North of 45

Way up on the shores of Lake Superior is Painted Rocks National Lakeshore. We wanted to find out why it's called Painted Rocks. Here's why.



We wish we had more time to explore the coast. There are 7 major waterfalls and some more un-named falls. There is not a road along the coast, but there is a hiking trail, and geocaches. This is a place to come back to with Rich and da boys for a summer vacation. I don't suppose they have stat conferences on the shores of Lake Superior, though.

Here's Munising Falls, a nice 800ft walk from the parking lot.


We've crossed 45 degrees latitude a couple of times on the trip. There are markers for 45 degrees, and markers for halfway between the north pole and the equator.




I'd rather live at the equator. It's too cold for me up here.

Door County

Door County, Wisconsin is that peninsula that sticks up into Lake Michigan. We drove up the east side and back down the west side, stopping at a couple of state parks for walks and caches. Mom had been here in the early 50s with her parents, so she told lots of stories on the way.

Some pretty flowers at the I in Ephraim.


On the trail to a cache.


Can you see the cache?


It's hidden in the log. A girl scout troop maintains this cache. This was my kind of cache. A fairly short walk to an ammo can filled with swag in the woods. I was surprised by the lack of mosquitoes. The weather was beautiful, about 85 degrees and sunny all day.

Horseshoe Island


Many views like this one along the way. The road would go by the lake at some points and back away from the coastline into the woods at others. It was a terrific drive, and I can tick off an item from my "always wanted to do that" list. Drive Door County, Wisconsin, check.

I'm in Wisconsin!

I'm going to the JMP Discovery Conference this week, and am taking a couple of days vacation in Wisconsin beforehand. My mom came with me.

Today was a driving tour of Door County. We stopped a couple of times at state parks to find a few easy caches, and go shopping.

My main goal is finding a Michigan cache. We're in Marinette tonight and will pop over to Michigan in the morning to find a cache. We don't really have a plan after that, probably headed north to do a circle around scenic byways and heading back down. I have to be back in Chicago on Tuesday evening.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

We all scream for ice cream

Ready?

Make up some rice krispy-marshmallow-butter stuff. Butter the outside of a small bowl. Put the stuff around the bowl, in a bowl shape. Let set. Fill with ice cream and enjoy.

Notes:
1) These were made using a small cereal bowl. They are too big. Next time I'll use the outside of a baby food bowl. You want something that will hold just a scoop of ice cream. Two scoops is too much richness.
2) I'm a big fan of drizzling melted butterscotch chips over the finished rice krispy bars. So we did the same thing here, using a spoon to coat the inside of the bowl. Brilliant.
3) You can also use melted semisweet chocolate chips to line the inside of the bowl. The one on the right has both chocolate and butterscotch.

Blackwater Falls

One last beautiful part of our trip was a couple of visits to Blackwater Falls State Park. We found three caches in the park, and placed 4 travel bugs to race back to Austin. The bugs were keychains with our names on them, from the Museum of Natural History in DC. Here's a picture of them before the race.



Blackwater Falls and Blackwater River are named after the color of the water. It's not black, it's more like tea. This is because there's so much organic matter around, the water contains tannins and is a beautiful dark brown color. Here are the Falls from the upper overlook.



We were down on that platform on a previous visit, and the Falls are just stunning from that angle. I didn't bring the camera! I do have some crappy cell phone camera shots, which I used for the earthcache down there, and if you really want to see them, you can go find my log. There are 214 steps from the trail to the lower platform and the kids enjoyed racing ahead of us then coming back to us. They pretended to be worn out afterwards. I seriously don't think they ever get worn out except maybe at 10pm.

We rented a paddle boat and floated around for a while on the gorgeous water. Didn't take the camera along for that trip either. Too scared it would get dropped in the lake. Honestly, I was scared *I* would get dropped in the lake too!

The caches were harder to find than their terrain and difficulty ratings would suggest. This was a 1.5 terrain.



The terrain got much worse, so I hung back with the kids, and Richard climbed down the side of the mountain, then back up, then found the cache and the trail back out. Turns out we went on the wrong side trail. I don't really blame the cache owner, because signal was bouncing in there, but even the right trail wasn't a 1.5.

More gorgeous scenery in the park. There's a falls in this picture, can you find it?

Mountain Mama

We rented a house in West Virginia, near the Monongahela National Forest. It was called Mountain Mama. It had 4 stories - the master bedroom at the bottom, with a hot tub on the desk, then the kitchen and living room on the main level, then another bedroom and bathroom, and finally a spiral staircase to the crow's nest which contained two twin beds. The boys stayed up there and liked it a lot.

Here's a yummy and simple recipe: take a potato and slice it. Melt some butter in a dish, get some salt and pepper. Grill the slices, brushing with butter and shaking on salt and pepper. Throw some fresh sweet corn on the grill too. Mmmmm.



Here is the groundhog who lived near us. He was practically our only neighbor.



We visited lots of parks and did a lot of walking and climbing. There were streams and waterfalls, evergreens and deciduous trees, cliffs and rocks.



This is Seneca Rocks. There are climbers on the side of that cliff. We just walked around the trails.



Then we got lost, and ended up on the top of a mountain.



There was a loop trail, with lots of pretty scenery.



I think this shot is destined to become my desktop wallpaper soon. It was extremely windy at the top of the mountain, especially on top of the observation tower. The spruce around here grows with branches only on the leeward side because of the wind. There was a wind farm on US50 nearby.



While still lost, we found a stream to throw rocks in. Actually, we weren't lost. We just didn't know where we were, but the road we were on turned out to be the right road to get us home. Funny how that works sometimes.

Friends

I have two friends in the DC area. One of them used to live in Austin, the other I met online. I talk to them via email often. But the internet is a poor substitute for a great evening out.

We met Patricia and her friend for dinner. She works very near the conference hotel and it was easy to meet up. Dinner was fun. (You know what? Everything on this trip so far is fun, except possibly the strange guys on the metro. So just expect me to say that things were fun.)

The normal shot.


The fun shot.


The next day, I went to a couple of talks in the morning, then the boys picked me up and we went to the Museum of Natural History.

I think the kids are getting tired of museums.


The Hope Diamond.


There's GOLD in them thar display case.


Connor is shorter than an elephant leg.


Then we went to the other side of DC. We checked into a super fabulous Marriott Courtyard ($84/night, which is half as much as the conference hotel and twice as nice). My friend Jane met us there and had we hung out by the closed pool for a while until dinner. Then we took the scenic route through Greenbelt to the New Deal Cafe, a middle eastern restaurant. This is where Jane volunteers for the veggie co-op. People sign up to buy a box of veggies each week and she makes sure that they pick up the right stuff, etc. She switched with someone else so she could spend time with us. :) We had a delicious dinner and then it was open mike night! So naturally we stayed for I think three acts. Connor picked up a 5 year old and took her dancing. I have some great video that I'll show to his prom date in 10 years.

Me-n-Jane.

Sightseeing in Washington, DC

On Sunday, we took a bus tour of DC. It was raining, sometimes pretty hard. But rain is still a novelty to us, and clothes dry, so we didn't mind it.

The Capitol



The FDR memorial, one of our favorites. There are 4 "rooms" for his 4 terms, each with a different water feature.





Korean War memorial. 19 soldier statues, a mirror wall, and 19 reflections make 38 total, which is the latitude - 38th parallel. Really cool fountain/pool too.





Lincoln and Washington memorials and the reflecting pool.





Lincoln and Washington and the WWII memorial.







Highlights from various Smithsonian museums.

Penny-farthing bicycle


Assorted stuff from Night at the Museum


Highlights from the National Zoo

A green crested basilisk


An orangutan on the o-line


A bug made of bugs

Assateague National Seashore

We went to find a couple of caches near the shore. One of them was at Assateague Lighthouse. I've never seen so many mosquitoes as I did there. It was crazy. The kids and Rich went to the top, I stayed down to find the pieces I needed to solve the cache puzzle. It was hot, humid, and skeetery. Not fun.



Then we drove to the beach. Saw some wild ponies on the way.



They posed for pictures.





Then the fun really began. Rich went to find an earthcache, and the boys and I went to the beach. Of course, we weren't expecting to go to the beach, so we didn't have swimsuits with us. At least the boys were in shorts, I had my jeans on. Naturally, we got soaked. The ocean is much colder than I expected, but it warmed up quickly. The boys made friends and sandcastles. Richard found the cache.



And inside the visitor center -- horseshoe crabs!



Next it was off to the south, to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel. But first, a cache at an impact crater in the Bay. Who knew? The tsunamis generated by the impact went to the top of the Blue Ridge mountains.

Here's the view from the long fishing pier.



We though this nest belonged to a pelican, but it was really an osprey.



The kids waded out to this island. Andrew picked up a couple of large shells and brought them back to the beach. Then he found out they had crabs in them! So he took them back out to their home.



Then it was on to the bridge and tunnel.

The start of the bridge.



This is the view looking back at the last tunnel.



Then we had to hightail it to DC. It was a really long day and a long drive, and my jeans were still wet when we got to the hotel. But it was fun. And the conference was fun too.