Back Home...

...From a 6-day camping trip. No pics of anything, because the camera refused to turn on, despite a fresh charge. (Here's a link to my brother's blog for some of his pics: Arrested Photons) Looks like we may need to buy a new battery that will hold a charge. We can't seem to find one in the local stores, but I did find one online.

Betsie River campground near Frankfort was nice. If you do any sort of fishing, this is the place to go. You can fish in Lake Michigan or Crystal Lake which are both a short drive away. Every morning around 5am, people were gearing up and leaving with their boats. Actually this wasn't too disturbing. We managed to sleep through this most mornings.

What was mildly disturbing was the fact that we managed to sleep through that, and a lot more until 0830 or even 0900 every morning. This is *not* normal. In past camping trips, I've been unable to sleep most of the night, and then bored with the whole thing, gotten up at first light. It's a nice change to not come home from a camping trip more sleep-deprived than at the beginning. We slept well at Coldwater Lake in Isabella County, too. That's a nice, small non-state campground that we will consider using again. Our group is not too picky: if it's not more than 2 or 3 hours from home, reasonably clean, allows alcohol consumption and has plenty of space for the adults to sit around in camp chairs drinking while the kids swim in a lake, we're all happy. It was great to see all our friends again. We missed last year's group trip due to a late change in the week it was planned.

Last week was also a reaffirmation that youth has not completely gone south. All the times I've peered over the edge of a 450-foot sand dune down to the shore of Lake Michigan in the years I've visited the Sleeping Bear Dunes area and thought 'that would be nuts to go down that, and then have to climb back up'... I wait until my mid-40's to go for it. My brother, 13-year old nephew and Tim and I plowed down the 45-degree slope of hot sand, and then climbed back up. We got our cardio workout for the week, without having a stroke or heart attack. Needless to say this is not recommended by the park service because of safety issues and dune erosion, but now I can say I've done it.

Then there the games held for the kids which the adults got talked into participating in, too. Everyone must be doing a great job raising their kids, because we watched them be straight arrows and play fair in the balloon stomp, sack races and spoon relays to fill glasses of water. Then the adults stepped up and demonstrated every possible way to cheat and trash talk and thwart our opposing teams. Of course we may have consumed a beer or two by then. But it was all in the spirit of good clean friendly competition.

Today's been pretty lazy. We got a lot of the clean-up and laundry done yesterday right after we got home. Tim's ambition more or less propelled me along. I don't know where he got all that energy from, because I simply lost all steam sometime in the afternoon. But we managed to get the camper opened, dried off, cleaned out, fresh sheets put on the bed, and all closed up again. It's all ready for next time, which will be in 2 weeks when we go to Muskallonge State Park. Our plan to go beachcombing on the shore of Lake Superior to gather enough round granite rocks to fill the top of the new bathroom countertop in the basement.

Today I got suckered into buying some expensive miracle cleaner by a fresh-faced college student going door-to-door. I think we've reached the point in our lives where we can start making sympathy/'please go away' purchases from people who knock on our door now. I guess I'm going to have to start inventing creative excuses to say no, or get away, otherwise we'll be writing checks to every shyster that comes along. He was a very nice, well-mannered shyster. And the stuff does seem to take the rust stains off concrete and the side of the camper without burning our lungs and dissolving our skin like some other cleaner we've used before.

Best thing that happened today? A phone call from Ellen. I didn't bother to check how long we talked, but I'm sure it was at least an hour. It still needs to sink in that she will be here in 6 weeks. We're getting excited and plotting all sorts of things to do and see while she's here. And planning what we'll cook. We sort of forget that she's actually coming here to get a working experience in an American law office.

It's after 7pm now, so I suppose I'd better get something accomplished today. Maybe.