We’re back home…

…from the “Mystery” vacation in Michigan!

 

Well, most of us made it home, but maybe not all of us. (See Video) 

Looking forward to posting day-by-day videos and photos showing our adventurous week.

Cousins

Gardens @ the Creation Museum

Day 2–22 Mile Bike Ride

   


This morning we drove into town and grabbed some breakfast.  The town we were in, Montague, was very small and cute town.  There were flowers planted along the roads and in planters along main street.
   The bike trail began in Montague so we unloaded the bikes and strapped Lydia in her bicycle seat-yes, Lydia came along too!

   At the very beginning of the trail, Kate nearly ran over a water snake.
   The first few miles were fairly arduous and Kate was having a hard time keeping up.  We stopped at 4 miles for a quick break.  The trail was pretty flat, but we were still going uphill.



  We stopped at “Dips n Dogs” for another break at about 7 miles.  Unfortunately, they didn’t have any dips and we weren’t hungry enough for dogs, so we just got a few water bottles.
   Kate was having a hard time keeping up, so we looked at her bike to see if something was wrong.  The front brake was rubbing against the wheel so we disengaged it which made a world of difference.




We rode until we reached the town of New Era where we stopped to eat lunch and air up our tires.  The markers showed we were half way and had gone 11 miles.


   It would’ve been great to go the next 11 miles of the bike trail, but we would’ve needed someone to pick us up at the other end with our bikes.  So, we had to turn around and go back the way we came.
   With Kate’s bike adjusted and food in our stomachs we did the 11 miles back in only an hour and ten minutes.  I never would've thought we could do the 22 miles, but we sure did!
   We stopped at Montague foods, the local grocery store, to pickup food for the rest of the week.  After dinner at the house,  we drove over to the beach that was only a couple of miles away.
   It looked just like the ocean and had the same white sand beaches we love in Florida.  However, there was a big difference between these beaches and it can be described in one word: DUNES.  More on those later…

Aug 22 11

Creationist Camel

Petting Zoo @ the Creation Museum

Looks like we all had horizontal stripes when we were getting dressed that morning

Day 1-Heading to Lake Michigan

   We were up pretty last night to celebrate Noah’s 13th birthday with family.
   We had a later start that morning than we had planned for and half of us weren’t even packed.  However, it was only mid-morning when we had the van loaded with our bags, the trailer loaded with bikes and our canoe loaded on top of the van.



  Because of a few errands we had to run we didn’t hit the road until after noon.  We made some good progress and listened to a few teachings on tape-no, I mean on CD-no, I mean…well, they were actually tiny bytes of information encoded in MP3 format transferred onto a tiny hard drive inside of an audio player.  We’ve been on a real Sherlock Holmes kick lately so we listened to a few mysteries as well.  We made a couple of stops to make sure the canoe was strapped securely.





   We were nearing southern Chicago when we stopped for dinner at Jimmy John’s.  We ordered our sandwiches and then asked for cups of water. 
We can’t give you our water.
Well, could they give us ice?  We had warm water bottles in the trailer.
Yes, we can sell ice. It’ll be $1.75/cup.
No thanks!
   We drove on and ate at Boston Market as it began to get dark. We gassed up (please take this to mean what I mean it to mean) and drove up along the Eastern side of Lake Michigan.
  We had a few delays along the road…someone smelt rubber burning, so we stopped a couple of times to check and sniff everything…Noah thought he saw someone being held up in a gas station…called the police, but I think everything looked fine.
   Arrived at our home away from home after 1am (but we lost an hour due to time zones) and then we had to unload all of the bags before we could hit the sack.


As you’ll see in this video, we got a bit slap happy towards the end of the trip.

Buddy Davis

A long time favorite since we watched the Creation Adventure Team videos on VHS!

Heading to Cincinnati…

A couple of weeks ago we took a trip with some of our family to visit the Creation Museum!  We had a fantastic trip, had a great time hanging out with my awesome aunts, uncles and cousins and it was a great opportunity to learn at the Creation Museum.

 

 

 

We were thankful to not have to bring our van, my uncles offered to let us ride in their cars. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   A quick stop to eat lunch…

Good Times with Family

Gotta love cilantro salsa!

Tree Stand

Benjamin (not pictured) bought a tree stand to use for bow hunting the deer in our yard for the bow season this fall. The photo may be a little deceiving-it’s only 11.5’ off the ground.

Noah (pictured) had fun putting on the safety harness and climbing up the ladder.  There’s enough room for all 3 of us to sit up there.

Noah’s 13th Birthday!

 

 

 

 

It’s hard to believe that Noah turned a big 13 today!  We went to dinner at Fuddrucker’s to celebrate and we’ll also get together with some family later this week.

   Noah got a gigantic 29” bike for his birthday that’ll be great for our bike ride that' we’ll take on our mystery vacation trip (which isn’t a mystery anymore.)

Noah on a Hammerhead Go Kart

A Deer (Video)

In the twelve years or so that we've lived in our house we could count how many times we've seen deer in our yard on one hand.  However, in the past 18 months or so we've been seeing them frequently and now we see them all the time because of our garden.

Mystery Vacation Part III

 

Michigan’s Adventure Amusement Park

   We’ve taken a look on their website and the rides look like a lot of fun.  They have also have a pretty extensive waterpark, so if it’s warm enough and not too busy we may try out a few of the water slides.

 

Silver Lakes Sand Dunes

The Silver Lake area is known for their sand dunes-the only place in the US with dunes like these are in Oregon.

We’ll be renting two dune buggies and we’ll also try sand-surfing.

Pontoon Rental

  We’ll rent a pontoon for 8 hours of fishing, swimming and best of all-tubing!  Even Lydia will get to go (as long as she wears h

Lydia Gives Up on Studying

Mystery Vacation Part II

 

Bygone Basics

   Bygone Basics is a local store that offers lessons that teach you the good ole’ skills from canning vegetables to churning butter, etc.  We’ll get to pick what we want to learn.

 

Hart-Montague Bike Trail

  This trail is 22 miles and passes through a few small towns, so we’ll probably stop for lunch sometime along the way. 

 

 

 

Canoe Float Trip

  We’ll be bringing our canoe and we’ll also rent another one so that we can all fit.  For my brothers and I this will be our first time taking a float trip down a river.

Mystery Vacation Part 1

Riding Horses at Rainbow Ranch

   We’ll get to ride through some beautiful scenery on the back of a fiery steed…or something like that.  It sounds like we will be crossing a river…on the horses.

 

Dairy Farm Tour

   A dairy farm nearby takes tours of people through their place…it looks like they may take you on a tractor ride as well.

 

Little Sable Point Lighthouse

   Really looking forward to seeing the view from the top of the lighthouse.