A New Way of Walking

I changed my route and took my camera. It is like looking at the same thing with new eyes.
I started off by taking some shots of the Hen & Chicks in bloom. I thought this the best of the selection.

Stopped at the reservoir and this Mullein caught my eye. Looked it up upon returning home and found out this plant/weed has a two year cycle. This one is in year one and will grow its tall flowering spike next year.

This is the reservoir where I like to rock hunt.

The sumac is beginning to change from green to its brilliant scarlet.

Color is beginning to show in the trees. Just barely beginning.

The Hillman bridge with the Brush Mill Museum in the background.

The new bridge in Hillman is looking fine.

Thunder Bay River

The wood chips for the power plant.

One of natures beautiful arrangements

The back way into Thunder Bay Resort

Once you enter this sanctuary the sounds of the busy little town are muted. Everything is still except for the occasional falling of an acorn.

It doesn't take long for moss to coat everything.

Horse hoof prints- both directions represented

There is a deer in this photo...VERY hard to spot.

The bridge back home

Sunlight sparkles on the ripples

The water is clear- Pure Michigan

Hen & chicks in bloom

I have been not so patiently waiting for the Hen and Chicks to bloom. I knew it was close. The first of a dozen or more little flowers opened up this morning. It doesn't take much to please me...

New Faucet and the heat goes on

 I have wanted a different faucet in my kitchen ever since we moved in but I "got by" with a flexible sprayer do hickey on my faucet. For some reason Butch got fired up about replacing it. There is some corrosion around the base of it. So we went to Home Depot and looked at the pricey ones on display but we didn't buy that day. I began an online search for one and found what suited me on the Home Depot website for a modest $58. I read all the reviews and the people who had purchased one were happy with it so...
I thought since Home Depot is so close we will stop by and pick one up and save on postage. NOT! First off the stores do not carry it and secondly they cannot and will not order it for you. From experience I have found the online version of any store in any town is in no way related to the store you walk into anywhere. I feel they ought to advertise as such. Big sign saying if you order online we do not care- we do not have it here-and we cannot help you.
So I returned home and ordered it online. That is usually what I do anyway. And I found it on sale so with the sale price it made up for the S&H and thus got it for $58. So it all worked out as things usually do if we let them. 
We have been having some warm days (upper 80's) and running the AC. The forecast is for 2 more days of it before we have a cool down. It will be September then...wow- the days fly by.
later...

Work and a rockpile

Butch and I were 13 hours over this past week. We are trying to go the other way and work less hours not more but it isn't working out. Butch mowed greens yesterday morning and it was the first trouble free day of mowing greens that he has had. The weather was beautiful, the mower worked properly and everything went like clockwork.

After he finished mowing we walked to Hillman for breakfast. Stopped at Dollar General on the way back to see if they had horseradish. They didn't so we bought cookies instead.  Not totally Butch's fault this time. Butch said I think I am getting thicker through my middle because my pants are rolling over top my belt. I said uh,huh-that is why I wear my shirts over top my pants and have since I was 10. Butch weighed a skinny 135 when we got married and the list of things he would not eat was 3 times as long as it is now. And it isn't a short list even now!

But that worked for him in a way. Maybe I need to be a pickier eater. I like everything!!

As you can probably tell we haven't done a bunch of exciting stuff lately.

I went to the reservoir, a former gravel pit and did some rock hunting. That was fun and the fossils abound there. It does not take long to spot one. There are an abundance of Horn Coral fossils as I have found plenty of those and quickly.

It reminds me of a Ropa experience, sitting in a pile of rocks and looking them over, keeping the good ones and discarding the ordinary ones.

Video of GreatGrand Elise

Getting anxious to see her in person!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJwaCce_oKU

Bonfire pictures

Jan gets the table ready for Silverfox to set up

Butch and Ted get the fire going. Ted knows how to fan the flames!

Workampers Ronni and Rob enjoy the music.

Emma, grandaughter of Jack and Jan Matthias is working on S'mores.

24 hours

I kept getting a message that my pictures I was trying to upload were "server rejected". I was puzzled. Rejected by who? Verizon? I finally traced it down and I was being rejected by Blogger which is a part of Google. It seems you have a limited amount of space for pictures and when you exceed that you are rejected. I can buy more space which I have but it might take as long as 24 hours before it shows up in my account. So if you ae looking for the pictures I tried to post they are most likely not there. It seems I can post text and that is why you are getting this message.
Hope all is back to normal by tomorrow.  Just testing....

Thunder Bay is featured on M-Live

Thunder Bay is featured on M-Live and the phones have been ringing for reservations. Check it out. I am tickled pink we will be here for the fall colors and bugling elk.

Music, Bonfire and S'mores

Butch and I  were asked if we could help with a bonfire last night. That seemed like easy duty and we all know there is nothing on TV to distract us so we jumped at the chance. Silverfox played his beautifully haunting flute music, a few S'mores and the company of a group from Alpine Pleasure Tours made for a pleasant and relaxing evening.
Butch being the firebug that he is loved making the bonfire and I took more than a few pictures.
This is a lovely shot of pinecones burning. For some strange reason I am getting a server rejection notice on pictures I am attempting to upload so I will try again later. Check in later for more pictures.

A couple more

I have whipped out a couple more bracelets. I am getting faster. These do not hurt my wrist.

Update from my friend Kay

Kay and Bill are our age and there are only two people in their current household. I am not sure I would let him out of my sight!
Latest from Kay:
I do have to tell you that Bill is at it again. Yesterday he came home with 34 ears of sweet corn, (all you could get in a bag for a $1.00). Of course he got 2 bags. They had red potatoes for 5 cents a pound, so of course we got two bags which totaled 25 pounds for $1.30. I have the biggest head of cabbage, that will take me at least 3 weeks to use up, a head of lettuce, 2 pounds of baby carrots, and celery Hey there is hope he only got 1 dozen eggs. He is bragging as he got all this for $9.70.
Hey do not laugh        I NEED HELP!!!!!

Vibrams

Fellow workamper Jan has the weirdest looking shoes that she says are extremely comfortable. So I took a couple pictures of them to share with you. The website for the shoes can be found here: http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/indexNA.htm

Stumbled upon

I stumbled upon a website where he makes a short movie of the places he and his lovely young wife have visited. I thought you might like to see Mackinac Island from his perspective.

http://longlonghoneymoon.com/2010/07/13/video-no-man-is-an-island-mackinac-island/

Full Day

Butch put in 10 hours yesterday. That does not happen often. He did 4 hours of mowing greens and 6 hours of rangering. I did some blogging then worked on bracelets.
Oh and we worked in a walk and breakfast at a local restaurant too. While we were on our walk I noticed a smell that was not easily identified. Finally it dawned on us that it was from the power plant. The Alpena power plant is located in Hillman and they grind up wood chips. The ground up wood chips is what we were smelling. Not an altogether unpleasant smell but quite powerful. I imagine the humidity had something to do with the intensity of it. I did notice it was better than the rotting corn smell we got from the elevator in Cumberland IA when they cleaned out the bins in the fall. That was always pretty disgusting and it seemed to last for weeks.
Our plans for today include the demise of some spider houses. I was going to put a really neat photo of a spider web in here but copyright issues cropped into my head so you will have to rely on your imagination of a dew covered spider web of beautiful proportions.

Baby Elise looking serious

Latest Elise

From proud Grandpa Gary

With Grandma Susan

Movie and Ice Cream

Went to see Nanny McPhee, small cee-Big pee. You know about that if you had seen the first one. Good movie. I like kids movies. Butch liked it too. Especially the synchronized swimming pigs. We went with Tom and Wanda Burnell and Rob and Ronni Silver-fellow workampers. After the movie we went for ice cream at North Country. Very pleasant afternoon.

Hen & Chicks

I seem to have a knack with Hen & Chicks. Or Any plant in the cactus family that does not take much attention. I found a Hen & Chicks on Leo's  back steps and they needed planted so I did an intervention some might call it a plantnapping and they have flourished. The main mama is about to bloom!












This was taken from Main Mama a few months ago and now she has a bunch of chicks.

Lightning

Last night it started to rain and we had flashes of lightning and rumbling thunder. Butch started grumbling about mowing greens in the rain...again! I said do not cry before you are hurt thinking it surely could not last all night. Well it did. The sun is starting to peek out now but from 6 to 9, the green mowing time, it was pretty rainy...and he has a sore throat with continual sinus drainage. Chewed him out for not using the netipot. He is now using it so we will see if he caught it in time.
Found a website about our hometown all done on a humorous note. It has been around since 2007 so not exactly new. I could tell right off the local hierarchy was not in charge of it because they were being lampooned. www.jeffersoniowanews.com  The website takes some maneuvering but very interesting in many places. Check out the archives. I got stuck on the "Who lives here" section where there are several pages of house pictures and who used to live there and who lives there now. Probably not of much interest to anyone but Jeffersonians past and present.
I am reading Sunday's Child by Tom Lewis and Butch finished The Help by Kathryn Stockette. Butch was in need of more reading material so I started looking on the kindle and found a bunch of free ones. Most of them were by first time authors, perhaps the reason they were free. I will let you know if they were worth downloading. There is a kindle for PC version that you can download for your computer and it is free. It works very much like the Kindle I have and can take with me anywhere. If you have any questions about that feel free to ask me or go to www.amazon.com and do a search for kindle. They will tell you about Kindle for PC.

Ladybug in flight

Have you ever seen a photo of a ladybug in flight? Me neither. I am not the photographer.

A story about our friends Bill & Kay

For those of you who know Bill & Kay well this will give you a chuckle and not surprise you. For those of you who don't know them well, I hope you will get a chuckle. Bill & Kay were getting ready to go on a trip so Kay had pared down all the food in the fridge. A day before they were headed off on their trip Bill decided to go to the Farmers Market. Kay told him NOT to buy anything. Firmly she said, "DO NOT buy anything!". Bill has a shopping problem that is famous. He cannot seem to buy just one of anything.
 Kay had a few errands to run before taking off on their trip and she came home to find  8 quarts of strawberries, 24 ears of corn, 4 pints of Blueberries, ( 4) 5 pound bags of sugar, 2 dozen eggs, and 6 tomatoes!


This is what Kay emailed to her friend Julie:

Funeral arrangements are pending for William R. Stilson, age 69 of Curtice, Ohio. He was reportedly found buried under 8 quarts of strawberries, 24 ears of corn, 4 pints of Blueberries, ( 4) 5 pound bags of sugar, 2 dozen eggs, and 6 tomatoes. He is survived by his overworked distraught wife Kay 


I think she is going to have to ground him for his own safety!

Touring Northeast Michigan

We took Bill & Kay on a bit of a tour first stopping at Fletcher's Pond.

Then we moseyed on to Alpena and stopped at Dollar Tree for some Maple Leaf Creme Cookies.

 Dollar Tree is the only place that has them and we have refrained from stopping there every time we go to Alpena until yesterday. Butch was driving. After filling the car with the aroma of maple we did a short tour of Alpena and then moved up the road to Rogers City and the 40 Mile Point Lighthouse.

Following a pleasant visit at the lighthouse we found our way back to Hillman and played cribbage for a good share of the afternoon and evening. Bill had received a really bad haircut a couple of months ago and the "edges" had reached a point where they needed attention but the top was fine so Butch took out his clippers and trimmed Bill up around the edges. He did a pretty fair job considering both of them had enjoyed more than a little margarita.

Cold Front

Yesterday was a busy day with surprises. I was expecting our friends the Stilsons  on Wednesday but they came yesterday afternoon and what a pleasant surprise. We have had a great time with lots of laughs since they arrived. We have showed them around Thunder Bay Resort by car and golf cart. A cold front went through yesterday afternoon and we dang near froze to death on those golf carts. We made it a quick tour for sure. We enjoyed pizza at the grill and then went into Hillman for ice cream at the Lickety Split.
This morning Butch is playing his usual golf at Bill and Kay's insistence and then we are going into Jaques restaurant in Hillman for omelets. Kay loves omelets and at this particular restaurant not only do they have good omelets they also have homemade wheat bread. So more fun plans for the day.

Kay is objecting to picture taking but I think it is a good one of all.

I have neglected to tell you of Butch's bracelet making. It is the bracelet that hurts my wrist to make. Unfortunately he says it strains his eyes. Age takes its toll. Take care of your body, you never know how long you'll need it and it is doggone frustrating to have it give you trouble. I tell this to all the young ones knowing full well it is either too late or falling on deaf ears. 

It is Butch's bracelet. I started it and finished it for him. He did the middle.

Water for Elephants

by Sara Gruen I just finished this book and it is worth a look to see if it suits your tastes. Butch enjoyed it very much too.
http://www.amazon.com/Water-Elephants-Novel-Sara-Gruen/dp/1565125606

Sometimes...

Thinking of a title is the hardest part. Butch is off traveling to another golf course with a bunch of guys. Something he said he wouldn't do but we all know how that goes. I am doing laundry and plan to get  a walk in shortly. Missed yesterday.
It is one of those mornings that remind us that summer is on the wane and fall will be here soon. Just a bit of coolness in the air. Very nice after the hot days with the AC running. I know all you folks who have had the triple digit temps are chuckling about our so-called hot days in northern Michigan. It has been a very pleasant summer weather wise. Near perfect most would say. I was very interested in what yesterday would be like because "WINDY" was in the forecast for here. It was going to be blasting away with 20 mph! Whooeee! That is merely a breeze in most places we have been where wind doesn't even play a part unless it exceeds 35 mph with gusts from 45 to 60. But it was a windy day here-the windiest one of the summer. Maybe winter is a different story. I have no plans to find out.
Must get my sheets in the dryer...till later...