"Home" Again for awhle

 
We are Home again for awhile between traveling adventures.  The garden is in full bloom and the house is starting to collect school supplies as football season starts up as well as a fall soccer league for Sophia.  But being home seldom means that we are actually home much longer than it takes to weed some flower beds and check on the garden for a dinner salad.  Merrick was named Captain of his football team and gets to lead the team in stretches as well as about a fourth of the teams through drills.  His games will start next week.  Grace had an audition with a guitar teacher and we are waiting to hear back about her acceptance to his program.  She is looking to get back into the routine and the house has had a couple of haunting scales from the clarinet as Ella gets her fingers loosened up for the jazz band tryouts in the early weeks of summer.  Grammie came for a week visit and all the kids were very excited to see her come.  She did take and unfortunate spill on a bike and broke her wrist in several places, this put an obvious damper on the visit, but she didn't let it slow her down too much.  We still hit the pool for an afternoon for some high dive fun and splashing around and then also checked off the first trip to Bay Beach for the summer.  The kids hit all of the big rides including the two trips on the Zippin Pippin and after more than four hours we figured we needed a trip to Twigs to refuel with the summer nectar of Pirates Bounty, Daily Grind, Mackinac Island Fudge Swirl and other life sustaining ice cream flavors.

Like a Bonus Day!

 

Grandprize and Grandma were in the Door and invited us our for a lunch date!!  Silly grandparents, lunch isn't a summer thing....ice cream is a summer thing...so we meet them in Sturgeon Bay at the Frozen Spoon.  The ice cream was great and the weather was perfect as we chatted about their vacation and ours.  We walked down to the water's edge to dip our toes in and marvel at the giant yachts that were moored in the harbor.  The visit was way too short so we extended it by heading north to the Fun Park for some water balloon battles and some Go-kart racing.  Ella quickly pointed out that there wasn't any way to win the Water wars, but I think they will all remember that they won the Go kart race.  With some hugs in the parking lot we finally headed different directions that both lead to vacation.  I am not sure about theirs but ours meant a stop for cherry picking. With a couple of buckets of tart cherries....Merrick's face indicates that some were more tart than others...we made our final leg home.

Back to the Boot!

We delayed our early start to wait out the pending rain but we were all hooked up with the new 3-bunked mobile cabin and eager to get going.  It was time to get back to the Nicolet and spend some quality family time and continue the traditions of Boot Lake.   Wednesday night was a little rainy, but that gave us some time for checkers matches and quality time inside the new ride.  Sophia even found enough room to pace around until she hit 10000 steps on her pedometer.  A big breakfast was postponed skipped by Amy and I as we decided to pack up and move a couple of sites down the road to a much nicer campsite.  The move was only an hour and gave us a great campsite with enough room for Kubb.  After the move it was decided that the ever anticipated trip to the candy store was already overdue.  The kids loaded up all things sweet and a couple packs of candy cigarettes as well.  A quick run across the street to the bait shop also rewarded us with a box of worms for a little bobber fishing.  The older girls had already done plenty of planning and a day of shopping for this years theme night.  They had organized several games, like bago, ball toss and badminton bounce and rounded the prize winning games off with a big beach ball pinata.  There was plenty of sugar for everyone.  Campfires and smores round out the evenings and days were spent in the water.  The kids were fortunate enough for more than a hour of tubbing in which Amy and Ella were the only ones to get dumped.  We also made our way over to Fanny lake for a short hike and some snorkeling.  Grace snorkels like a duck.  With their life jackets on for bouancy it was hard to free dive deeper.  Grace had her ducktail high in the air as she pushed her goggled face deeper into the glacial lake.  A hike to the far side of the Fanny to check out a remote campsite and plan for the future rounded out a great way to take in some sunshine.  The kids spent multiple hours constructing fairy houses from materials scavenged in from the woods.  I am not completely sure but apparently it was inspired by cupcake wars or maybe cakeboss or iron kitchen...whatever the inspiration they seemed to have plenty of fun doing it.  Grace was rudely awaken followed by the rest of us as Sophia got sick in the bunk.  It was dark and we were wholely unprepared for such an occurrence.  It was decided to load up all the sleeping bags, bunk mattress and head back to town for a night of laundry.  We made it back in time for breakfast the next morning.   There was plenty of time for slingshooting rocks at beer cans, whittling and firestarting.  Sophia and Ella gave dutch oven cooking a try and made a great struessel to accompany some bacon and eggs all made over the open fire.  Just a great place and we hated to leave it.

Tortilla Point

Tortilla Point likely exists on a map, but it isn't this Tortilla point.  The name is a remnant of a bright spot on an otherwise hike from hell that Amy and I took three years ago.  On that hike we found two great spots on two different and equally beautiful lakes in the Nicolet and knew that it would be a great place to backpack with the kids.  It took some years to get back there, but it did not disappoint. We headed out early on Friday morning and hit the trail before ten.  I dropped Amy and the kids off at the trail head and then took the canoe to the down the forest roads to a remote put in site. When I arrived at camp there was a small turtle there to meet me, it was apparently my totem animal for the pace I had set compared to theirs.   They hiked about three miles in record time and I wasn't even finished putting up the tent before I heard their voices coming down the trail.  They had wove through forest trails between three different lakes to arrive at our rendezvous point.  My pride and amazement wore off in time to hear the stories of their travels, how they only stopped once for a snack and had a "head scratcher" when the trail sign pointed in both directions, with experience and logical consideration the tribe had chosen the correct path for our meet up.  We didn't actually camp at Tortilla point, but rather a great little knob on a hemlock peninsula.  It has a nice breeze to keep the bugs away and the swimming hole was Rockwellian perfection.  The bass were jumping and spawning and two of them were hung out in the swimming hole the whole weekend.  The kids tried to swim to them, noodle them a and net them but in the end it was only Grace that caught one. It was here first fish ever and I had told her she I would give her a dollar if she didn't catch a fish by the end of the weekend.  Later in the day we did add to the mileage by taking about a 3 mile trip over to the actual Tortilla point.  The plan was to hike over, swim there for a while and then come back for dinner.  When we got to Tortilla point there was an empty tent set up, so we swam for just a few minutes and then the kids mostly ran back to our camp through the forest trails and barefooted to get back to 'their' swimming spot.  It was great to see them dripping with lake water and barefoot hiking through the National forest.  The dehydrated food meals that the kids started planning about eight months ago didn't pan out.  Fortunately the snacks and ramen noodles were a hit and after dinner we pretty much planned on just ramen for the kids from here on out.  The kids worked on making flint/steel fires as well as whittled away around the fire ring.   The collectively figured out that getting your eyes close to the water surface but not under it works as well as goggles in the oligiotrophic glaciate lakes of the north and spent some collective hours 'snorkeling' for bass.   The kids swam across the lake and later swam to a nearby island.  They took turns paddling around the lake in the canoe and ran the shoreline fishing.  After a campfire we fell asleep to the sounds of crying loons and lovesick bull frogs.  We slept well past sunrise and nobody was up until about 8 in the morning, a sure sign of the amount of activity we packed into the previous day.  The second day was much a repeat of the first, a recreation of perfection.  Hikers and a few bikers traveled through our little camp and we received news of the weather and pending storm.  The rain was supposed to start about dinner time and last into the next day so with that news we decided to pack up the canoe and paddle out while Amy lead the kids on the trail-less expedition through the woods to the canoe landing and head for home.  The drive out on the forest roads gave most of us the first glimpse of a bear in the woods, as it wander along the dirt road.  Two full days in the humid back country conditions didn't elevate our self awareness to a point that we couldn't hit a little tavern for a quality burger before heading south to prepare for our next adventure.

Evergreen and Ever Smilin'

 

Load up the truck and head for the camping resort!!  We headed west to resort style camping of Evergreen.  It had been almost four years since we were last there and obviously plenty had changed.  The pool didnt seem quite as far away as it did last time and the water at the beach wasn't as deep as we had recalled it however the laughs were certainly the same.  We did all the standard stuff such as mid day ice cream runs and the Chippy Express and popcorn but we added some new events this year like broken wrists and paddle boarding.  Eight kids total and one of the nieces fell at the playground and ended up in a splinted cast.  Fortunately her absence from the campground was minimal and she was able to judge the pool jumping contest of the other kids. Smores and old stories around the campfire and several rounds of 'treasure island' during the night time would replace the playground, beach, pool rotation of the day.  The weather was great, only raining at night.  Saturday night a young country band had the the arcade rockin' out and the kids ran around in bandannas shooting their cap guns.  We hung around late on our last day for one more trip to the beach to rent paddle boards and while everyone got a shot at them I was the first to fall off.  Our return found us back in the summer swing of things.  This morning was Swimming lessons and then 18 holes of frisbee golf before looking for a couple of geocaches before getting home.  The last geocache was at Uncle Mikes, so that was a pretty good morning!  Merrick and Grace headed off with friends for the afternoon  and we started to repack for our next backpacking adventure.  No reason to be home more than a few days in a row when adventure and exploring await!

Waterfalls and hiking in the North

We were fortunate enough to be invited to the land of Crivitz again!  We set out for an late morning hike with Scott and Sonya in the Peshtigo River State forest.  The adults were settling into to new boots and weighted backpacks and the girls were feeling good to have us carry their gear.  The hike was tiring but not that long, a little over four miles but the little ones legs gobbled up the trail easily and with very little complaining.  We took a wrong turn right away and headed down the wrong trail but as life goes we did find some wild strawberries so that is a good wrong turn.  We had lunch on the trail, heating water with our little recycled can stoves and munching on ramen noodles and nutty bars, cliff bars ...there was no shortage of treats on the little romp through the woods.  It was a beautiful woods and I am sure we will be back.  Back at the cabin for some fellowship and camaraderie, the girls worked on their fire starting skills Sunday came quickly and sneaked in between all the laughing and we weren't quite ready to head home or leave the woods, so we headed further north.  After our hike we had hit a great little ice cream stand and found a nice map with multiple waterfalls indicated.  It was a little more than an hour back home or an hour farther north to the waterfalls....we headed north and bagged three new waterfalls.  Great trails and twelve-foot falls didn't disappoint.  four foot and 8 foot were pretty too!  We had stopped at a little grocery store on the way to the falls and grabbed a stack of tortillas and with those in hand and a bag of chips we made ourselves a nice little waterfalls picnic lunch.  The girls could no longer resist the siren like calls of the water and soon enough were in over their heads and splashing and kicking up spray.  Just another great weekend outdoors.