Adventures in Michigan's Great Northwest

Gretchen and Augie are done with school, and I was on vacation this week. So we packed up the Highlander and headed for Bergland for some much needed time off. It was a busy week. Here's a recap. (Note: This is a long post.)

We left around 10:30 p.m. Sunday after I got home from work. So we didn't do a whole lot on Monday except try to stay awake. We did venture off to Ironwood for dinner and a trip to the store. Gracie and mom had fun at the Burger King playplace (or whatever Burger King calls it).

Augie and Mikey had fun, too. Mikey -- just like Augie and Gracie -- was making his first visit to grandma's house in the U.P. He endured many a waterfall pit stop on his way to the house with grandma.

Augie and Mikey had each other to play with for Monday and most of Tuesday. Aunt Jen and the cousins didn't get there until Tuesday night.

Sophie made the trip, too, but she doesn't have the energy to keep up with the boys like she used to.

I went to a couple of different places Monday trying to buy a fishing license, only to find out the DNR terminals were down. So we didn't hit the pier until Tuesday. This is a shot from Augie's first time fishing. He didn't last very long, which didn't surprise me.

Tuesday afternoon we drove to Silver City to see Lake Superior and visit one of the world's best gift shops. It's a small place, but it has a ton of gifts.

Back to the lake. This particular Lake Superior shoreline is known to have a plethora of smooth stones. When we were kids, we'd visit the lake every year to skip them. Augie and Mikey were more interested in finding the biggest ones and throwing them in.

When they grew tired of that, they discovered the wood along the shoreline floated. So they threw a bunch of it in.

Gracie checked out the rocks, too, which is dangerous, because she's been known to put rocks in her mouth and try to eat them.

What she really wanted was to play in the water. I didn't test it, but I assume it was somewhere around 50 degrees. She didn't care. If there is water to be found, she wants to be in it.

You'll notice Gracie had something on her ankle there. It wasn't a bracelet, it was a mosquito band. It was supposed to repel them. There were mosquitoes everywhere. We put Mikey in charge of killing them when they got in the house.

You might say there were more mosquitoes than you could shake a stick at.

We managed to shoo them away for long enough to get a family picture. Gracie and Augie were clearly still thinking about the rocks.

When we got back to the house, Gracie did some exercises so next time she'd be strong enough to squirm away from mom.

On the way back to Bergland, we stopped at a restaurant that was supposedly visited by bears every day. However, we were told they weren't expected to visit until about 8 p.m.

So we went home, ate some watermelon and did some grilling.

On Tuesday night, the minions from Kenosha made it to the house, and things started to get tight.

So Wednesday morning, we packed up the tackle and headed back to Lake Gogebic for a second go at the fish.

It was a windy, choppy day -- perfect for fishing. Especially since it was a southerly wind. Grandma's house is located near the north end of the lake, so the fishing is better when the southern winds blow the fish north. Here's my first one of the week. It was a monster.

They were biting so good, even Titus caught one. He seemed more impressed by mine, though.

There isn't TV at grandma's house. Well, there is a TV, but only a DVD player and VHS player, so the kids had to fill their time with other things when they weren't fishing, like Hungry Hungry Hippos.

The game pieces were a little small for Gracie, so she played stuffed animals with Aunt Jen.

Wednesday afternoon was spent hiking to Agate Falls. On the hiking difficulty scale, this waterfall ranked about a 1. When we were kids, we hiked many a "trail" trying to find "waterfalls" in northern Michigan.

We were told it's been raining up there a lot this spring, so the falls didn't disappoint.

Here's everyone we had up north, except grandma, of course. She was taking the picture.

On the way back to Bergland, we stopped in Bruce Crossing for some adult beverages. Gracie wasn't amused by the delay.

So we fed her some spaghetti and chocolate cake. She forgave us pretty quickly.

After dinner, Mikey and I played catch with some Velcro mitts grandma Westerhoven sent along for the trip.

Thursday morning, grandma got her obligatory all grandchildren picture out of the way.

Then it was off to the Ontonagon County Historical Society Museum for an adventure back in time.

They had a lot of cool stuff, but I especially liked this mural of Michigan license plates from 1910-59. What's cool is that grandma has several of these plates hiding in her barn at home.

The Ontonagon lighthouse wasn't far from the museum, so we dropped by to see that, too.

We stopped at the Ontonagon County Park for lunch before heading back to Bergland. The park was newer and had a lot of nice playground equipment, but of course everyone liked the sand pile.

I ventured out to check out the Lake Superior beach.

Grandma found me.

Thursday afternoon, we checked out the baseball field in Bergland. But we didn't have any gloves, so it wasn't much fun.

Lucky for us, the city had dropped a couple of basketball hoops on the tennis courts behind the diamond AND left a basketball to use.

I wanted to play, so I put Augie in charge of cameraing. He did a pretty good job. He didn't drop the camera once.

He even got a couple of good action shots.

Yesterday, we made the drive from Bergland to our friends' house in Portage, Wisconsin so we didn't have to take the whole trip in one shot again. I didn't take any pictures there, because I was too lazy to unpack the camera. Today, we made the rest of the trip home, but not before Gracie could play with this frog at one of the toll road oases.