Weekend get-away

This weekend, Eric, Indy and I took a trip up to Grand Marais. It was partially a work trip for Eric (Stone Harbor Wilderness Supply is under construction and inventory is being ordered, and the store is hopefully opening in about a month) and partially just a nice mini-vacation for us to escape from the city and our school work and just relax and spend some time outdoors. (Apparently, I like run-on sentences.)

Friday was more focused on work stuff, but Saturday we got a chance to head out to Judge Magney State Park for a nice hike with Indy.

I just love it up there - the cliffs and waterfalls and trees and just the sounds and smells of the outdoors. I love it. I told Eric that this weekend felt like a preview into our life after grad school. I just cannot wait to be done with school and have more time for us to just take trips and have free time.

See all of our pics here.

Some unpictured memories of the weekend also include: the purchase of camping hats (pictures to follow in the future - stay tuned!), pizza at Sven & Ole's, BBQ at the Stones' house, touring the store under construction and lots of time throwing the tennis ball for all three dogs.

I can't wait for school to be done. You will find me outdoors. In the yard. Up north. Camping. Hiking. Gardening. Just sitting in the sun. Can't wait.

I am so thankful for this weekend get-away. Hopefully it was enough to re-charge my batteries and give me strength and energy to finish this semester.

Photo extravaganza

Can you tell I'm catching up with finally getting photos online today? Here is an album of pictures that Eric and I took in March when we were up north looking for places to have our wedding. All the pics show sites (Gooseberry Falls, Temperance River State Park, Chateau LeVeaux) that look pretty cool in the winter, but will look completely different and beautiful in the summer for our wedding too!

Click on the album below to view all the pics.

Winter 2009 Up North

Here is a brief sampling:

Round 2

Here are some more pics from this fall--some from Halloween, my bday and our trip up to Grand Marais for Thanksgiving weekend.

On Halloween, Eric and I were quite excited to carve pumpkins and pass out candy at our new house. We bought pumpkins from a farmer who trucked in tons of pumpkins daily and sold them out of a church parking lot down the street from our house. Here are our pumpkins (and click on the link to see all the Fall pics):

From Fall 2008

For Thanksgiving, Eric and I drove up to Grand Marais and spent the weekend hanging out with the Stone fam. We played a lot of games with the nieces and nephew, ate a lot and also went hiking at Cascade River State Park. Here is one good one of Eric, me and his dad. Click on the link to see all of the hiking pics.

From Thanksgiving Up North

Catching up: up north pics

From Girls Weekend Up North

Remember how I went up north with some friends a few months ago? Well, here is a link to some pictures that should have been shared back then. Due to the end of the semester and due to the fact that we've hunkered down and are not leaving our house because of a crazy snow storm, I'm finally catching up on things like this.

Also notice that I'm now uploading images to Picasa instead of Kodak Gallery. I'm moving up in the world, people! Thanks, Em, for introducing me to the world of Picasa.

Boundary waters

Yay! We survived our boundary waters trip!

I put all of our pics online here.

The last day (when we had to leave), it was absolutely beautiful. The lake was calm and clear and just gorgeous. I think that was nature's way of making sure we come back again next year.

I would love to go on another trip next year and try out another route. This year's route was challenging, but it was fun. We did the following:

Day 1: Enter at Round Lake in our canoe with all our gear, paddled and did 8 portages (where you empty out your canoe, carry all your gear and the canoe through the woods on a hiking trail to the next lake, where you put all your stuff back in the canoe and paddle to the next portage). Arrived at camp at Gillis Lake around dinner time. Ate, set up tent, read and slept. Here are Eric and me at our first campsite.

Day 2: We stayed at this same campsite and fished, ate, read, explored any paths around the site, relaxed.

Day 3: We left our campsite on Gillis Lake and did 1 portage to Crooked Lake, and then carried our canoe and gear over a beaver dam to get to a kind of hidden campsite. Here is me on a portage walking through what Eric calls an enchanted forest. And here is Eric's senior portrait. :)

Day 4: We left our hidden little campsite and did 2 portages to Tuscarora Lake (a pretty big lake). This was the first day that the wind calmed down and the clouds finally left! It warmed up a lot..... and it was perfect timing cause we found a campsite with a sand beach! Here is a pic of us watching the sunset on our very own private beach campsite. Ahh.....this is what Minnesota summer is all about.

While watching the sunset, we were also lucky to see a group of 9 loons (the MN state bird, for those who don't know what a loon is). There were adult and baby loons, and they were all fishing together, flapping their wings and making loon calls. It went on for about 15 mins or so and was amazing. There are a bunch of pictures in the link above, but here is one of my favorites.

Day 5: Slept in because the previous night, it was so nice and clear that we thought it was a good idea to leave the rain fly off the tent so we could see the stars while laying inside the tent. Yeah, it ended up being so cold (apparently it was in the 30s!). So we slept in a bit, ate breakfast and then packed up and left our beautiful campsite. We did one portage that one mile long (longest one of the whole trip!) -- but we do double portages, which means you carry half the stuff on one trip and go back and get the rest for a second trip. So total, we walked 3 miles just for that one portage! Then we paddled a bit to our last portage of the trip, which was long, but not quite as crazy long as the first one. Then our trip was done! We drove back to Grand Marais, showered finally, and then went out for burgers, fries and cokes with Eric's mom.

Up North

This weekend, my mom, Indy and I took a trip up north to stay at my aunt Katie's cabin before she sells it in a couple weeks. It was a lovely weekend away, and I was excited to be out of cell phone range. HOWEVER, I was surprised to find that Verizon (the best network ever) does get very nice coverage up in the northwoods. Who knew? So that was good solely for the purpose of getting in touch with my other relatives who have homes or cabins up in the Longville/Hackensack area of northern Minnesota.



We arrived Friday around dinner time and spent the evening watching Indy play in the lake. She actually got some action this weekend (Indy...not my mom). :) A black lab named Bear swam all the way across the lake (a smaller portion of the lake) to play with Indy. It was hilarious! He came over and chased her around and then actually jumped on top of her from the dock while she was swimming. He then proceeded to try to hump her while she was swimming. Being the modest lady she is, she batted him away with her paws (while swimming) and discouraged the sexual advances. Luckily, she's spayed or we'd probably have some new puppies on our hands soon. I yelled over to Bear's owner that Indy must be a hot commodity if he swam all the way over just for her. He didn't really laugh, but my mom did.

Anyway, the rest of the weekend, we read, played Scrabble, laid out in the sun, drank some girly drinks, visited with some relatives (Jan, Jim, Bill, Sue), took a boat ride around Lake Wabedo, played tennis in town and had some ice cream at Frosty's (you really can't leave Longville without visiting Frosty's at least once). Oh yeah, and we had high hopes of going hiking and even started hiking for about 5 minutes, but then we decided that the grass was too high, and it is tick season, so we turned back to the car. And in that 5-minute window, here was the tick count: 5 found on me, 4 on Indy and 3 on my mom. Sick! I hate those things. They freak me out. So then for the rest of the weekend, we kept checking Indy for ticks every 5 minutes, and every time one of us had an itch, we'd freak out and do a little dance to shake off whatever it was that made us itch (lots of times, it was just a cool breeze or a piece of grass -- but you can never be too careful!). I actually found one more on Indy when we got home. Let's hope there are no more to be found.

See all the photos from the weekend.