Vacation, Day 8

Tonight I sit in a hotel room in Moose Lake, Minnesota writing this post.

It was a long, but fun day.  Most of the day was driving, but even so, we had a lot of fun singing, listening to the boys hammer out details, solutions, and whatever else they were dealing with in the back seat.  Crazy funny stuff we would hear from back there, most of it, we'll sadly never remember.

We left Munising, Michigan this morning around 9:30am after having breakfast at the Dogpatch... yes, the same restaurant that we ate supper at the night before.

You see, when we got home from supper last night, our key would not unlock the front door as I said in the last post.  We received a $20 off coupon for our breakfast at the Dogpatch. I'm guessing this place may have the same owner or at least be in the same family.  Who's to say?

Never-the-less, we left town and drove through some heavy rains with one scary incident involving a hydro-plane in water that we couldn't see on the road.  Nasty.

So as we're driving, we keep encountering Lake Superior along the way and Lesley would ask Robby what body of water it was.  After guessing wrong the first couple of times, he caught on and was simply amazed that it was still Superior.  He couldn't get over the size of it.

So after driving all day long, we FINALLY are heading into Duluth, Minnesota, on a different route due to road construction, and Lesley asks him for the final time of the day, "Robby, what body of water is this?".  He wanted to reply Lake Superior, but he just couldn't.  I think he finally said, "I don't know.".  Momma told him it was Lake Superior and he said, and I'm not joking, "WHAT THE FREAKIN' H3ll???".

I nearly drove off the side of a very high bridge!

So once Mom and Dad gathered themselves and fully recovered, we told him that he is not to talk that way.

His response?

You probably guessed right, he said, "Well, I got it from one of you guys!".

I can only assume it was me...  what a fine moment for gut check on how you're doing with your parenting. Good grief.

Anyway, let's get on with some pictures since it is approaching 11pm which is WAY past my bedtime.

I got up at 5:30 this morning in hopes of watching the sun rise from behind me (I'm looking West here) and lighting up the hills in the distance.  That dark cloud thru the middle of the photo eventually dumped a nice rain on the area before we said goodbye.  So while I did not get my sunrise as planned, me and the seagulls had a great time out there by ourselves.

Caleb spotted me taking a picture and started heading back to our room.  Those white chairs and the two little ones are where we watched the sunset the previous night with a bottle of Door County wine.  If Robby looks a little sad here, it's because he was. He was showered and ready for his play date with his new buddy Jack.  That's a football in his lap.  Jack never showed but we did run into him as we were making our final trip to the RamVan this morning, so he did get to officially say goodbye.  That made him feel better, but he REALLY wanted to play football with him again.

This was  a waterfall that we encountered at some point in our drive today.  It was about 3 hours into the drive and a good time to stretch as there was a short hike to get to it.

You had to hike underneath this bridge to get to falls lookout point.  I enjoyed this bridge and a really high old steel rail road tressle bridge that looked like a giant erector set.

We drove to the Apostle Islands today but didn't really do much.  Caleb was just about disassembling because he wanted to play in a park so badly.  You can't really see it, but this is on the waters edge.  There's a marina on the left side of the photo and there's an island that you cannot really see in the background of the photo as well.  It was about 50 feet or so from the edge of...  wait for it Robby...  Lake Superior!

This is a shot of the sea caves at small inlet in Apostle Islands called Myers Lake if I recall correctly...  I'm just the driver.  There was a young athletic kayaker that was killed here earlier this year.  The waves get to be pretty unforgiving, as they were today, and he got himself mashed up in this area.  I'm guessing it hurt really bad, but not for long!

The critters giggling like a couple of school girls as the waves would come in and circle around their feet.  Robby kept trying to go on the other side of that log but when I pointed out that you could see the drop off of shore about 10 to 12 feet into the water, he thankfully got a little more timid.

Pictures of waves never capture the essence of what you're seeing/hearing.  It was really, really loud out there and the waves were relentless.  Really humbling to watch the power of water.

What the heck is this, you ask?  For those of you who perhaps don't know, a nickname of mine from the days of working at Musicland in Ames, Iowa, is Boogie.  It's a long story and about 97% of it is indeed true.  So today we're driving thru what must have been around the 214th small town/township and we see this classy place.  A real live saloon!  I'm not lyin, the sign says so!  I had to wheel around the block and take a pic. I really like the Blatz beer sign on the second story! A classy joint, for sure.

So that pretty much wraps up vacation.  We got into Moose Lake around 7pm, ordered some pizza from Poor Gary's,  sketti and meatballs for Caleb, had an excellent dinner once it was delivered and then went swimming for roughly an hour and a half.

Everybody is in bed where I intend to be in mere moments.

I hope to find more of the interesting photos once we're home and I have more time to go through them.  There are a few I know I have forgotten now but haven't had time to go back and add them yet.