Isle Royale

Ever since moving to the upper peninsula we've had a goal of checking out Isle Royale National Park...and we finally made it! Labor day weekend we packed up our bags and headed off to visit the park and simultaneously attempt our first back packing trip with the kiddos.

Friday morning the adventure started early with us leaving Houghton at 6am to make the one our drive up to Copper Harbor. From there we took a 3-4 hour ferry ride to arrive on the east half of the island at Rock Harbor.  We were very fortunate in that it was an incredibly calm day on Lake Superior so the ferry was very smooth.

Waiting for the ferry to take off from Copper Harbor.

Our seats on the ferry

Once we landed in Rock Harbor and got settled we hit the trail! Our itinerary ended up being as follows:

    Friday     --> hike from Rock Harbor to 3mile and camp (3miles of hiking)

    Saturday --> stay at 3 mile and hike partially up towards Mount Franklin (shown in yellow on the     

                         map), (~2miles of hiking)

    Sunday   --> hike back to Rock Harbor and camp there (3 miles of hiking)

    Monday   --> hang out at Rock Harbor and catch the boat back in the afternoon

Our hiking route is in red and yellow, the two pink triangles are our camp sites, and Suzy's cave is marked with a  red/pink star.

Having a snack on the trail on Friday. I am absolutely certain this is Friday because bunbun in June's hands is still a pristine white. By the time we left on Monday that was one dirty bunny!

A picture of the trail and trees. In some places the trail was very rocky or had lots of tree roots, in other places it was fairly smooth.  There was a lot of understory growth and in some ways it reminded me of the Pacific Northwest, except the trees were MUCH smaller.

Looking out into Lake Superior, you can see some of the smaller islands dotting the viewscape.

Home sweet home for Friday and Saturday night! These shelters were great, and because it was end of the season we didn't have to share. We got lucky in that there were almost zero bugs, but in July these things are probably pretty vital for comfort.  I liked them because they contained the children, but it still felt very open to the outside. One of my favorite memories is how every evening we heard loons calling.

Saturday morning's coffee. When June sees us with coffee she says "Kaka!"...which makes my inner twelve year old giggle every time.

Suiting up on Saturday for the day hike!

Aspen on one of the boardwalks on Saturday. When the hiking trail would cross boggy areas it would turn into an elevated plank to hike on, some of which were quite long (100m?).  Also, I can't say enough good things about this little girl and hiking. She hiked the whole trip on her own and totally rocked it. Yes, we had flagging moral at times, but she (and we) figured it out and kept going.  Turns out breaks for playing, lots of story telling, and the occasional chocolate chip wrapped in a piece of tortilla did the trick. This is my mom brag, but she is only four and did an awesome job.

This is a picture that Jamie took. One of the things I really liked about Isle Royale was all the small vascular plants, mosses, and lichen that covered everything. (Incidentally, the island is a bit of a biodiversity hotspot for lichen with over 600 species present.)

On Sunday morning we started our trek back to Rock Harbor. There had been a strong rainstorm the night before so the rocks were wet and slippery so we had to carefully pick our way down.

Looking out at the water.

The trail home.

About half way between Three Mile and Rock Harbor is Suzy's cave. We had promised Aspen that if she hike to Suzy's cave she could play for a while.  After eating she promptly climbed up onto a big rock, declared it was a space ship, and spent time travelling to three different planets to collect moon rocks on each one. If you ask her about Suzy's cave she will also proudly exclaim that she "climbed up a tree and an avalanche and didn't even fall down!" during her explorations. June tried to follow her as much as possible and got a little cranky when we occasionally curtailed her activities.

Back in Rock Harbor we spent Sunday evening in another shelter, but this time we were near the lodge and splurged on pizza rather than camp food. It was a nice relaxing end to the trip.

Finally, there is definitely a deficit in pictures of Jamie (mostly because he was the one with the camera). However to make up for it, we did end up with lots of pictures of mushrooms. Especially pictures of the mushrooms we were going to eat! Here are the oyster mushrooms and chanterelles Jamie found for dinner on Friday night.

For Saturday night we had porcinis, chanterelles, and hedgehogs. The bouquet is courtesy of Aspen.

Overall we had a great trip...now we just need to decide where our next backpacking trip will be!

Running, kicking, and smiling!

Aspen has started playing on her first soccer team. Her division is comprised of  4 and 5 years old, and since Aspen just turned 4 this summer I am pretty sure she is one of the youngest and smallest kids in the whole league. There are 11 other players on her team and 6 players play at a time. She plays on Saturday mornings and they have a 30 minute practice followed by a 30 minute game.While she may be small she has a lot of heart, running with the pack the whole time with a big smile on her face.  Her team name is either the "blueberries" or "blue lightening" (it seems to shift around from one week to the next) and she will excitedly tell you that she is "number five!".  

Aspen running with the group. This photo makes me smile because you can see how she is a full head shorter than the other kids (the cute little guy in back isn't actually on the other team, I think he is a 3 year old who really wanted to run with everyone..)

She has a smile on her face for most of the game!

Juniper spends most of her time during Aspen's game either carrying a ball around the edge of the field, playing in the ditch, or doing everything possible to try and get the camera and camera case.  She is a mischievous sweetheart who's favorite game is to quickly snatch whatever object you happen to be focusing on and run away with it giggling hoping you will chase her. In this photo she is very proud that she is wearing Aspen's rain boots after much effort (plus a little help from mommy) in trying to put them on. She is coming up with more words all the time and is constantly amazing me with how much she understands of what we say.

Pink rainboots, purple diaper, blue tutu, and a watermelon juice soaked shirt. What could be better!?!

Someone has been having fun with the camera!

I was trying to get a picture of Juniper smiling so I was playing around with the camera. When looking through the pictures there were some confusing and unexpected images.

First, it was all white, as if someone was taking a picture of glare off a window over and over again (not just once or twice, more like 30 times).  I would post an example, but it just looks like a white box. As I continued to scroll through the camera, a more complete story began to emerge. Please keep in mind that this is just a small sample of photos and each photo has many replicates.

Add caption

I think *someone* must have found the camera laying around and decided to stage a photoshoot! Jamie and I laughed for a long time after we looked through all the pictures.

Also, I did finally get some good pictures of Juniper smiling.

Diving back into blogging

Hi! I have been a terrible blogger the last 6 months (obviously). However, I had a New Years resolution about posting...which is why it is almost the end of February and this is my first post. 

Part of the problem is that I like things to be thorough and sequential, which makes it hard to just start. (What about Thanksgiving? Christmas? That funny video I took 4 weeks ago?). It's a viscous* cycle  and if I insist on doing things my preferred way I will never get the blog going again.

So, in the spirit of just diving in let me introduce our newest addition....

Juniper! She is now just over 1 month old and a little over 10 pounds.

Turning into a family of four has definitely been exciting (and terrifying?). As parents it has been interesting to realize that sometimes everyone has needs that must be met at the same time, and thus this (pic below) is our new reality:

Grandma Sue (also known as my mom) came out to help for several weeks, and that was amazing! When she left Jamie and I were a little concerned to realize that our adult to child ratio was now 1:1. 

Overall, Aspen has adjusted really well so far, which is great as that was my biggest fear. She is currently a very busy toddler. VERY busy. This is a sampling of this evening's living-room-destroying activities.

 1. On the couch, the potato head family is on the airplane (only Aspen calls them the "sack of potatoes" family).

2. On the coffee table are her "babies", all wrapped up in her sister's clean diapers. She really likes the velcro and this is a pretty common game. Some days they are babies in diapers, today they were presents that santa gave out.

3. In the green chair, bear and friends are enjoying some pizza and soup! (Also, notice how they all have bibs?)

Some variation of this is repeated pretty much every night. Correspondingly, every night we are working on family clean up, which Aspen is actually a relatively good sport about (considering "lets clean up" is really a polite way of saying "tonight we are destroying all of your creations...again"). Only, like her parents, she can be obsessive about the details. Tonight her major contribution to putting toys away was meticulously picking all the toppings off the pizza. When we tried to explained that maybe that wasn't necessary at the moment (given everything else we had to pick up) she responded with "Guys, I'm helping you. I'm cleaning the pizza."

Many people have commented on how similar Aspen and Juniper looked at the same age, so I leave you with one last image for the night...

Aspen 

Juniper

*I meant vicious...but I've written viscous so many times during research writing that it popped out instead. Since it makes me giggle, and it kind of works, I'm leaving it!

You're turning violet, Violet!

One thing I have really enjoyed in our new home is going blueberry picking.

This is the second time we have gone, and it is a fun and relaxing time! Today's farm was an organic form and thus slightly more expensive at a whopping $2 a pound. ;)

Sprout had a great time and probably ate a pound of blueberries all on her own. They had a pumpkin bucket they let her use and she would dutifully put a blueberry in it every 30^th blueberry or so….then eventually eat the few blueberries that made it into the bucket before starting all over again. Usually she chomped away silently but occasionally I could hear a "pbththt!" as she spit out whatever leaf/green blueberry/insect she had just accidentally injested.

Towards the end of the morning she enjoyed wearing the bucket as a hat more!

We picked for a little over an hour and this was our bounty of around 9 lbs of blueberries (again, not counting all the ones Aspen ate.)

Our cheesy photo of the day can be blamed on Jamie as he said "lets get a ripening picture!". So here it is, berries and baby both ripening.

Now the question is, what to do with all those blueberries!

Pace Lamit addition #2!

Hi! We are expecting baby #2 around January 16th, 2014. I am currently 20w2d along and all seems to be going well so far. We just had our anatomy scan and everything seemed to look good. No idea what the sex is, as we aren't finding out this time.

3D picture of baby's profile

4D picture of baby's body

4D picture of baby's face

Baby flashed us a peace sign and the tech managed to capture it!

We've relocated 2000+ miles away!

The last month and half has been a time of transition for us. Jamie was offered a postdoctoral position at Michigan Tech University in Houghton, MI so we decided he should accept the position and that we would move this summer. While I am excited about the new adventure, I have lived in Flagstaff for over a decade and have many wonderful friends there and that part makes me sad (that, however, will be for another post someday).  One complication was that Jamie moved out a month before we did (end of May) with a moving truck and all of our stuff, and then I drove Aspen, the two kitties, and a car full of crap important things to Houghton at the end of June.

It was a 5 day drive, and actually wasn't horrific (not that I really want to do it again anytime soon). Finn meowed the first 3 hours of every day, but since he was way in the back I could mostly ignore him (sorry Finn). Freyja added some sporadic meowing, but few cats are up able to keep up with Finn when he really gets going (thankfully!).  Finally, Aspen was a trooper! She definitely was sick of the car, but she did an awesome job. Two highlights of the trip were getting to visit friends in both Durango and Chicago.

This picture is actually from Houghton, but it accurately depicts what Aspen looked like for most of the drive. Let me just say, that car seat is DISGUSTING (but I haven't washed it yet, of course, because life is busy...and because it feels somewhat futile as I know it is just going to get gross again).

Houghton is on the Keweenaw peninsula, sticking out into Lake Superior.

Not only is there lake on either side, but a mostly natural canal that runs directly between Houghton and Hancock (the city on the other side of the canal). Basically, there is a LOT of water everywhere and a LOT of places to go swimming!

The two weeks we have now been here (we arrived on July 4th), we have been swimming at least 6 times. There is a small swimming beach on the canal a 15 minute walk from our house, but we have also ventured out to swim in Lake Superior itself. To swim in the lake we went to the Great Sand Bay, on the Northwest side of the Keweenaw peninsula. Although the water was cold (much colder than in the canal) it was still a lot of fun!

Looking down either side of Great Sand Bay.

Playing in the water, brrrr!

Playing on the beach!

This girl loves both, quite a bit!

At this time of year, Houghton reminds me a lot of the Pacific Northwest. There are sunny hot days, followed by cloudy rainy days. There is water everywhere and the trees come right up to the beach.  Like many waterfront towns in Washington, Houghton itself is on a giant hill that slopes down to the water. The only thing that is missing is that it doesn't smell right. It is freshwater so there is no "ocean" smell, which somehow confuses my brain because it keeps expecting it.  It really is a beautiful place though!