The peculiar combination of exposed, gray sandstone bedrock and reddish pebble beach can be explained easily using (what else, given the theme here) water work! The bedrock was exposed and smoothed by glaciation, then smoothed even more by mostly wintertime wave action ever since, while freeze-thaw cycles acted to push out sand grains and further shape the mass around natural faults and fractures. The colorful pebbles were washed here by Lake Superior’s waves from erosion of other rock formations nearby—namely the cobble- and gravel-infused, Precambrian Copper Harbor Conglomerate. For its complementary and nicely framed patterns of earth, lake and sky tones across different surface textures, this was one of my favorite shoreline scenes of many around the biggest, deepest and most picturesque of the Great Lakes.
1 NNW Copper Harbor MI (20 Jul 7) Looking E
47.475, -87.8987