Dictations of the Conkerer

I’m not sure of the exact date at the moment, but sometime in mid July, Todd and Linda had organized a kayaking trip to Lime Island in the UP / Canada. The plan was to get to the launch around 5:30 on Friday evening and head over to the Island where there were government cabins for camping. On Saturday, we’d paddle around the Island with a stop at St. Joseph Island in Ontario. On Sunday, paddle back and head home.

Janet and I drove up to get to the launch site in Raber, MI at 5:00 Friday afternoon. We got there a bit early – which is odd for us, so we decided to turn around to go back to some rumored general store that had coffee.

We never did find that stupid store… Instead, during a moment of brilliance trying to read a sign behind us, I managed to drive the Subaru into the worlds largest ditch, where it stayed for the next few hours.

We walked back down to the nearest establishment – a bar / restaurant on the corner and called the nearest towing service. While waiting, we got to meet the owner of the property on which my car was now located. She gave Janet a tour of the farm and offered us her four wheeler in case we needed to go anywhere.

The group headed off to the island around 7:00 – 7:30 after Todd helped move our kayaks over to the launch site just in case the Subaru wasn’t driveable. Ends up, the car was fine other than some scratches on the wheels and a bend safety ring on the trailer hitch from the wrecker. Janet and I headed over shortly after 8:00

We got there just a bit before dark, and I insisted on making a fire to cook, because I believe that cooking on a fire is essential for a camping trip.

On the island there are a set of government owned cabins in which we resided for the weekend. They were minimalist, but nice. I think I even have some pictures of them and the general “camping” landscape, but apparently I did not set them aside to be posted here.

Saturday, as planned, we circumnavigated Lime Island – with a little jaunt over to St. Joseph’s Island in Canada. While on St. Joseph’s we toured the remains of the fort there. Very importantly, they also had Reese’s PB ice cream sandwiches.

This was the most prominent remainder of the fort on St. Joseph’s, but there was no explanation of what it was for since it was detached from everything else.

Toward the end of the day, most of the group wanted to head back to the cabins to make dinner. I took a small group out to the light house North of Lime Island – which is really a glorified mansion at this point.

This buoy marked the East side of the shipping channel. We paddled up this east side and crossed at the buoys.

The lighthouse itself – like I said, it’s now a glorified mansion.

Sunday, we took a hike across the island in the morning, then headed back to the mainland. On the trip back, we got to see a Coast Guard ship in the channel.

Todd with the Coast Guard in the background.

The group on the return to the mainland.

Janet testing the water temperature.

When we got back, we were “greeted” by the boarder patrol who breezed through to make sure we all looked American. Some of the group gathered at the restaurant/bar, but we opted to head back since it was about a five hour drive to Grand Rapids and another three to Chicago.

Packed up for the return trip – the side that didn’t have mud packed wheels.

Playing “blog-entry-catchup” here, but backdating things so no one will know…

Fourth of July weekend is kind of a big deal for Traverse City, the surrounding area and probably anywhere that has an economy reliant on summer tourism. It’s a popular time to come back to visit, and Mark and Ashley were going to be back in Michigan for a week. Since I wanted to see them and Janet, I invited her up for a stressful weekend of meeting the entire family and many of the extended family.

Since she had never been North of Grand Rapids until this winter for skiing, all the summer fun things of Northern Michigan were new… which made a nice excuse to revisit some activities from the past. I got to Traverse City on Friday, and joined Mark and Ashley for the visit to Cedar and Polka Fest – Janet did not make it into town until very early that morning, so she missed out on that.

One of the most important of events was a trip to and up the Sleeping Bear Dunes. This also is a prime opportunity for picture taking.

The group atop the Dunes and looking out over Glen Lake.

One of the reasons that you go to the Dunes is to jump off the high points as in this fine exhibit.

The sand was incredibly hot, but I have issue with wearing shoes for the dune climb. This was a mistake, and at this point I had started to develop a nice blister in the middle of my right food. This eventually turned into a hole about an inch and a half wide in my foot… and I stole Kenzie’s shoes for the walk down.

This is Pier Stocking drive. Due to the hole in my foot, there was no plan to slide down and climb back up this time.

After the dunes, we did a cruise down the Platte River. I’ve probably done this 100 times, making it an easy classic. Apparently I didn’t take any pictures of our journey, but this is representative (and even understating) of the mass of people.

Sunday we went out on Kyle’s boat and Janet and I stopped briefly in town for a quick Cherry Festival experience – as usual, if you live there, downtown is not really the place you want to be during Cherry Festival.

WPC 21 took place in Qingdao China… honestly, not my favorite place to visit. I had been to Qingdao once before for a quick business visit, but to a more industrial area. This time we were staying in a hotel on the coast – I guess this is somewhat of a vacation place within China.

When it wasn’t insanely foggy, the beach was kind of a cool landscape. This boardwalk didn’t run everywhere, but there was some sort of path along most of it.

It wasn’t really a sandy beach, and we weren’t quite sure if these were natural or remnants of something man made.

I don’t know what these are, but they were scurrying everywhere on the beach.

This is a close up of one of the centipede like guys. They’d usually scurry as soon as they felt footsteps on the rocks.