Stay with me, this is going to be a longish update, starting with the US long weekend.
On Friday, my brother-in-law's friend was found. He had been missing for a week in the lake after a boating accident. There had been a search party organized that was going to go out on Monday morning that I was going to go lend a hand with. On Sunday, it was Timmy's first birthday (my brother-in-law's kid). Other than those 2 events, not much happened that weekend.
The weekend following, Teresa and I went to the Kruzin' Klassics Fun Run in Escanaba on Saturday. We walked for quite a bit, saw a lot of nice cars, saw the burnout competition finals and saw a couple dyno runs. On Sunday, we went for a nice 4 mile hike/walk on the "difficult" trail at Fumee Lake. It turned out to be pretty difficult (for us anyway) but we made it.
This past weekend was our first anniversary. On Saturday, we headed out to Porcupine Mountains State Park. We got our camp setup at the Union Bay campground and went for a short interpretive hike at the visitor's office of the park. We returned to the camp site, lit a fire and had supper. There was a really nice sunset that night (all digital pictures are here). Saturday morning I was up at about 8 after a crappy night's sleep. I sparked up a fire and after Teresa got up, we had some breakfast. After that, we got involved in a good bit of hiking. I think we did about 4 miles of some good elevation-changing trails. Near the end of the day, we drove to the west end of the park and saw the falls in the park. They were pretty amazing. We ended the day back at the campground again with some campfire food and a less appealing sunset. Teresa had a good headache in the evening so she spent some time in the tent while I sat around the fire eating marshmallows. On Sunday, I was up early again after a slightly better sleep. We packed up and were out of the campground by 12:30. It was a very nice campground and we'll probably go back again. Hopefully next time we're not next to some middle-aged man who talks to both of his parents like they're complete morons. Not only that but they couldn't hear very well so everybody around heard him yelling at his parents and making them feel useless. Anyway, after packing up, we drove to Ontonagon and spent a few hours there. We went a tourist information booth (AFTER spending most of the weekend in the area) and got some info for stuff on the way back and for other weekends. We spent an hour or so walking around an old Irish cemetary right outside of Rockland. It was a pretty interesting place. I think everybody there is directly from Ireland. Most stones we saw were from 1860-early 1900's. There were a few later 20th century stones but not many. It's a shame that the cemetery isn't kept up but at the same time, it's kind of neat letting nature take it's toll on the place. I'm sure it would be a very beautiful cemetery if it was trimmed up and all the stones were set back in place but I'm not sure it would have the same feel to it. After leaving there, we stopped at Bond Falls. We tried to find the town of Calderwood which was partially flooded with the Bond Falls flowage but had no luck. There were a few hours left before dark so we didn't get to see the Paulding Light but I'd like to go back for that someday.
That's my update for now.
