Grace beats the Devil

 

Grace loves a road trip, even if it means a start time of 5 am.  Amy, Grace and I hit the road long before a post-7 sunrise to make hike part of the IAT around Devil's Lake.  The red quartzite trails and outcrops never disappoint and are made all the more enjoyable with the maple/beech forest at its peak coloration.  The initial temperatures were near freezing but our climb raised our internal mercury to a point of quickly stripping some layers. We debated if it had been one or two years since we had did the hike, although we selected the ridge trail this time rather than tumbled rock.  The trails are always busy at this popular park, but our early started seemed to mitigate some of the trail congestion in the areas we traversed. We completed the loop at an easy pace, taking in balanced rock and resting for awhile at Devil's doorway, long enough for me to have a sandwich and Grace some Cheese-its before taking the slow descent through the east bluff woodland trail.  Tumbled rock pub/grill served us a great lunch and the ladies napped as I drove back towards home.

Basically a boys weekend

 

Ella had her senior night for the marching band (I forgot my camera).  It was the last march at the last home football game before she turns her attention to the pep band Friday nights.  Grace was running around the stadium with her friends as the team slaughtered a cross town rival.  Ella and Amy hit the road early on Saturday morning to make a Lacrosse tournament south of the Twin Cities, pounding out the miles in the predawn darkness and leaving Merrick, Grace and I home alone for the weekend.  Grace had plans to hang out with a friend most of the time, with a sleep over, bowling and Sunday corn maze so it our pack was quickly down to Merrick, the dogs and I.  Merrick and I laughed a bit about the idea that it was only the second time that this particular combination had occurred, they last time also involved all the girls in the Twin Cities.  He and I hit a burger place were for dinner and then played the strings a little bit when we got home.  He had been picking up the guitar in the basement and I gave him a brief instruction in tab reading...thus bestowing all of my guitar knowledge on him.  We shared the couch and watched some Peaky Blinders before I called it a night.  Sunday morning(ish) we grabbed the dogs and headed to Oconto to scout around for plan B deer stands and hoped to see a squirrel or grouse.  Hazel ran off, but eventually came back and we decided not to push our luck in the dense woods that wasn't going to yield a good deer stand any ways.  The Packers were playing on the radio as we made our way south for a quick dog wash and a malt/fry combo.  All in all a pretty good weekend.

A hunt

 

Merrick and I headed to the Oconto county forest for the WI youth gun hunt.  After last springs trip to Stanley he said he wanted to give deer hunting another try.  The weather was great, even plenty of mosquitos but the thermacell helped cut those down to size...or as Merrick continued to call it 'the incense burner'.  We left the house about 5 am and made the drive to arrive at the stand about 30 minutes before the light started to creep into the woods.  There was another Father/son team at the trial head where we parked, but that was a good example of how to hunt public woods. Introduce yourself, share your locations for safety and be polite.  The ground blind I built last April fit us both comfortably, the seats we had were not up for the task and the screw in tree steps slowly bent through out the day under our weight.  It lead to a constant battle to find comfort.  Merrick had a his head in his lap by 7:08...I took a picture of him and he busted me, smiled and figured he should check his phone too.  I then heard the characteristic double bound of a deer.  "Was that a deer?" I whispered to him as he smiled and shook his head at our foolishness  'Yup".  The deer had tiptoed in behind us and to Merrick's left, he only saw the white flash of the tail bounding away through the woods.  It was still great that we saw a deer, it would be the only one all day, but it if gave Merrick enough focus to hunt until sunset.  We headed back to the truck for an early lunch and chatted about hunting, school and the Nov. deer camp.  I pulled out the poem book and read a few to give him an idea about that aspect too.  He said he had a working title already "greenhorn' but no verses to go with it.  We walk/stalked around the woods for about an hour after lunch before making our way back to the stand.  He was great in the woods, had a good sense of the layout and found the stand on his own when we came in from a different direction and having only been there once in the dark.  He was safe with the gun and all around a great hunter.  In the end we didn't get a deer or even see another one, but both agreed that it was a great way to spend the day.  On the way home we made plans for how we would hunt on the second day.  I was impressed at his desire to go back out at 5 am...once home with a shower, dinner and on the couch he decided that not hunting and sleeping until noon would be more relaxing.  It was fine with me, with temperatures in the mid sixties it was a little hot to hunt anyways and the important parts of the hunt were already instilled.

HoCo season

Homecoming is a new event for us.  It has been on hiatus for about 30 years due to a few hooligans, but this year they brought it back.  With two in High School we dipped our feet into the celebration.  Grace was able to go to the red bird rally on Friday to show her support as well as the football game and then continued the night with a sleep over.  Ella marched in her first and last homecoming game and the sense of "seniorness" is setting in a little as this was the first of her lasts.  Her night ended with  friends and a campfire before starting all over on Saturday to get ready for the big dance.  Her and Merrick both dressed up in their finest casuals and headed to the school gym for the dance.  Ella left early because she and her friends were bored seniors, Merrick stayed until the final song and came home all sweated up from dancing...it is fun to have them at both ends of the high school age spectrum.  Around all of this we celebrated Amy's Birthday too with a family brunch and one of Grace's homemade cakes.

The Return to Routine

Routines are back.  The weather says that summer is at its best but the calendar reminds us that School in now in full swing and we are falling back into the routines of the school year.  Still time for evening campfires and even the occasionally coerced Kubb competition but the days fill up and the evenings are getting shorter.  We did get Sophia dropped off at college, unpacked and starting her own adventures.  We made the drive back to LaX the next weekend for Ella to get an official tour.  The longest college tour we have had at almost 3 hours. She liked it and is weighing her options. I assume our stroll through Riverside park and the Woodstock festival will help a bit. Merrick and Grace are meeting friends at some of the Football games and finding their way back into socializing postish..pandemic.  Grace did join Amy and I downtown for an art fest.  We were caught in the rain the first day but made it back the following day to check out the completed and impressive murals that were painted. We also headed to TR for our first krautfest experience which did not disappoint and brought home about 50 pounds of 'prekraut' from the 323 pounds that were made that day at the family gathering.

 

the end

Everything has a last time.  Most often we don't know these last times are happening.  At some point there was a last time you took your kids off your shoulders but didn't know it would be the last.  At some point you tucked then into bed for the last time but didn't know it would be the last.  This trip did have a feeling that it could be the last family trip of such magnitude, the kids are getting older. As always we hope we have given them experiences that allow them to grow. This last day of the trip gave me time in our travels to remember this.  It was a busy day with an early start due to flight changes.  The drive to SeaTac was easy and dropping off the Tank was smooth.  I reminded the kids again to empty their water bottles so TSA wouldn't take them and Amy reminded me that I had told them a dozen times and they weren't children.  Seattle airport was the most chaotic poorly designed and laid out airport we have been in.  Agents were hollering, TSA was telling long lines of people about to miss their flights that they should have planned better, passengers were cutting in line and throwing laptops out of their bags on to screening... Stress and disgruntled travel was permeating the air. The older two asked to use the restroom at this point, I was miffed having suggested it when we dropped off the Tank.... Slightly more irritated when I learned it was to empty their water bottles. Grace was thinking that when the 'kids' move out then the three of us should fly first class. The flights themselves were smooth and we had great food during our layover in MN. It was about 2:30 am before we pulled into the driveway and officially ended what could be one of our last.

Penultimate

Minimal hiking and a different summit as well, as a different type of summiting.  Our start was later too and we filled our bellies (a phrase Amy came to loath) with breakfast sandwiches and hit the road to take a gondola ride to the top of Crystal Mountain and see Rainier from the north east vantage.  The gondola ride didn't do anything for Amy's fear of falling but was an easy 15 min ascent that offered great views.  We grabbed some drinks and pretzels at the top and wandered around a bit checking out the ski slopes that we all agreed were quite steep.  Back at the base of the hill the girls all "panned" for minerals and Merrick and I checked out the store before we headed back to the cabin in 95 degree heat.  The plan was for an early pizza dinner in Packwood, but we opted for an air conditioned bar advertising burgers.  We chose wrong, but at least the food was so bad that it was comical and the pool table was open.  We passed around some pull tabs quickly turning 7 dollars into four and then zero while we waited 4 min for our food to arrive...yes four min. That was our initial sign of how bad it would be.  We had access to a pool, but there was snafu and we weren't allowed in so we headed back to our cabin.  Back at the pad we walked up the river a ways with plans of maybe getting in to cool off from the heat, but calf deep wadding was all that was needed in the glacial run off.