Michigan: Farm Fun

Mark's brother Glen and his wife Terri own 80 acres that they live on. Glen is a doctor, so they don't farm the land, but they do enjoy a country lifestyle. They have a cat, dogs, horses, peacocks, chickens, and ducks. They have a field planted with feed corn, an apple orchard, and a big red barn. I think that every day we were in East Tawas we visited them. Bentley, Jake and Viva found the farm fascinating.

They hung out with the horses:

They ran through the cornfield:

They fed the chickens and collected eggs:

They visited the barn and played in the hayloft area:

They helped make apple cider:

They ran wild and had a great time. 

Soap House

Bentley was supposed to do some whittling for Scouts, so he made this house out of soap:

I tried to convince him to make a butterfly or a fish, but no go.  :)  After we were done carving the kids had fun microwaving the Ivory:

And experimenting with the fluffy product:

(If you haven't microwaved Ivory soap before, you should.  Very entertaining.... )

Michigan: Rocks

On our road trip to the Upper Peninsula one of our main goals was to find some great Lake Superior rocks. Lake Superior beaches are famous for their awesome rocks, the ultimate prize being a Lake Superior agate. Before we traveled to Michigan I purchased a couple of rock guides and a CD (!) on how to find agates on Lake Superior. The trick is to train your eye to overlook all the distracting, pretty rocks and focus on finding an agate in the rough. In the rough an agate can be quite ugly, but when cut open it can be incredibly beautiful.

Bentley was very focused on finding agates and he did find a few. He did not allow himself to be distracted by many other rocks. Although he is the most avid rock hound in the family, he collected the smallest number of rocks on our trip. Viva if left unsupervised will bring home the entire beach to examine at a later time. Jake sometimes collects, sometimes not. Mark collected a surprising number of rocks. I was very distracted by pretty rocks and at the Gratiot River mouth I picked up two gallon sized bags of gorgeous rocks. Fortunately I was more discerning at the other beaches we visited.

While Lake Superior is famous for its rocks, the Keweenaw Peninsula is famous for its minerals. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan contains more than 150 collectible rocks and minerals. The Keweenaw Peninsula is the richest area being the site of the first copper boom in the United States. There are dozens of mine tailing piles left from the days when the mines were active. We only explored one such site. We looked for a second site, but we didn’t find it. If we stayed on the peninsula for two weeks, we would not run out of great places to hunt rocks. (We want to go back!)

In the late afternoon of our second (and last) day on the Keweenaw Peninsula we stopped in at the A. E. Seaman Museum on Michigan Tech's campus to check out their world class collection of minerals. We arrived an hour and half before it closed, so we had limited time to examine the museum's incredible collection and only a few minutes to visit the gift store. Bentley wants to go back and spend a full day there. He was fascinated by the displays and wanted to read the tag on every mineral. 

In addition to hunting for rocks on beaches and in mine tailing piles, you can purchase treasures found by others at local rock stores. We visited three rocks stores and the museum gift store and made purchases at all of them. We kept our visits short and we asked for advice on where to hunt for rocks in the area. 

By the time we arrived back at East Tawas we had 75+ pounds of rocks. (That might sound like a lot to someone who doesn't collect rocks, but a true rock hound would find that amount ludicrously low.) We spent a pleasant Saturday afternoon culling through the rocks and donating some to Uroma's rock pile. Glen stopped by and helped us hammer open some of our finds to see if they were worth hauling home. None of my bag of maybe agates turned out to be agates.

In addition to finding room in our suitcases for the rocks we'd collected while in Michigan, I had to find room for the rocks I'd purchased online and had shipped to Michigan. We have been wanting a rock tumbler for months, but I couldn't find the model I wanted for sale on amazon.com. The best rock sites online did not offer great shipping deals to Alaska. The rock tumbler itself wasn't that heavy, but if you purchase some rough cut stones from around the world the weight of the package goes up (55 pound) along with the price. I saved $80 by shipping the box to Michigan and hauling it home to Alaska in our suitcases.

Snow Update

The snow that I postulated would be gone in a day or two has instead stuck around and we got a couple more inches. The children's fort grew in size to around five feet in diameter and two feet high walls. Unfortunately the location of it wasn't well thought out and it crumbled today during a sledding run.

Viva was quite upset and Jake wasn't too happy either. I have had a number of arguments with the kidlets about where it is okay to sled in our yard and where it is not okay to sled. Our property lot is very sloping and we have a lot of trees. When it comes to sledding, trees and hills are not a good mix. I told the kidlets that even if the chances of running into a tree are only 1% (and they are considerably higher than that on our property!) that's an unacceptable risk. 

The only half way safe place to sled is out back directly up from their fort. So it was either not sled or risk taking out the fort. The first run down the hill Bentley stood guard and blocked any sleds from hitting the fort, but on the next run he himself took the fort out.

Yesterday I took the older four across the street to a great sledding hill on the high school property. When we arrived we were the only ones on the hill and only a couple more kids joined us that afternoon. It was a perfect day to sled!

Get Air!

We have a new trampoline place in town.  It took quite a while to open - the start date was pushed back four times.  The twins originally wanted to check it out for their birthday, but it didn't open until the end of August.  We made it over there this past week - not a bad turn around time from me, if you ask the kids.  :)

We have been playing with Google Photos lately, and it does a nice job of taking pictures and videos and clipping it all together with music.  So here is our visit to Get Air (a lovely 45 seconds other than the random photo of Viva admiring microwaved Ivory Soap - I'm not sure why that is in there!)

Michigan: Road Trip

While we were in Michigan we borrowed Mark's brother Glen's motor home and we took a four day trip to visit the beaches of Lake Superior and to check out the fall colors on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. We drove 1050 miles in four days. We had a lot of great adventures, but we needed a lot more time to do all that we wanted. What we did fit in was:

Fossil Hunting at Sturgeon Point on Lake Huron

We found a lot of fossils, but nothing exceptional.

Fossil Hunting at Partridge Point on Lake Huron

The fossils here weren't that great.

Rock Hunting at the mouth of Gratiot River on Lake Superior

 It was a gorgeous fall day in a beautiful place.

 The rocks were awesome. 

Mineral Hunting on a Tailing Pile from Mohawk Mine

Not the best tailing pile on the Keweenaw Peninsula, but it was easy to find and a relatively safe place for novice rockhounds like ourselves.

Rock Hunting at Lighthouse Point Viewing in Copper Harbor

It was raining. We didn't stay long or take many photos.

Hugging a White Pine at Estivant Wilderness Nature Sanctuary

We were hunting for a mine tailing pile and found this place instead.

The Mackinac Bridge

It is the longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere. 

(Five miles of bridge, 8600 feet of suspension.)

 Hunting for Petoskey Stones on Lake Michigan

Terri's cousin Cathy took us to her favorite beach and showed us what to look for.

Visiting a Water Park

The trio LOVED the water park. It had six impressive water slides.

Admiring the Fall Colors

We were on the peninsula during peak colors, but it wasn't the best year leafwise.

These were most of the highlights of our quick trip north. In addition we visited three rock stores and The A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum (future blog post). The children loved traveling by RV. They spent their time on the road reading on their Kindles or playing (mostly Minecraft) on their iPads. It was a lot of driving for the short time we were there, but it was fun to revisit the Keweenaw Peninsula where Mark and I went to college and met each other.

Rock Slicing

The shower in the master bath upstairs had a leak this fall and it was quite the process to rip it out and fix it.  It involved a hole in the kitchen ceiling, jack hammers, the loss of the master shower for a while, and lots of trips to the tile stores by Opa and Grandma.

On the plus side?  Our contractor had a nice tile saw and he helped us cut open some of the cool rocks from Michigan (and elsewhere) to check them out.  It was a fun afternoon treat!

Michigan: Relatives

 The Enzenberger Progenitors

Mark and I took Bentley, Jake and Viva to Michigan for ten days in early October to visit Mark's family, to collect Lake Superior rocks, and to see the fall colors. We did all three, so it was a very successful trip.

First and foremost we went to Michigan to visit Mark's parents and siblings. Mark's parents moved two years ago from Florida back to Michigan to be close to family. We decided to take advantage of their new location to go and visit not only them, but Mark's siblings, too!

We stayed in East Tawas with Mark's parents, but his brother Glen and sister-in-law Terri live just a few minutes away in Tawas. Both cities are on the shore of Lake Huron. We flew into Detroit and on our drive up to Tawas (three hours) we took a short break and joined two of Mark's nieces, Shannon (on her way back to school in Kentucky) and Julie (who was accompanied by her fiancé Ben) for lunch at a Bob Evan's. While in Michigan we took a road trip to the Upper Peninsula and we were able to sneak in a quick visit at Dairy Queen with Ben, Mark's nephew. 

While in Tawas, Mark's sisters and their spouses (Roz & Dwight and Sharon & Ray) drove up to visit with us one weekend. Mark's sister Sharon came back a second day, too. It was good to see all the family. We have the oldest grandchildren in the family. It was great to be able to let them get to know the family in  Michigan a little better.