Snipe. Snipe. Snipe.

• We arrived Sunday afternoon to Harrisville State Park which opens up onto beautiful Lake Huron. It had been rainy that day, so the white caps were coming in strong. It made for fun swimming.
• We weren't at the campground more than twenty minutes, and Owen's glasses were swept out to sea never to be seen again. We were so tired from traveling and so excited about the waves, we neglected to take the precaution of removing them before he went in the water.
• He was devastated.
• I, was not. I was already in full vacation mode. Nothing could remove my level of relaxation. They were gone. Let's not ruin the rest of the trip.
• He screamed at the water, "I need those to read!"
• My wife kept asking me if I was "really angry." As if I was hiding it well or something.
• Nope.
• Skunks. Skunks everywhere!
• Our first morning in camp was greeted with a tiny neighbor girl trying to get us to look at a jar. Her father asked, "Would you like your kids to come over and see our bat? We found him on our tent this morning. He's been acting kind of sickly, so we put him in a jar."
• Let me interject this tidbit: I'm paranoid and deathly afraid of the idea of rabies. Bats and Skunks are two of the most common animals to carry said disease.
• I shook my head in a negative manner, but I think the expression on my face conveyed much more. Shortly thereafter, the little girl returned. In a rather crestfallen voice she told us that the bat had been let go. I think the father realized handling bats, especially those "acting kind of sickly," was not a great idea for anyone.
• I actually felt a bit guilty for conveying so much with my face.
• My camping trip seemed to have a theme emerging - me facing my fears without ruining the vacation with fits of anxiety. I'm happy to say I conquered from beginning to end.
• I don't sleep well in strange places. It takes me a few days to settle in. So, I often don't sleep well when on vacation. The first night in camp wasn't too bad as far as noise was concerned.
• The second night, trains started going through. There are tracks in the front of the park, so we're talking less than a block or so from our site. I can't relay in words how loud their cautionary horns were. There were multiple trains that second night. Good times.
• You can successfully cook chicken noodle soup over a campfire. It was great!
• Those huge marshmallows that they sell now, you better have a good cooking fork. Once those things go molten, it's near impossible to keep them on a stick. They are perfect for smores though.
• Another tip: if they go molten and start to fall, DON'T TRY TO CATCH THEM WITH YOUR BARE HAND!
• When you get into small towns, like Harrisville, it's fun to visit their grocery stores. They're very different than the stores I'm used to. Their selection is small on most things. Harrisville has one grocery store, and I don't believe there's another grocer for at least thirty miles. Even in the neighboring towns, the stores are pretty basic.
• This IGA in Harrisville, they had a huge Michigan-based, micro-brewed beer selection. How very surprising. My wife and I love to sample micro-brewed beer. We drink about two bottles a week, and we share those two bottles. So, it's not about the buzz. It's about the flavor. We generally hate most big chain beers.
• They also had this rootbeer called Frostop everywhere I went up there. It's hard to find down this way, but I highly recommend it. They also make a Carmel Cream Soda that is like nothing I've ever drank before. 99¢ gets you a 40 oz.
• The first 40 I ever drank was a Cream Soda.
• The best part of my whole three-night camping experience: Taking Owen on a Snipe Hunt, just the two of us. Harrisville State Park has a great, semi-paved nature trail perfect for Snipe hunting in the dark. I told him that snipes were small, elf-like creatures with bright red noses. We walked about a block into the woods saying, "Snipe. Snipe. Snipe." After a while, I asked Owen if he'd remembered the cheese? Snipes won't come out if there's no cheese. We turned around, toward camp when the flashlight started to flicker. Did I mention the bats and skunks?
• Praying on a deserted beach with a full moon overhead, waves crashing just a few feet away - great experience!

Non-Camping Randomness:

• How can I put this nicely? Who loved the G.I.Joe movie? I was never a big fan, so this isn't a fanboy whine fest, but I watched the cartoon when I was a kid. I found the recent live-action movie comical on many levels, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to be. They're now making a sequel, and they've attracted some huge action-star names: Bruce Willis and The Rock. I guess it's a good sign. Maybe part 2 will be infinitely better.
• We were playing Apples to Apples with some friends the other day. Someone made the euphemism between coconuts and breasts. It wasn't me.
• The very next day we're driving on Miller Road, and for whatever reason, Gage points out Hooters. I think it was the owl that caught his attention. The boys wanted to know what kind of restaurant it was. I jokingly said they have coconuts. Owen replied, "They have milk in them!" Heidi and I laughed. The kids were puzzled.
• I never thought I'd do a post mentioning Hooters.
• I'm sure I'm guilty of not hearing the words coming from my mouth. Sitting at the play area in Genesee Valley Mall recently with the kids, a mom sits down near me. As her barefoot son runs up she says, "I sure wish you had socks to wear so you didn't have to walk around on this dirty flooring filled with the fungus of all these other barefooted kids here."
• Wow. So, my kids and the other children present were apparently quite dirty in her estimation, and she didn't feel ashamed at all to share that with the rest of us.
• She did leave pretty quickly after that, so maybe her words finally sunk in to her own ears.
• Before anyone points it out, I know, they're supposed to be wearing socks. I've also noticed that very few kids ever do in the Summer. Too many kids are wearing sandals.
• Socks and Summer do not go hand-in-hand.
• I like fish. I love pizza. I hate anchovies. Nasty.
• On a related, tongue-in-cheek note: I'm in mourning. My favorite pizza place in Davison, Rocco's Pizza, was sold last week. It's gone. Gone.
• I took the kids to a Vacation Bible School a few weeks back. I wore a t-shirt that says, "I don't go to church…" on the front, and "I am the church." on the back. It didn't wear it because I wanted to make a statement. It was really the only t-shirt I had clean that day. Every day there was this one lady that insisted I stay long enough to hear the opening worship songs. She said it was because she feared Gage would be more comfortable with me there, but I think she just missed the back of my shirt.
• Snipe. Snipe. Snipe.

Hiking, 10th Anniversary, Autumn

• My wife and I have been married for 10 years as of last Thursday.
• We spent the afternoon cleaning our church together. It seemed very appropriate actually. We had dinner at a decent restaurant afterward to celebrate.
• Last year on our anniversary, we discovered that we enjoy hiking by taking a short vacation in Oscoda. Well, I love hiking. I think Heidi enjoys it to a lesser extent. We hiked a very cool trail there. We planned a short getaway again this year. How often do you get to celebrate an entire decade of marriage?
• No matter how much I look forward to time spent away from the kids, I miss them instantly whenever the realization hits me that there is no chance of seeing them in the next 12 to 24 hours. I love my kids, but sometimes I need down time. But I always, always, always miss them early on. It's like instant home sickness.
• Last year we had no trouble finding overnight accommodations, and Oscoda had a music festival going on. This year things were different. The cottages we hoped to stay in were only half open, and they were booked solid (despite what their website reported). Many of the other local resorts were closed for the season or because they were currently for sale.
• We drove on.
• Everywhere we went, it was like the trees were on fire with color. Last year we saw browns and sickly yellows. This year we were treated to vibrant reds, yellows, and oranges.
• Harrisville, just to the north, is a picturesque small town, especially in the fall. There are no big chain restaurants or stores. As you travel through the main section of town, every street has a sidewalk, and the view usually includes Lake Huron, a marina of some sort, and tons of yellow fall leaves.
• Two years in a row now, we've tried to stay at a bed and breakfast there. With the 'open' sign clearly displayed and the doors unlocked, we have yet to find the owner home. Another tenant told us that we could make arrangements to stay if we called the owner on her cellphone. She was camping.
• We ended up in Alpena.
• The next morning we drove to a nearby State park to try their hiking trail. The guidebook read, "As you come to the cemetery, take the unmarked road directly afterward." A lot of people wouldn't really recognize the path we were driving on as an actual road. The road cut into a thickly wooded area. It was pretty with the fall colors, but it was also dark and twisty. Everywhere you looked there was barbed wire, hunting lodge signs, private property declarations, and what looked like houses that should have been abandoned but weren't. The "road" was mostly sand. We drive a small Ford hatch back.
• I feared banjo music.
• When we reached the entrance to the State park, their road was ten times bigger and better.
• We didn't get to hike, though the area looked perfect. Michigan changed their laws last year. You can no longer deposit money on an unmanned site. You have to have a state pass displayed on your car before entering the park. Not having one, we moved on to the next State park (back south in Harrisville), which had a ranger on duty.
• We hiked a bit there, but the trail was partially paved.
• I enjoy trails that are marked, visible, but the idea of the trail being paved defeats the purpose for me. It's offensive. I want to barely be able to see sunlight through the thick trees. I want to glimpse areas that human feet have not touched on a regular basis. I want to fear the wildlife to a certain extent. I sincerely don't want to run into other human beings on the trail that day.
• I let Heidi choose the main trail this year. We headed back to Oscoda to check it out. When we arrived at the Lumbermen's Memorial my heart sank. There were tourists everywhere. There were children and little dogs in sweaters.
• But then I saw the view. This was a scenic spot that just happened to have a hiking trail attached. I don't think I've ever used this phrase before, and if I did, I didn't mean it, but this view took my breath away. We were at the top of an Au Sable river valley. The fall colors were out in force, and you could see for miles!
• I watched as person after person exclaimed in their own way how beautiful the view was. Heidi had chosen wisely.
• The park has a walkway that takes you down 272 steps through the woods, down the steep hill. The view along the way and at the bottom was great, but it paled in comparison to the view top side.
• We tried their hiking trail. It was sparse, kind of boring. The road was on one side. The river was on the other with less than a mile of wooded area in between. We could hear motor vehicles from time to time. Most of the wildlife was onto this fact, and had vacated.
• We stopped at two other scenic spots. One of them had another 300 step decent to some natural springs and water falls. It was beautiful too.
• We finished the trip with a quick stop at Tawas Point lighthouse.
• We didn't get in a lot of actual hiking, but we did get tons of exercise that day. We saw plenty of beautiful settings.
• I'm not an outdoorsman. I don't hunt or fish. I don't even particularly enjoy being outside. I never expected it even when I became curious about the activity, but hiking does something for my soul. Maybe it's just the Oscoda area. I don't know if it's Lake Huron, the waves, the sand, or the woods that we venture into. I love the idea that the wilderness hasn't been tampered with by humans. We haven't ruined it yet. I also like the smell of cedar, moss, and moldering leaves. I hate throwing my jacket in the wash afterward.
• We were only away for one night, but we packed the second day of the trip as full as we could. We didn't have any near encounters with wildlife like last year, but a few pheasants scared the crap out of us on one of the trails. I'll take it.
• I'm proud of us. We're way more adventurous than I thought we'd be ten years ago. Cemetery roads filled with backwoods gun nuts? Trails that lead into the deep, dark woods? The possibility of bears, wolves, coyotes, and fox? We've got a compass and some mace. I think we're moving forward.
• Most disturbing billboard of the week goes to: "Don't forget you breast friend." I know, we need to encourage mammograms, but…
• I'm also pretty sure I do have HMB.

Late Randomness

• "Vacationing" with the kids isn't like the vacations I remember from just a few short years ago. There was no down time. There was no care-free, we're disconnected from the world realizations. There was just us trying to keep the kids in line, entertained, and engaged. Don't get me wrong, it was still a great time, very memorable, but there were some things I missed.
• My wife is a guru at planning cheaper vacations. We wanted to take Owen to Cedar Point last year, but couldn't afford it. So, we jumped on the pre-Memorial Day hotel rates this year. She tracked down some discounted park tickets, and we invited our parents along to share in the room costs. (My parents declined) We were only gone for two nights.
• Owen had to warm up to the rides at CP. He started with things that stayed on the ground and required no input from him. Little brother Gage had no problem jumping on anything he saw. Eventually Owen caught up.
• I took Owen on the Junior Gemini expecting him to freak out. As we exited the ride he asked whether or not they had any other roller coasters. We proceeded to ride the larger, faster Woodstock Express multiple times.
• I'm a bit of a wuss when it comes to roller coasters. I prefer less hills, and fewer drops. I can handle upside down, twirling until sick, but I hate being dropped in any way. I went on the Gemini for the first time this visit.
• Stop laughing.
• In public restrooms, why is the toilet paper often positioned behind you on the left?
• I hate to tell whoever does the restroom budgeting, but you can use the thinnest one-ply paper you want, it's just going to make everyone use four times as much.
• One of my long-time, personal nightmares came true this week. My son Owen was diagnosed with cataracts, something that runs in our family, something I went through as a child at his age. I'm trying to keep a brave front up, but it's hard, especially when I spend time with him one-on-one. I know treatments for this condition have come a long way in the past thirty years, but it's hard to think about putting him through even the improved methods. Taking deep breaths.
• I've said it before. I'll say it again. If you want to learn about God and why or how He could love us, become a parent.