Friday, July 25, 2014

Alpena again

We spent sat night in Alpena, and got a little more cousin time and aunt/uncle time.

Ice cream!


To the beach:


All girls in the water:


Crazy ones running in:


So crazy!


They went under!


Smart people on the beach.


Running around with GG:


Katie loved Violet!


No pics with Uncle Carter, but he was there, and was tons of fun as usual. He taught the girls how to walk on the ceiling!


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Sault Ste. Marie

After three days in the woods, we were sooo happy to take a shower and eat a real meal! We fantasized about a whitefish dinner, so we got one at the Lockview restaurant. It was delish!


Meg made a diorama of the first locks for her 3rd grade social studies class. This model is almost as good as hers!


We watched a freighter come thru the locks after dinner:


Coming in very low:


Now it's 21 feet higher!


On Sat morning, we took a boat tour of the locks.


We passed this freighter:


Heading into the Poe lock, one of two big ones on the American side:


Look how low we are, at Lake Huron level to start:


Watching us float up up up!


Almost there!


And the gates opened at Lake Superior level!


Passing another freighter:


We tooled around the steel plant in SS Marie, Canada:


We came back thru the Canadian locks. Starting high:


Sinking lower:


At the bottom:


And the gates opened!


It was a great tour!


We walked all around the park at the locks, plus most of the downtown.


Meg learned about this steam punch that was used to make the first locks. She was amazed to see it in person!


Watching another freighter going through. And a tour boat zipped in the close locks. Look how low:


And then raised so high! This was our same boat, on the next tour.


Freighter after being raised:


I had grand plans of going on one or two more tours/museums, but the girls were clearly educationaled out. So we left the Soo a few hrs earlier than planned.

Crossing the Mackinac Bridge again!



Funny story - I told the girls that iThings weren't allowed in the UP. I'm sure they knew I was joking, but they didn't ask to play them too much. But as soon as we crossed the Mac Bridge and made it back to the Lower Peninsula, all three girls asked in unison! (I said yes!)

We stopped in Mackinaw City for some fudge :


And for a sweatshirt for Megan!


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Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Pictured Rocks Day 2


Thursday was another beautiful day, with temps in the low to mid-60s.  We had a freeze-dried breakfast made with yummy Lake Superior water, we packed up our campsite, and we set out on our longest hike of the trip - 4.5 miles.  It was also the most beautiful hike!

We went up to cliffs right away.  This is looking back towards Chapel Beach

The water colors and the rock formations were unbelievable!

The trail was right along the cliff edges!



This was the coolest "beach," on a point about 200 ft above water level!  We had a nice break here, snacking and exploring and taking tons of pictures.


Looking down into the water

Struggling to smile at this point!  They were really tired!

Our second campsite was very buggy, so we set up the girls' tent first and let them rest in a bug-free zone

After a late lunch, we headed down to Mosquito Beach.  There were no mosquitos on this beach, but tons of stable flies (biting flies).  They were annoying, but not nearly as bad as the mosquitos.

We did more rock skipping, this beach had the very best smooth skipping stones.  You can see the Mosquito Creek emptying into Lake Superior in the back right of the picture.  This creek was super cold compared with Chapel River, and the girls didn't play in it at all.

Filtering more water.  We all got into the water this time!  We were tough by this point!

Girls at Mosquito Creek

Our home sweet home for night #2

We couldn't hear the waves all night, like the previous night, but we did have Mosquito Creek just down the hill from our campsite.  We could hear it bubbling all night long.

Bridge over Mosquito Creek

Waving to a tour boat

Lounging on the cool rock formations near the beach.  No mosquitos here!

Then we started exploring the rocky sections east of the beach area

The layers were sooooo cool!





There were tons of little caves along the shore

I was infatuated with this layer of rock - it had ripples in it!

We put the girls to bed early, and wandered over to the beach to watch the sunset.  Absolutely gorgeous.