Planes, Trains and Automobiles

In Michigan, Ford is everywhere. Henry Ford has an awesome museum and old time village in Dearborn Michigan about 30 minutes from our house. 

He collected thousands of pieces from American History throughout his life, and the the museum has continued to collect over the years. There were all kinds of things to see. 

YAY! The wienie mobile! This was pretty much the best thing they had.

"Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener! That is what I truly like to be!"

Of course, being the FORD museum, there were about a bazillion cars to see. They had all kinds ... old ones, new ones, trailer ones, racing ones, big ones and small ones ... some were fords and some were not. 

This was actually the car that JFK was in when he was shot.

Lots of random American novelties. It was kind of cool that they had purchased an old diner and reassembled it inside the museum and they were still running it. You could take a brake and get yourself some diner food right in the middle of the museum ...

The museum had some very unique pieces of American history. He had George Washington's war possessions, the chair that Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated, and Rosa Park's city bus. We didn't get pictures of everything, but James was especially excited about Rosa's bus. 

They let you get on the bus and the docent told us that this was the seat that she refused to move from. It was a very cool exhibit.

The Greatest City in the World

For the last three weeks I've been running around Charm City, working at the science center again and playing with a few of my friends. 

I had a great time! I've missed the madness that is camp MSC and definitely all my B'More buddies. Multiple Blaus and Stacey were kind enough to let me stay at their houses for my vacation. THANKS GUYS!

Unfortunately I realized that almost of my pictures are of me eating, because let's be honest - eating is mostly what I did. 

Sam and Dan took me to have my first Baltimore Crabs at L.P Steamers. Delicious!

And then Sam and I took the bus to spend the day in NYC. I had never been there and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to go.

We were able to meet my awesome friend Shae who is currently living in the city and took a great walk through Central Park. The weather was great for our trip! 

And, of course, no day for Sam and I is complete with A LOT of eating. We had amazing square, jelly filled donuts, New York style pizza, and stopped off at Juniors with Shae for some of the best cheesecake ever! 

And although I really went to Baltimore for a little bit of work, how can you not enjoy yourself when your job is to do this all day ...

Birthday Weekend!

As some of you know, every year my family is able to celebrate quite the birthday week. In June Amanda's birthday falls on the 25th, my dad's on the 26th and James' is on the 27th. 

This year to celebrate we took an over night canoe trip on the Au Sable river in north-ish Michigan. 

Amanda and I shared a canoe and my mom and dad shared another. James was the lone man in the kayak for the majority of the trip.

The first day was 8 hours of paddling. Obviously we stopped to play just a bit.

James and I gave Amanda a package of stick on mustaches for her birthday, which she promptly opened. No canoe trip is complete without the handlebar stache, right?

Of course James couldn't sit in a kayak for 8 whole hours. In true James style he was out and about and up in some trees.

By the time we were done with all that canoeing we were HUNGRY! James and my mom made us some delicious burgers and tinfoil potatoes.

 

I'm not sure if I can effectively describe to you how truly excited we were to eat - so I'll let this picture do the talking for me. 

The night was young, so we took some pictures, jumped around a little and played before heading to our tents for a good nights sleep.

Over all it was a fun trip. Happy Birthday to the B-Day kids!

Pedal-Paddle 2012

This Spring, I bought a road bike, thanks to Clayton's influence (see http://pedalperupedal.blogspot.com/). I've been biking and canoeing a lot this summer. A few weeks ago, I got the idea to combine the two. My canoe is inflatable, which makes it portable enough to carry on a bike. That may seem strange, but its quite simple. I carry the canoe on the back of my bike, and then when I get to the river, I inflate. Once the canoe is in the river, I can carry the bike in it. I've done a few short trips, biking a few miles and then canoeing for about an hour or two.

On Friday, I left for an overnight trip. I expected to bike about 35 miles the first day, and canoe around 15. Then on Saturday, I would wake up early, canoe about 10 miles, and then bike another 5 to get home. I left Ann Arbor at about 10 AM and headed north towards Kent Lake in Island Lake State Recreation Area. It was about 25 miles, and my legs felt pretty good. 


My first view of the river put a knot in my stomach because the water was very low. I decided not to worry about it, and started paddling downstream. It was slow but okay for the first couple of hours. Then the debris problem started. There were so many downed trees blocking the river, that it took me about 4 hours to go the last 2 miles. It was pretty miserable to say the least.

I decided I'd rather bike the extra distance than keep battling the trees, so I pulled out at a road crossing and packed up the canoe. I headed to Hudson Mills to a campground and set up camp. I tried to go to sleep at about 10 PM, but was unable. I was too exhausted to sleep, and it was still 75 degrees outside. I wasn't enjoying myself, so I packed up and biked home. It was actually my favorite part of the day. Stars in the sky, fireflies, and no traffic.

My bike computer said I went 56 miles, and google maps says 59.1. I guess they calculate distances using different projection systems.


View Bike/Canoe Trip (June 15, 2012) in a larger map

Leaving home Friday morning with 55 lbs of gear.

The beach at Kent Lake

Huron River just below Kent Lake dam.

Huron River, somewhere in Island Lake State R.A.

Fairy Doors

Like I was saying, Ann Arbor has a thing for fairies.

The city has maps available of all the fairy hide outs in the city. There are fairy villages ...

And many of the businesses in town have had fairy doors installed for the many fairy citizens of Ann Arbor. James and I went looking for a few, but apparently there are quite a few more!

Memorial Day

Our family blog has been an extreme misrepresentation of what we have been up to lately. For some reason we just haven't been taking that many pictures. I'm really going to need to step it up.

On Memorial Day I did bring out the camera for our morning activities. Before the lake with our ward friends, James and I went on a bike ride to the university arboretum to see their annual peony beds.

They had so many different colores of peonies. It was super beautiful. 

We walked around taking pictures and smelling the flowers for a little until we decided to to visit Ann Arbor's Arb fairy village. 

The kids of Ann Arbor build huts every year for the fairies and wood trolls to live in. Ann Arbor has really embraced the fairy houses, and there are fairy doors and villages all over Ann Arbor. You can actually download a map of all the fairy doors in town and go on a hunt to find them! I think we might go on an adventure sometime soon to find them all!