More Photos Below!Gallery
We went up north to Baldwin, to visit the trailer and take in the Blessing of the Bikes and do a hike, bike and canoe outing. As is our wont each spring.
Last year I discovered a great local chunk of the North Country Trail. It’s the portion that goes near Highland Lake which is near the major destination of Big Star Lake, a couple miles SW of town.
So we hiked that. Lovely. Perfect. It offers a hillside and some wetlands. A mix of trees. Several miles. A couple hours. A picnic lunch. The elderly, infirm dog stays in the lead on the hike, never falters even if she wobbles; ears bounce and flap as she flops along.
We kinda missed the Blessing. It’s actually a compact event with a lot of peripheral action. Ya want to be at the airport around noon on the dot to see maximum bike fever. (10,000 bikes.) By 2pm it’s empty.
The trailer was in fine shape. We had a nice bonfire.
This was the first time we brought a kid’s bike along, Lucy’s. She went riding up and down the 2-track. Henry rode it, too. then Lucy wanted to do bigger rides, so we rode around the “block,” about 3 miles of 2-track and paved and dirt roads. While toodling along she asked me if you could ride across the USA on $100… She’s thinking… !!!
For some reason she also likes to crawl up onto the van and hang out. She does this quite often, on trips, in the driveway.
We attempted a canoe outing on a very nearby portion of the Pere Marquette. A small portion. I forgot how small it was. All four of us got into our huge 18.5-foot laker canoe. Man, that was a doomed outing. We bailed at the first take-out which was thankfully only a half mile along. I forgot how badly that fully loaded canoe handles in tight places. It doesn’t. It’s a barge. We need to change our canoe world. We need 2 canoes. We need to teach the kids to paddle. They kinda know. We need to teach Martha to paddle. She’s OK. Sigh. I think that RUDDERS would really help! Yeah, canoes need rudders, especially for small stream work. We had one once, it was great. Sold that boat, sadly. (Never sell boats.)
The wine dark sea. That’s what I think whenever I look over the bridge at our local branch of the PM.
The wine dark sea. (It’s actually very clear and clean…it’s just tannic/oak stained.)
From the time of the dinosaurs…
Someone just likes being on top of the van.
Hiking the NCT near Baldwin.
