Parting Shots

Congratulations! You have now made it through the "Take a trip with Us '07" blog! Reminiscent of the vacation slides that your old Uncle Ed would make you sit through, this blog kept our 10 days of adventure alive all summer. For me, this was as much of a "trip back home" as it was a journey to a new place. My trip to the north has been a long time coming, being re-located and adopted at birth to Texas 38 years ago from North Dakota. This was my chance to experience a bit of my Scandinavian heritage. It turned out that we were touring more of a Finnish land than a Dutch land (I'm lots dutch) but I still fit in very well with the widely European people of the UP (Upper Peninsula of Michigan). No longer did I stand out as a tall, broad shouldered, pale skinned woman with ice blue eyes. Instead I was just one of the crowd. In fact, I can't say I have ever been around more blue eyed people in my lifetime. Something I'm used to getting comments on here in the south ("you've got such blue eyes") was the norm all around us. I took home many experiences from this expedition. Perhaps the most important impression was just fitting in with folks like me.

While on the Island, I took a nature journaling class from writer Cindy Crosby. She challenged us all to write our own haiku about our surroundings. Being personally impacted by the people and the natural surroundings, this is what I came up with:

Isle Royale

Blue everywhere

Blue eyes, watching blue skies over blue shores

Royale Blue

Island Wildlife

• Here is a Momma Moose and her twin calves shuffling around Rock Harbor just mere feet away from our lodge room. This was two days prior to our arrival. The pictures were given to us from the staff. She never showed up again during our time there, but she did leave a large gift on the sidewalk one evening! Very large!
• Look closely on the pier shot and you will see a Loon and her babies (little loonies?) in the shadowed areas. Loons were also swimming around us when we were canoeing in Tobin harbor.
• This is the guesthouse where folks gathered to play games, read or sit around the fireplace. See the squirrel on the floor? I guess he wanted to play? We sent him outside to play after the photo.
• Antlers discarded by a moose. There is a spot on the other end of the island where the staff stacks them all up. There are dozens there. Kind of sad. Some moose are killed by the wolves and others die for other reasons.

Row Gently, Please

I was the lucky parent who got to take the boys paddling in Tobin Harbor of Isle Royale. What I had imagined to be a soothing activity for me quickly turned stressful after getting lectured by the Dock hand on canoeing safety. Before he could get a word in, I assured him, "we know what we're doing, we've canoed lots of times". Then he quickly put me in my place by educating me on something that I didn't know.

He said, "On Superior, we don't tell people to wear life jackets to keep them from drowning. We tell them to wear life jackets so that we can find their bodies".

That shut me up! He then informed me that the water temperature was a frigid 48-49 degrees and that ten minutes in the water without a wetsuit and many people would pass out from hypothermia. All of a sudden canoeing didn't seem like such a great idea and Tobin Harbor looked even bigger than at first glance.

But, we did it anyway. Only the boys were completely carefree and I had a much more "job at hand" kind of attitude! In the last photo you can see the yellow sea plane that some of the island's visitors arrive on. We did enjoy our tour of the harbor, and John Jr wants everyone to know that sitting in the middle in an aluminum canoe was like sitting on a block of ice! ;)

Have you ever gone canoeing and where?

Fun on the Island

• We hiked almost every day on the island. There were great look-outs at every turn of the trail. Very easy hiking compared to North Georgia Mountains.
• Rock hopping entertained the boys for hours on end! It took me a while not to worry about one of them getting injured! Just good old-fashioned fun!
• My favorite activity was beach combing. Superior water levels were down 18 inches this year! Very upsetting to the locals and many boating maps were having to be altered for safety. Two of the small islands were joined for the first time in any one's memory. Sad, but this did make for some exciting beach combing. Eric found many, many artifacts and the National Park artifact historian even kept some of them to be displayed in the office case. He was proud :)
• The boys also enjoyed waving down the incoming boats from a small pier at the harbor. They returned the greetings with horn toots!

What Vacation Dreams Are made of...

Here are my favorite scenic photos of the Island. Add in a crisp temperature of 65 degrees and that should give you the most accurate depiction of this sensational National Park. And yes, I took these!

Crossing Superior

• Not long after leaving Copper Harbor we encountered a thick fog. Nothing but water and fog as far as the eye could see (which wasn't very far). I would say it was gloomy, but we kind of liked it, as if we were entering a portal into one of John Jr's fantasy fiction books.
• Eventually, Superior began to rock the boat baby! Four foot seas and Eric was a little worse for wear. No vomiting, unlike another child on board, but I had to ride the rest of way with him out in the elements on the bow of the boat for fresh air just to keep color in his face!
• Land Ho! We begin to reach some of the outlying Islands of the archipelagio.
• Thank God, we made it! We enter Rock Harbor on Isle Royale National Park. Magically, the fog lifts and our fun begins.

A Date with The Queen

• Our first look at the Isle Royale Queen IV. This was our ride to the Isle Royal National Park. A 3 hour tour. Hmm. That sounds familiar. The Queen is a 100 ft. steel, twin diesel powered passenger boat.
• Eric's realization of the size of our boat! LOL! I think he was expecting an ocean liner!
• John, and then Eric at the stern of the Queen as we leave Copper Harbor.

Copper Country

• This is the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge, located in Copper Harbor, Michigan. We stayed here the night before our boat trip to the Island. I love the architecture, very Scandinavian or Finnish they might say. I read somewhere that 40 % of the census takers in this area answer to be of Finnish decent. But then, that might not be that many folks since I think there are only about 75 year round residents. LOL! Copper Harbor is Michigan's Northernmost community and it got it's name from the copper boom of the mid-1800's.
• Notice the rock work on the front steps of the main lodge. I wish I had some of those rocks! They would be mighty expensive in Georgia!
• Here's the front of our cabin. Looks like a movie set doesn't it?
• Here are the boys, getting cozy and glad to be out of the truck.
• This is John, working his remote magic to get the dish TV on. Shortly after this photo we lost electricity for the evening. Storms pretty much dominated the night, also causing our cabin phone to go out, and we had to resort to the Manager coming out to wake us up at 6:00am to catch our boat ride the next morning. Little did we realize the sun would actually come up by 5:30 AM!

ENTERING THE U.P.

• Our first view of Lake Superior - the Keweenaw Bay. As we drove our way out of Wisconsin, the clouds gathered up a somewhat irritable rainstorm. We loved it though, because we are, after all, Weather Channel junkies.
• We arrive to Houghton, Michigan - Gateway to the Keweenaw Peninsula. We crossed over this neat elevator style bridge. The middle raises up and down to let water traffic through on the Portage river (leading from open Superior water to the Keweenaw Bay of Superior). But, in the winter the water freezes over. With no water traffic to worry about, they lower that middle section by one floor and the lower passage accommodates snowmobile users. Totally cool!
• Here's a shot of downtown Houghton. They have the enclosed footbridges to use from building to building when snow piles up on the streets in winter. I loved this town! I'm already campaigning for John and I to retire there. At least somewhere in the Keweenaw. If you look closely in the photo they even have mass transit there! I'm not sure why...other than it is a small college town (Michigan Tech).

Happy Independance Day

Here's a little Americana from our recent trip up North. Happy 4th of July to everyone!

A Drive Through Wisconsin

• We had a nice drive through Wisconsin on our way to the U.P. It was only a couple of short hours before the outdoor temperature cooled off from the steamy Chicago heat.
• In Milwaukee, a city that I have visited before, my favorite things are the church spires that dot the skyline throughout the city. Many have copper roofing that has gracefully turned green.
• We drove underneath another weird roadside rest area? This one is actually in a bridge form! There were folks eating lunch inside there.
• These are also some of our favorite barns out of the many HUNDREDS that we drove by. Looks like the cheese cows have a great place to make cheese!