, you're gonna stay still, pick up one leg, pick up the other leg, pick up one arm, pick up the other arm.

Let's keep going in a circle, leg, leg, arm, arm.

One more time, leg, leg, arm, arm.

And that's gonna make sense because now we're gonna go into a crab reach.

So we're gonna push through one hand, reach for the ceiling with the other, come back down.

Push, reach, just like that.

Push, reach, come back down.

Push, reach, one more time, each side.

Last one, drop it down, rest, shake out your arms.

Great job.

We're gonna finish with a little game.

You need a tennis ball or any object that bounces, so I'm gonna grab what I have.

When you catch it, you're only gonna catch it on the back of your hand.

So, we're gonna try and bounce it once, catching it on the back of your hand, just like that.

And now, try and catch it on the back of just two fingers, woo, just like that, trying not to have to rebounce it, you're just lifting it up, all the way down if you need to.

Bounce, catch, bounce, catch it.

All right, we are done.

Great job, everyone.

I hope you enjoyed today's movement break.

Inpact At Home is a chance to apply the skills you may have learned in your PE class to improve your health.

To learn more about the health benefits associated with daily movement, visit inpactathome.umich.edu.

Now, don't forget to fill out your daily log and we will see you again during our next workout.

(scribbling) (kid laughing) - [Narrator] Support for this program is provided by the Michigan Public Health Institute and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

- In this next story, we'll go underneath the Blue Water Bridge and find out what's happening in downtown Port Huron.

Here's a hint, there's so much more than sandy shores in Blue Water.

Let's check it out.

(upbeat music) - Well, I think it's about time we warmed things up a little bit, so for our next story, we're spending a summer's day along the waterfront in one of Michigan's most beautiful lakeside cities, Port Huron.

And as you'll soon see, there's much more to the story than sandy shores and blue water.

So here we are in downtown Port Huron, it's a beautiful summer's day and, you know, this city's a place that I've been to a couple of times, but I've always wanted to learn more about it.

And we're gonna be meeting up with Andrew Kercher of Port Huron Museums.

He's gonna take us to the Fort Gratiot Lighthouse, take us underneath the Blue Water Bridge and show us some of the few hot spots that are around Port Huron that you're definitely gonna want to visit on your next trip.

So let's go hit the road and take a look at Port Huron.

To kick off our Port Huron excursion, we meet up with Andrew at the Fort Gratiot Light Station.

- I figure if anyone comes to Port Huron, this is probably the thing they are most likely to see and for good reason.

We're on the grounds of the Fort Gratiot Light Station.

This is actually the oldest light station in the state of Michigan.

It's pretty cool, Michigan has more lighthouses than any other state.

There's a lot of people who love lighthouses and you'd really be remiss if you missed this one.

We were really kind of presented with a conundrum of what do you interpret at a light station like this?

What stories do you tell?

'Cause this lighthouse has been in operation longer than any other state.

And the 1930s became a pretty logical choice for us to make.

That's because it marks the end of the lighthouse establishment and civilian lighthouse keepers.

But in the 1930s, it transitions to being coastguard control.

And there's still an active coastguard base right next door.

All of these buildings were used by the coastguard until just a little over a decade ago.

The 1930s is also really important for Port Huron because one of the coolest pieces of infrastructure in the whole state was built, in 1938, the Blue Water Bridge opens.

- [Man With Beard] Just down river from the Fort Gratiot Lighthouse is arguably Port Huron's most famous landmark, the Blue Water Bridge.

- Everywhere else you go in the state, when you say the bridge, everyone's talking about the Mackinaw Bridge.

But when you're in the thumb and when you're in Port Huron and you talk about the bridge, you're talking about this bridge.

- [Man With Beard] The bridge connects Port Huron to the city of Sarnia, Ontario across the river.

- It was a collaborative effort between the United States and Canada to build that bridge and it was dedicated to international peace in 1938.

And, of course, the traffic, this is, I think, the second busiest international border crossing in the country, if not, like, the Western Hemisphere, one of the busiest, certainly, in the whole world.

By the 1990s, the one bridge just wasn't cutting it anymore and they built a second.

A lot of people said, "It should be an exact copy, we don't care if it's obsolete, it would look weird if it isn't."

But the engineers actually came up with a compromise, so it has almost the exact same shape and profile, but it prides a really neat contrast between view and awe.

It's still an incredibly busy and incredibly important border crossing.

- [Man With Beard] In the shadow of the Blue Water Bridge stands a train depot dedicated to Port Huron's most famous former resident, Thomas Alva Edison.

- Thomas Edison is definitely Port Huron's favorite son.

Now, he's not born here, he was actually born in Milan, Ohio, but moves up here at a very young age and this is where he gets his start, his interest in science, technology and inventing.

And he gets a job very early on, as a teenager, at that railroad station.

So his job, he was selling newspapers, candy, apples.

- [Man With Beard] Edison's job at the train station granted him an outlet to put his creativity to good use.

- Eventually, he started printing a newspaper on the train.

He'd print that up on one little page in a little galley press in the back of the train and sell it right then and there.

That's like 1860s twit.

That is information as fast as it comes back then.

Being world famous was always a treat for the people of Port Huron and he'd come back home and visit them.

So, if you come to Port Huron, you'll notice there are a lot of things named after Thomas Edison.

- [Man With Beard] Now, our next stop in Port Huron was something that was completely new to me.

In my travels, I've seen plenty of lighthouses, but this was the first time I'd ever seen a lightship.

- A lightship is a floating lighthouse.

Anchors itself on the danger and has a light, just like a lighthouse, you can see it at the top of the mass there, there's actually two of them.

When we think about a big storm, it's always good to be able to, like, maneuver your ship out of the waves, this is anchored, it's gonna go up and down and slam up and down and side to side and you have to stay in the same spot as best you are able to warn other sailors about that danger.

Now, the Huron was actually the very last of the lightships on the Great Lakes, but this one was being used until 1970, which is pretty crazy when you think about how late that is.

An important part of Blue Water area history, as well as a fascinating part of just Great Lakes history, in general.

- [Man With Beard] After hopping all around town, Andrew and I wrap up our Port Huron tour in the city's vibrant and bustling downtown, right at the mouth of the Black River.

- To walk from one end to downtown to the other might take you 45 minutes, but you can see something from almost every decade going back to the 1840s.

I think in the 90s, like, a lot of places across Michigan and Midwest, a mall, drew lots of people to outside of town and downtown was pretty deserted.

Well, it's exactly the opposite now.

Every store downtown is either open or undergoing construction 'cause something else is coming in new and exciting.

We've got things for families, we have historic places you can visit, we've got a great beach, you can spend the day outdoors, you can spend it indoors, there is something for literally everyone in Port Huron in a small town atmosphere.

I think cool things are happening here.

We've got a great influx of young people coming in.

We have one of the greatest return of new college grads, are coming back to St. Clair County, they're coming back to Port Huron, coming into these downtown shops, into these lofts and really revitalizing the town, so I'm excited to see where things are going.

(upbeat music) - I kind of always knew.

When I was a little girl, amphibians were my absolute favorite animals.

I would go outside and see toads hopping around under logs and salamanders in streams.

But I think I first absolutely knew I would devote my life to amphibians when I was in college, an undergrad.

I met my first axolotl in one of my college courses and I fell in love with this species.

I was so in love with my amphibians that I wanted to learn all about their health and all about how they work.

Their skin is very important to their health and they act as indicators of the environment by how they absorb chemicals and how they breathe through their skin.

And I was so enamored with this, I went to veterinary school to learn about how they work.

And then after that, I wanted to do more, not only to learn more about these animals, to learn how I could save them, but to work with people that had degrees in different areas.

There's a lot of people that are needed in conservation, not just veterinarians, but different minds.

And so, I wanted to get more learning to be able to work with them effectively.

So I got my PhD and it was very specific to salamander reproduction and that's what led me to my career today.

Everyday is a little bit different.

I have a lot of staff that I work with and collaborate with and manage here at the Detroit Zoo, but I also work with a lot of people around the world, helping to save amphibians in the field, so I help breed amphibians, I help release amphibians, I help check the health of amphibians and that looks a little different day to day.

I also do a lot of work behind a desk and that may not sound very exciting, but in order to save amphibians, a lot of regulations need to get put in place and that's very important, too.

Being able to put animals back into the wild to help bolster populations of animals that are going extinct is extremely rewarding.

Specific species, you know, if I want to say which ones have been the most rewarding, being able to do that with the dusky gopher frogs, that was a long time coming, it took a long time to be able to finally release them and they've been very successful.

Amphibians have a huge impact on the ecosystem, on the environmental community, as a whole, but if you just look at our local community, they impact our water, they impact the air we breathe, they aerate the soil and make the trees healthy.

So, my efforts in helping protect these animals and keep them healthy keeps everybody healthy.

Conservation is global, conservation is a worldwide effort and you have to work together with a lot of people with different education and from different communities.

And we all want the same thing, but we don't always recognize we're working for that same thing and we have to get together on the same page and recognize we're coming together for the same goal and I love that about my job, I like that challenge and I like to face that head on.

Don't be afraid to follow your passion and have a passion in something that is smaller and maybe less charismatic.

I know I had a challenge of not being taken so seriously 'cause the animals I was passionate about were not getting the headlights, but that is something I would say is big advice to take.

Definitely hold onto that passion and follow it.

So, if you would like to be an amphibian scientist or even a, any kind of animal scientist, in general, action steps I think you can take are doing things like going outside and observing animals or coming to the zoo and observing animals and asking specialists like me lots of questions and explore, you know, outside is the best thing you can do to follow that path right now, no matter what age you are.

(upbeat music) - I'm Randy Chamberlain, I'm chef/owner of Blu in Glen Arbor.

I'm pretty much a native of Leelanau in Grand Traverse County.

Been here since I was five years old.

It was a Sunday at three o'clock, it still looked beautiful.

The sun was out, there was a little wind, but it was, I was, like, telling the service team to set up the patio, we're gonna use it tonight.

I mean, I stood right at this door watching the sky turn black and the clouds just rolling, a visual that you've probably seen things on TV, maybe they weren't even, you know, real things on TV, they were in a movie or something.

And then it got really dark and then the wind started.

(rain pouring) I remember looking at the islands here in South and North Manitou and seeing, you could see just a wall coming in and then all of a sudden, it eclipsed the islands and you couldn't see the islands.

Within a minute, we were in it.

So, from the islands, five-six miles away, to right here, it took a minute, maybe two, and I stood here and watched the whole thing and then the rain came.

I mean, these trees right here were almost laying down horizontal, just from the force of the wind, the pressure.

The windows felt like they were just rattling.

And at that point, the power went out and it was as dark as night for about two minutes.

It was a fascinating visual.

In about five minutes, the sun was out, the wind was gone.

About an hour went by and I was really understanding the gravity of what had happened, the severity of it, and I thought, "Well, we're not opening tonight."

Some people were telling us that we were all trapped, we couldn't get out of Glen Arbor.

And then I just said, "I'm thinking of all the people that are here in trouble, I have this food, let's figure this out."

So, they have a generator and propane at the town hall and so, I know the kitchen there and I said, "Let's take what we got," and we took some extra things, we took some pasta, we made some spaghetti sauce real quick while we were there, and so we had spaghetti and pasta sauce and we had duckling feet and we had salad, we had dessert.

I think there was 150 or 200 people there and they were all just as still stunned as we were.

Whatever anybody had to help with, if you had a chainsaw, you were helping somebody cut a tree off their house, if you had a boat, you were going out to get somebody's dock that flew out in the lake.

Everybody was doing what they could to help and we'd do food.

It was an amazing experience to see how grateful people were.

For the entire week of being closed, we were part of this community and still continuing to do what we could to help.

But seeing how everyone else was helping each other, it was very refreshing to see the help that people were receiving and giving.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] The Belle Isle Coast Guard Station is ready 24 hours a day.

- Station 622, we're underway at this time.

Our main mission is search and rescue.

We live for that search and rescue case.

We just love to help people out.

- [Narrator] The station controls the Detroit River from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie, but much of the focus is near downtown Detroit.

- We pretty much stay in the area of high traffic, high population areas, such as the Ambassador Bridge, closer down towards the steel plants.

- [Narrator] Today they're performing safety checks on boaters on the river.

- And then we just check over all the conditions of the life jacket to make sure it's in good working condition.

- Our job to do today is just making sure that the boaters out here are safe, they have what they need to have and in the worst case scenario, that they can make it home that night.

- [Narrator] In the past year, the Belle Isle Coast Guard has been on 100 search and rescue missions, but it's not the only mission.

The coast guard has been part of Homeland Security since 2003 and is actively patrolling the international border with Canada.

- We'll look for anything that would constitute cross border criminality.

You could go from anything from drug trafficking all the way to human smuggling.

We work closely with our cross border partners and the Canadians with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

- [Narrator] The coast guard can work on both sides of the river through a binational agreement called Shiprider.

Detroit and Windsor, Ontario were part of a pilot program in 2005, setting up the framework for the current agreement.

- When we're working with the Canadians on the Canadian side, we're considered peace officers in Canada, we're certified peace officers and can enforce Canadian laws in Canada and when they're working on our side, they're considered customs officers accepted and they can enforce U.S. laws on our side.

- [Narrator] No matter the situation, the coast guard are trained and ready.

- And we'll work two days on, two days off and every other weekend we will have a on.

There's times where we get woken up in the middle of the night, 2 a.m., 3 a.m., we got a vessel taken on water and we gotta go out.

And we're out in about two minutes time and we're searching.

- [Narrator] For more stories on the U.S. Coast Guard, head to greatlakesnow.org.

- I had so much fun exploring the Great Lakes with you.

Do you remember why we're known as the Great Lakes State?

That's right, because Michigan is surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes.

We have so much more to discover next time, but before you go, let's say thank you to Bri.

- See you all later, have a great one.

- See you soon.

- In the next episode of Extra Credit, we visit some of Michigan's most interesting locations, learn about the hog-nosed snake and so much more.

Get your extra credit on the Michigan Learning Channel.

- [Narrator] This program is made possible in part by Michigan Department of Education, the state of Michigan and by viewers like you.

(upbeat music)