Got up this morning, and pretty much the first thing I did was stub my toe on some furniture. It was the toe next to my left pinkie-toe, and it didn’t hurt too much at first, but walking was tough, and when I put my boots on it was torture. I tried other shoes, the only things I could wear were my sandals. Today is the start of the Trail Summit too, and today’s schedule included biking to Easton in my sandals, riding the canal boat — something I’ve never done, until today — then going on a two mile walking history tour before the return ride. It wasn’t too bad, but I think my toe is broken, and I think I’m going to take a nap.
- Category Archives day by day
This is the category closest to just being a plain diary. Places I go, things I do, people I see, what’s happening in my life.
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Ham & Eggs
That’s what’s for breakfast — Anne is out of town for a bit, on an epic bike-touring ride down the East Coast with two other women. They met yesterday at the start point (a two-day drive for Anne) and they are leaving either tomorrow or, if they move up their schedule, today. Meantime, I’m holding down the fort and doing my own cooking… I normally have oatmeal for breakfast, but hey it’s the weekend.
Got in some mapping yesterday, moving some recent OpenStreetmap changes (ones that I’d made) over to my PostGIS/QGIS towpath project, as well as adding more stuff to OSM; I also worked through a bunch of yardwork and laundry. The car was in the shop for an oil change, inspection and (surprise) a new pair of rear tires, so I was sort of hanging around the house, awaiting developments.
Later in the afternoon I went over to Southside. I got a haircut at Eskandalo and went to Bonn Place for a pre-dinner beer, which is where I ran into old Brew Works compatriot Brian. Haven’t seen him in years and we did a little catching-up, and then I walked over to El Jefe’s Taqueteria to meet Scott S for dinner. Nice place, I’ll be going back.
After dinner I caught up with John & Donna at Molly’s, which was a fun change of pace, at least until the DJ started in with the club music. At that point we left, walked back over the river and through the last of Celtic Fest, and called it a night.
Today is house work and (more) yard work and laundry — make hay while the sun shines — then I may do a towpath ride.
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Rainy Day
It’s another rainy day, in fact it came pouring down in buckets this morning, and I spent the morning doing some more OpenStreetMap mapping. There’s a new development in Bethlehem Township, mixed apartment buildings and single-family homes, with its own shopping center, swim club, bike paths and retention ponds, and I rode over there yesterday to gather information. GPS, geotagged photos, and now I’m just trying to put it all together. I think I need another trip over to get more street data, so for now I’m focusing on the stores in the shopping center — I did some last night, and a bit more today, and will probably finish the stores a little later this week. Meantime, here’s a photo from the yard:
Bumblebee on a Mexican sunflower. I took this a few days ago, playing with the “selective focus” on my camera phone since it doesn’t actually have a “macro” function… The summer is winding down, but the yellow and reddish-orange flowers are still doing great; the bumblebees are really enjoying the Mexican sunflowers right now, and there are usually dozens on each plant every time we walk by.
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Lazy Day, Sunday Afternoon
Just kicking back this afternoon. We woke up at the crack of 10:30 to a rainy day, bad weather ahead of Hurricane Florence — the “pre-math” of the hurricane? — and since it looks like a good day for housework, nobody here is moving very fast. It’s actually a bit chilly out, mid 50’s, and I am wearing a long-sleeved shirt Anne got for me yesterday while “back to school” shopping with her nieces (who all have school-age kids, and who are all in education themselves). I can do without the rain, but it feels like the start of my favorite time of year.
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More Nashville
We did a bit more sightseeing yesterday, and managed to go out to the Parthenon replica they have here. It was built for the Tennessee Centennial, and I’m guessing it was part of the same impulses that influenced the Greek Revival type buildings throughout the town. It was a pretty impressive building, and the inside (the basement, really) is now an art museum.
A full-scale model of the Parthenon in Nashville After that, the group split up, with some going to Reese Witherspoon’s store while the rest of us went on a brewery tour, in a section of town called “The Gulch.” The first place we went was Yazoo Brewing, and — we planned it this way — I met my old Manalapan friend Scott and his family. (They live nearby and were going to a College football game.) Really nice to catch up, and meet his wife and kids in person rather than just Facebook.
After Yazoo Brewing, we went to the Jackalope brewery where the Reese Witherspoon crowd caught up with us. Again, awesome place and really good beer — it was kind of strange to see so many breweries with serious local cred that I’d never heard of, but it was also kind of fun… BBQ dinner after that, then we split again, the youth among us heading back to the honk-tonk part of town, while us olds checked out the free concert.
The less said about that the better: we are probably a bit too old but it was loud, and crowded, and the act we saw — Matt and Kim — was just plain horrible. They seemed to be a cartoon parody of a bad techno act.
Today we’re going on a hike at a local park, and the wedding is tonight.
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Greetings from Nashville!
We interrupt this Michigan vacation report to say: we are now in Nashville, Tennessee for the wedding of Anne’s nephew. We left on Thursday about noon, stayed over in Christiansburg VA, and arrived here yesterday in time to go out on the town with a big portion of the wedding crew. The strip here is basically nuts — Nash Vegas, as one homeless guy said — but we got some really good BBQ, and did some serious honky-tonking, before bed.
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Manistique: Big Spring and Indian Lake
We were only able to reserve one night at Tahquamenon Falls, but I did get two more nights reserved at Indian Lake State Park, between Lake Michigan and the much smaller, but still huge, Indian Lake. We were almost glamping at this one: our site was near the bathroom, and we ate out for breakfast and dinner. We were right on the shore of Indian Lake, which was forbidding and choppy when we arrived. Llater that afternoon the wind picked up; it felt like, if we were back home, an incredible thunderstorm was about to begin, but all it did was blow — all afternoon and all night.
The next day was much nicer weather, and we rode the seven miles to Big Spring, which was a huge, crystal clear pond, fed by springs coming up through fissures in the bottom. They said it produced 10,000 gallons a day, which then exited via its own stream and fed Indian Lake. Incredible color, with huge trout just swimming slowly around in the water.
That night we ate at Big Spring Inn, and the next morning we took off for Marquette.
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The Searchers All Say We Made Whitefish Bay
We didn’t quite make it to Whitefish Point, but our first night on the Upper Peninsula was spent pretty close to the bay, at a campsite in Tahquamenon Falls State Park, right where the Tahquamenon River enters Lake Superior. It was pretty serendipitous, actually: the campground was supposed to be full, but I took a chance and called, and we got a reservation for one night — in the RV section. (We got a good look at RV camping here and at our next campsite, and it’s a really weird, alien world.)
Anyway, we made it to our site in the middle of Thursday afternoon, set up camp and took a short walk down to the river mouth and lake shore, and saw a bunch of pileated woodpeckers, all hopping around on the ground eating bugs. The sunset was pretty; we watched from the riverbank as the sky grew dark, then crashed for the night in the hammock. We’d been warned about serious mosquito nastiness, but the bugs were not too bad, and it was also mush warmer than we were expecting, mid-eighties during the day and maybe 70 at night.
Friday we packed up, then we did a road ride out to the Lower Falls on the river, about 30 miles round trip. This area is so flat that we were doing a good 17 mph with almost no effort — it was a bit of a surprise that there could even be waterfalls here, when we actually found ourselves at the falls they were really big (though not tall), and beautiful. It was another hot day and people were swimming;,and some teens were even playing behind the falling water.
It was mid-afternoon when we got back to the campsite. We showered and changed, and then hit the road for Manistique.
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Greetings From Ann Arbor!
Well, we made it! The eight hour (and change) travel time turned out to actually be more like ten-plus, what with construction delays, rest breaks, and breakfast/lunch stops, but the trip was uneventful. We got to our bed-and-breakfast — the Baxter House, which by the way is really awesome: I’ll take photos — around 6:00.
We didn’t do too much last night — Nicole Atkins was playing in town, but we blew it off and just grabbed dinner and drinks, outdoors at an Irish pub on Main Street; we wandered around afterward, did some people watching, and then we just walked back to our place. We tried to do a bit of reading but were both probably fully asleep by 10:00. It’s actually much warmer here than we expected, and a lot like home: highs in the upper eighties, lows around 70, though not nearly as much rain (or flooding). We brought tons of warm clothes, which will probably come into play once we’re sleeping outdoors in the Upper Peninsula.
Today is our only full day in town. We’ll be meeting Ben’s old friend Jason, who’s getting his PhD here, so he can show us around a bit. There are many cool bookstores and coffee shops, and I have a list of great brew pubs to check out, but I have a feeling we’re only going to scratch the surface of what’s on offer here.
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Just A Test
This is a shot of VolksPlatz and other Musikfest shenanegans, from the Broad Street bridge over the Monocacy and colonial industrial quarter. I took it on our way home the other day, and I’m posting it here as a test, to see about blogging from my phone.