More Camping Pictures

Patrick took most of the pictures. He has a fancy camera and knows how to use it.

Summertime in Northern Michigan

Last weekend my best friends and I went camping. It was my last Michigan adventure, and it was wonderful! We drove up to Traverse City (if you look at the back of your left hand, Traverse City is roughly between your middle and fourth fingers) on Thursday. We found a state park with a campground and set up our tent on one of the first sites we found. It was dark and rainy, so we didn't take a lot of time to explore our surroundings. The next morning, we realized we were the ONLY people in the whole campground. It was awesome. We blasted some Black Eyed Peas and had a little dance party to start off the day of adventuring.
Then we drove up a little peninsula in Grand Traverse Bay (a bay in Lake Michigan). We played in the sand, waded in the water, and found a little playground next to a lighthouse (I can still swing upside down on the monkey bars!). Next we drove to the lake and rented an inflatable trampoline a little ways off the shore. That was a blast! We only got pictures of the little trampoline, but we spent most of our time on a bigger one. It kind of gave us a feeling for what it would be like to be drunk. It was almost impossible to stay balanced. We were falling all over the trampoline and each other. The day was rainy and cold, but it was a blast anyway.
Next we headed up to the upper peninsula. I don't know if this information is generally known (except by Jacob, who lived there), but besides the mitten portion of Michigan, there's another chunk that's about half as big as the rest of the state, connected to the US only through Wisconsin. We had to drive over the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere to get there. And it was great! Almost the whole UP is state parks and wilderness areas. We camped in a really pretty forested state park. The next morning we went to Tahquamenon Falls. I don't know too much of the history of the falls, but they were beautiful. There were little nature trails going through forests of ferns and pine trees. I love the UP. It was just so pretty. On the drive home, we stopped in a little town for a blueberry festival, had dinner in Saginaw, and saw some amazing landscape. Michigan really is a great place for summer activities (and winter, too).

The Parable of the Potato Chips, Part Deux

If you'll remember, when we left off, a certain girl had eaten one really good gourmet potato chip, and was left wanting more. Well, this girl was recently given a whole bag of gourmet potato chips. They were perfectly seasoned, not too oily, perfectly crispy, and, according to the label, contained nothing fake. She just wishes she knew where to get more, and what the rest of the package meant.

Even more Italy

1. Raphael's tomb in the Pantheon

2. Us in front of the Roman forum

3. Mt. Vesuvius in the background of the Pompeiian ruins.

4. Jenny serving up some lunch at one of the restaurants in Pompeii

5. The courtyard of our hotel in Naples

More Italy

1. The beach in Sorrento. It's a really cute village about an hour train ride from Sorrento. We didn't realize there'd be a good beach there, so we showed up in 90 degree weather fully clothed and missed what could have been great fun. But it was still amazing to see.

2. More Sorrento

3. Victor Emmanuele Monument. Victor Emmanuele was the first king of the consolidated Italian city states. He built this huge monument to himself. It's a giant building with huge horse sculptures on the roof. This sculpture is so huge, a person can fit in the horse's hoof.

4. The Pantheon

5. A tombstone in St. Peter's in Chains Church. It's the angel of death.

Italy

So, it turns out being a tourist in a foreign country is a little more fun than doing it alone. We saw a lot of cool sites and ate some good food. I'll try to just give some quick explanations of a few of our photos. The first picture is from Pompeii. Pompeii was lived in from about 500 BC to 79AD. Then Mt. Vesuvius exploded and the town was buried in lava and ash. When excavaters were digging it out, they found hollow spaces, and realized these were where people had been buried and then decomposed as the rock hardened. They poured plaster into the holes, and these are the casts that were made. These particular ones were up against a garden gate, on the farthest end of town from the volcano. The second picture is an ancient welcome mat, built right into the front porch. I can't remember exactly what it means, but the letters "HAVE" mean something like "Hail Friends". The third picture is Jenny in front of one of the casts of a victim. Next is where we tried to go to church in Naples. Before I went to Italy, I looked up the address for the meeting house in Naples, and figured out how to get there from the hotel. It was in a skeevy neighborhood, and we were clearly the only church-goers around. We got there early and waited around to see if anybody would show up, but nobody did. Next is Jenny sitting on a bench in Naples after a few too many gelatos. Okay, more photos in the next post.

Hoffmaster

Now that I'm facing less than one month left in Michigan, I'm trying to enjoy it as much as possible. Not that I haven't been trying to enjoy it- I'm just making a point of visiting all my favorite places again before I go. And, as you may know, I think Lake Michigan is one of the happiest places on earth. It's like the ocean, only not salty and cleaner. So last Saturday my friend Jennifer and I got together a small group and we went to the Lake! We went to Hoffmaster State Park, which is about three hours straight west of Rochester Hills (where I live). It was really pretty. When you pull into the parking lot, you're surrounded by forest. It looks like the redwood forests in California except that the trees are shorter. You can hear water, but you can't see it. We followed a little paved pathway through the forest to the lake. The lake is seriously huge. The coast goes as far as you can see, and you can't even begin to see the other side. It's miles and miles. The beach we were on was really sandy, and the water was warm and clear. We watched the weather all week and it was supposed to be about 85 degrees and sunny, but the weather never goes according to plan. It was super windy and pretty cold. But that just made it more fun! The waves were huge! I'd be standing in water up to my knees, and then a big wave would come- big enough that I couldn't see over it- and after it passed I'd be in water up to my neck. And there was a really strong undercurrent, too. You could tell when a really big wave was gathering, because the water under you would start moving away from the shore and dragging you with it. It was a real workout to not get dragged all the way out into the lake. After a little while, we realized it was raining pretty hard (we couldn't feel it in the water), so we had to run and gather our things and put them in the car (which is why I have no pictures to post), but then we went right back to play in the waves. It was great fun! I think we should get a Lake Michigan in Utah.