Summer Trip to the Flats

We had another wonderful trip to Michigan and the Flats this year! Elizabeth had a fantastic time as did we all and it was sure great to see the family, especially my Grandmother and Grandfather whom we don't get to see very often!
The cottage is looking great, my parents are doing a wonderful job with the old shack. As usual, the fleet of boats continues to grow. This year the new addition to the fleet was a 2nd wave runner. My parents also brought their jet boat down from Traverse City for Kate, Elizabeth and I to use. I am quite certain that this makes the largest Flats fleet on record: The main boat - 21ft center console, the jet boat, 2 jet skis, the 11ft whaler, Prindle 16 catamaran, 6 kayaks, and of course the leaky aluminum boat under the cottage.
Of course before we could get into the swing of things Kate needed her fix of Boat Knots from the Riverside Grocery. Boat knots are basically pizza dough cut into strips and rolled up almost like mini cinnamon rolls but with your choice of toppings rolled inside. Our favorites are the Aloha Knots which are the pizza dough rolled up with ham and pineapple inside. They are baked up and served hot with a pizza sauce dip and drizzled with garlic butter and covered in Parmesan cheese. They are absolutely heavenly! After arriving on a Friday night, our plan was to head over to the riverside late in the morning for lunch because Kate just couldn't wait to get to have them boat knots again... Unfortunately it was poring rain but I couldn't keep my preganant wife hungry so I donned the foul weather gear and life jacket and took off on the jet ski for the ~8 mile round trip to the Riverside.

Despite the full covering of Gore-Tex I came home soaked, but Kate's Boat Knots made it just fine! And they were delicious!Elizabeth did a great job wearing her life jacket everywhere we went and fortunately without protest. She loved going for boat rides but wasn't so sure in the beginning about going fast. She doesn't like the wind and the noise from the engine but by the end of our vacation she didn't mind it a bit.Grandpa and Uncle Casey did a little "fish habitat improvement" prior to our arrival to ensure there was a sufficiently deep fishing hole for Elizabeth to fish in right off the dock. Of course she got into the fish in no time at all catching her very first fish, a nice little lake perch with grandpa. Grandpa also taught Elizabeth about fishing with bait, and more specifically worms. The funniest part was, "what does the worm say when you put it on the hook?" Elizabeth's response: "Ouch!"Kate, Elizabeth, my Mom and I drove up to Rogers City Michigan to visit my Grandmother. It was so great to see her and to see how wonderfully she is doing. We had a nice dinner with Grandma and Aunt Carla at Karsten's Dairy. Elizabeth especially like the meat loaf. Of course we couldn't resist snapping off a few pictures in the back yard.

Lake Huron is just down the street from my grandmother, literally a couple hundred yards away. Elizabeth, Grandma, and Aunt Carla ventured down to the lake to play with Elizabeth while kate and I were visiting with Grandma for a few minutes. Of course Elizabeth has to get her feet wet in pretty much every body of water she comes across, everything from mud puddles to even inland seas like Lake Huron.
After a great visit with Elizabeth's Great Grandma and Aunt Carla it was time to head over to Traverse City to see my Grandfather and Uncle Casey. Casey had just graduated from his nursing program and he and Jennifer finally were able to take their official RN exam with the state of Michigan. They had to wait for 2 days to get the results but fortunately the news was all good. They both passed. It was also my mother's birthday! So of course had to celebrate! We had Grandpa out to the house, and our good family friends Lee and Shirley came over and a wonderful time was had by all!
Grandpa is doing great too, he is very active visiting many of Traverse City's fine culinary establishments and has a new favorite past time, the Opera. Kate and I were able to take him to one our favorite breakfast joints, an amazing little French place called Patisserie Amie. Its a quaint little place with only about 5 tables but the food is nothing short of amazing!

Elizabeth did her share of fine dining as well, Uncle Casey was jealous of all of the great food that she we eating and decided so see if she would share... Apparently the food was pretty darn good because she wasn't giving any of it up. It's wonderful to get back to Traverse City in the summertime. Its truly an amazing place. There is so much to do and precious few nice days to do it in. We did manage to stop by my long time favorite restaurant in TC - good ol' "Don's Drive In" for some of the best greasy burgers and fries around and easily the best chocolate malt I've ever had.
The scenery in northern Michigan is pretty fantastic too this time of year. Its lush with greens and of course there is water just about everywhere you go. We took advantage of the natural beauty and took some fun shots of the family out in the front yard.
We also headed down to the beach at the end of the street for an afternoon dip. We are all familiar with the saying "water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink..." Well this isn't really the case in TC, the water is so clean that drinking it isn't really an issue - especially thanks to the zebra muscle invasion, but in a mild summer like it was this year a more appropriate saying would be "water, water everywhere and its all too freezing cold to swim in!" Despite the cold water, I sure miss having Lake Michigan within walking distance.
Elizabeth didn't seem to mind the cold though, as long as the sun was high in the sky and she has a great time making sand castles with grandma and grandpa.
Before heading back to the flats we decided to spend an extra day in TC and go canoeing with Casey and Jennifer. After a nice breakfast with Grandpa we headed out to the Boardman River, dropped a car off at the pickup location and then launched the canoes. We had a great day on the river and a nice lunch on a little island halfway down the river. Casey and Jennifer managed to tip their canoe and go for brief swim just before lunch. After lunch it was our turn. A low hanging branch clothes-lined kate picking her up out of the canoe and setting her gently down in the river on her tush. It all happened in seemingly slow motion but there was nothing either of us could really do about it. I somehow managed to stay dry in the canoe... don't ask how, its still a bit of a mystery.
Nice Dismount!
The Boardman river is of particular interest to the fly fishers among us as it is the origin of the Adams fly. I did get a chance during lunch to do a little fishing an was pleasantly surprised to catch a nice little brown.

After a great stay in Traverse City and some wonderful visits with my Grandparents it was time to head back down to the flats. We decided to try our luck with putting Elizabeth in a Kayak to see how she would do.
We picked out the one we thought would work best for her - one that was stable but also one that you sit down in a little bit instead of one you sit on top of. We equipped her with some Cheerios, sunglasses and a hat and went out looking for duckies. She loved it! This is a wonderfully unique place around the cottage with hundreds of square miles of wetlands which is home to a huge variety of interesting creatures like cormorants, blue herons, coots, mallards, muskrats, turtles, frogs, carp, gar pike, swans, geese, swallows, an assortment of snakes, and even foxes who have been consistent residents at the cottage. Exploring by Kayak offers a fantastic opportunity to explore and sneak up on these critters. Elizabeth especially liked feeding the ducks with her cheerios!
One fun treat at the flats this year was my parents jet boat. They brought it down just for us so that we could get around easily. Because the area is a large wetland river delta there are miles of cuts through the marsh, shallow bays and a number of fun places to go. A jet craft of some sort (jef ski, wave runner, or jet boat) is one of the most fun ways to get around.
So kate and Elizabeth and I would hop on the jet boat and my parents would take the wave runners and off we all went! Elizabeth wasn't so sure at first but it didn't take long before she really began to have a lot of fun in the boat!
We also took a fun little day trip to the Detroit Zoo. We got up early, zipped back to the mainland in the jet boat, jumped in the car and after a short drive we were at the zoo. They have a fun butterfly pavilion there and some nice large spaces for the animals to live in.
Our favorite exhibit had to be the polar bears! They have a nice pool that they can swim in and a glass tunnel in the pool that people can walk through. When we were there the bears were sitting on top of the tunnel playing offering a unique perspective of the polar bears! Elizabeth loved it!On the way back to the island we stopped for some Famous Dave's BBQ. It was delicious and cheap - our kind of meal! What a fun filled day with Elizabeth!
We also had a couple of opportunities for some great water skiing.While we mentioned how great the Riverside is for Boat Knots and Pizza, we never mentioned just how great their ice cream are too. Whenever we would go there for lunch we would also be sure to indulge just a little more and have a delicious ice cream cone - the have some fantastic hard ice cream and since everyone was having a cone, Elizabeth decided that she just had to have one too!
I took Elizabeth in and asked if they had a kiddie cone and it turns out that they had a little itty bitty baby cone just perfect for Elizabeth and it was only 75 cents! So I let her pick out her own flavor which turned out to be the pink one, and we went outside to eat it. after about 5 minutes her cone was gone and surprisingly more of it was eaten than melted and smeared all over her face and lifejacket! Then, in the cutest little voice we hear "More ice cream cone?" And who could resist a face like this one? So we go in and get another baby cone for her and this one is devoured in no time too. Watching her finish the cone was quite amusing, you could see the gears turning in her head as Kate and I were still working on our cones. Now with cone #2 eaten she looks at Kate and says "More ice cream cone?" while pointing at the remainder of Kate's cone. After a few licks from her cone she comes over to me and.... you guessed it, "More ice cream cone?" It was quite a spectacle. Our dear friend Cathy also made it down for a couple of days at the flats!
Fortunately her arrival was much less exciting than last year! Kate and Kathy got to catch up on things, do a little bit of Kayaking, sailing, and jet boating! One day we decided to head over to a fine establishment on Harsen's Island, Browns, for the Pickerel Plate and some cheese burgers. Browns is kinda like Michigan's version of a biker bar only instead of bikes, its boats. It was extremely windy that day but decent enough to make it there safely without overdoing it in the waves for Kate. By the time we got there we were soaked but the food was absolutely fantastic.

Cathy and I had a couple of great sails while she was there. Cathy also tried out water skiing for the first time and did great! We'll have to get her out there again next year. We also took the ferry over to Harsen's Island one day when it was too windy and rough for Kate to go boating. We had a great breakfast at the Riverside of breakfast pizza and cinnamon rolls. Elizabeth had french toast which she refers to as pancakes (anything that gets dipped in syrup is a pancake) and even found a nice park to play. Cathy, Elizabeth and I nearly got sick riding the merry go round - it was fun at first but then I felt sick most of the rest of the day. No wonder they've taken them out of most playgrounds! Elizabeth really liked the airplane that she could ride in with daddy.

We had a great trip yet again this year! Elizabeth had a terrific time too! So much to do and so many things to explore! Her vocabulary also seemed to double in those two weeks, it was so exciting to see her grow.

We are already looking forward to next year's trip!

The new deck - Ah the joys of home ownership!

So you may be wondering why we haven't been putting up any new posts lately... part of it is good news, we were on a long family vacation which we will be posting soon, but the other reason is because all of our free time at home has been completely consumed rebuilding our deck. The old one was built using non-pressure treated pine for a sub structure - basically lumber that one would use to build something indoors - not outside as the foundation of a deck. The substructure was rotting, the decking had seen its better days and was also starting to rot in places, after a lot of unsuccessful brainstorming on how to fix it on the cheap we finally concluded that everything had to go.
Some of these boards were so rotten that weeds were growing out of them! Very Nice! And you've gotta love all the trash that was left under there! Kate was nice enough to help me extract the thousands of screws holding down the decking.


Once all of the old junk was removed it was time to replace the sub structure with some real pressure treated lumber that would last. And then time to put on the new decking and railing.


Finally at last the project is complete! We decided to put a 45 degree angle in the corner by the apple tree. This really made a big difference. It looks a lot nicer. We also didn't want to obstruct our nice view of the park in the back with the railing but still wanted a small barrier along that side of the deck so we decided to build in a little bench seat. It worked out well. The finished product!

Colorado River - The Secret Family Fishing Hole

There is a narrow window of opportunity each year on our secret hole on the Colorado River where the weather is nice and warm, the river flows have settled down to prime fishing flows and the fish are willing to take dry flies from the surface making for a wonderful day in the mountains. This year, with a late start to the warm summer weather and a very rainy spring, the runoff hasn't subsided until just recently and the fishing has finally picked up. With nothing planned on the calendar and the window of opportunity open we made a quick decision to head up to the Colorado River and our secret family fishing hole.
Elizabeth had a great time fishing. She really like holding the fishing rod, poking the rod tip into the river, and splashing the water with it. Occasionally, while "casting", she would throw the whole rod into the river and Kate or I would have to go retrieve it for her.

Elizabeth also had a great time exploring, she wanted to "go for a walk" with me wading down the river while I carried her and do some exploring. She also had a wonderful time chasing the chipmonks and looking at all of the bugs. Her new favorite was the Caddis fly which is one of the favorites of fly fisherman as it is a mainstay in the trout diet.

We also had a wonderful little picnic along side the river. We made some great sandwiches, had some cheese and crackers, as well as Elizabeth's favorite, chocolate chip cookies!

What a wonderful day! Hopefully we'll get another opportunity to get up for another day on the river before the summer is over!

Texas visit

Elizabeth and I visited my mom and dad in Texas this weekend and had such a great time. Avery was visting Grandmom and Grandpop for a week for summer camp so we got to spend lots of time with her as well. She and Elizabeth had a great time together!

Avery was like a big sister to Elizabeth and Elizabeth could not get enough of Avery. Everything Avery did, said, touched, colored, played with etc. Elizabeth had to do, try, touch, color, play with etc. Avery was so patient with Elizabeth and really took her under her wing for the weekend.

One of the highlights of the trip was our morning swims in the pool. Avery and Elizabeth were little fish who would have stayed in the pool the entire day but they wore Grandmom, Grandpop and me out within a few hours! Elizabeth enjoyed watching the golfers while she swam and would say in her cute little voice "hello golfers" and "more golfers" as she hung over the edge of the pool, staring at the golfers tee off. She got a lot of waves and smiles from the golfers! She also liked watching the bumble bees on the bushes next to the pool and singing baby bumble bee with Pop Pop.
I could not publish a post of Grandmom and Grandpop's house without a picture of Shadow and Baby Shadow the dogs. Every time my mom and dad Skype us, Shadow always comes out for a visit. Elizabeth knows Shadow via Skype and therefore they were best friends in TX. Shadow was dragged all over the house by both Avery and Elizabeth!

Another hit of Grandmom and Grandpop's house is the piano. The girls surprisingly did not bang on the piano (for the most part) but actually tried to play it. Elizabeth could entertain herself at the piano for 1/2 hour which is pretty amazing for a two year old! I think piano lessons are in the not too distant future.

Are these some great looking Texas cowgirls or what!





It was over 100 degrees every day we were in Texas so this is how we spent our afternoons. Speaking for Elizabeth and myself, popsickles never tasted so good!

4th of July - Hiking Trip - Goose Creek Trail

With a nice 3-day weekend and some fantastic weather we decided to celebrate our independence by packing the family up into the American made gas guzzler and head to the high country.
We headed out in the Lost Creek Wilderness, basically the middle of nowhere Colorado, to avoid the crowds for a little hike, picnic, and of course some fishing in the beautiful Rocky Mountains.
Much to our surprise and delight, Elizabeth willingly jumped into the backpack and had a grand old time back there on our hike. She lasted probably about 30 minutes which turned out to be perfect, it got us down off the ridge line and down along the river where there was some nice shade and some great open campsites along the river.

The trail head is in what is known as the Hayman fire burn area where a few years back a fire consumed hundreds of square miles of forest. Within about 10 minutes from the parking lot the trail works its way into a nice lush river valley that was spared by the fire.
We found a nice open area along the river with plenty of shade and open area for a picnic and plenty of space for Elizabeth to explore and plenty of new things for her to discover.
Elizabeth loved climbing on the large boulders and looking at all of the birds and butterflies that were constantly around us. She also made her way over to the little hill on the edge of the path to climb a bit.
Who knew Mushrooms were so fascinating?!
I of course strung up a little fly rod and jumped in for some dry fly action with the little brookies in the creek.
What these fish lack in size they more than make up for in their beauty and willingness to take large dry flies from the surface.
Kate also took a turn with the fly rod with Elizabeth looking on with interest. She eventually wanted to take a turn too. I got a nice little shot of Kate performing a perfect roll cast from the tight cover of the stream bank. Nicely done!Elizabeth was eying the river all day long and I finally convinced her to come with me out to the rock in the middle. Even on a hot day in July the mountain streams are very cold and with runoff still in progress and all the rain we have been having it was a little off color. About 5 minutes in the water and my feet were numb, but our expedition to the rock was successful. After lunch and out little trip to the rock our little explorer was getting tired. We packed it up and did a couple of quick pictures with the camera on a timer to get the whole family and they we were on our way home.
On the way back Elizabeth fell asleep in a matter of minutes.

Along the trail were a wonderful variety of wildflowers in full bloom. We stopped to take a few pictures, a couple of which are worth sharing.

After a few last shots we headed back up to the truck at the top of the trail head. Even though we were in the middle of nowhere, we still passed a surprising number of families out for the day. Considering we were about 10 miles off the nearest paved road who would have guessed it would have been this popular...
Once we made it back to the car, we were so careful to get Elizabeth, still sound asleep, out of the backpack and back into the car without waking her up. It kinda worked at first, but then it quickly became clear that she just experienced her very first power nap. Elizabeth was raring to go with about an hour and forty five minutes still ahead of us. That was one crazy drive home!

What a fun trip. Kate and I look forward to heading back sometime for a quick backpacking trip. Further up the trail the scenery gets incredible and we would really like to take it all in sometime...

Maybe next summer!

Weekend with Grandmom Maron

My mom came out last weekend for a quick visit and we had a great time. One of the highlights of her trip was taking Elizabeth on tractor and horse and buggy rides at the Golden farmer's market. Elizabeth's new favorite word is "giddy up." It was cute at first when she would say it to the horses but now she likes to say it to mommy and daddy. Giddy up mommy! Mommy has been moving a bit slow lately so that does not go over very well (but deep down, anything Elizabeth says is still pretty cute).

Elizabeth has learned how to really jump lately and we caught her in action. She likes to make pretend she is a kangaroo. Look at that air!


My mom is one of those people that is amazing at anything she puts her mind to, quilting included. She made me the most beautiful quilt that I've ever seen for my birthday and I absolutely love it. I will treasure it always.