Visiting Friends from the AT

Olivia & Grandma enjoying the beach with Nate & Sandy

     Monday morning we got up and headed down to have the free continental breakfast with our family members at the motel lobby. It was hard to believe the wedding was over and done. We said our good-byes and were on the road by 8 or so. We were headed to Ocean Isle Beach to visit our friends Mark (Skidmark) & Pat that we met on the Appalachian Trail back in 2011.

"Skid" enjoying the Appalachian Trail

     Olivia was excited to be headed for the beach. We told Olivia she would have a good time visiting Pat & Mark and that Mark would tease her for sure. When we arrived at their beach house around 1:30 or so, Mark and his son Nate met us. Pat is teaching Math at a local high school and wouldn't be home until later on. We decided to head down to the beach to give us a chance to stretch our legs after a 5 plus hour drive. Sandy, their yellow Lab, came along with us. Olivia raced up and down the beach looking for sea shells and splashing thru the waves.

Mark helps Olivia wash sand off her feet

     Olivia and Mark bonded almost immediately. He took her down to their dock and showed her his crab trap. Shortly after that he had her fishing from the dock. We enjoyed catching up with Mark and meeting Nate as well. Pat arrived home sometime after 3 and we enjoyed getting to see her again too. For dinner we headed down to Calabash, a famous seafood town, to eat out at Ella's. All five of us enjoyed shrimp dinners that were the best I can ever remember. Thank you Pat & Mark for the great meal. We headed home and enjoyed talking trail and just catching up in general until it was time to head to bed.

Olivia helping Mark with the crab trap

Fishing time!!

Great shrimp dinner @ Ella's

Olivia and her buddy

Pat & Joyce outside of Ella's

     Tuesday morning Pat headed to school and Mark and us went up to Wilmington to the North Carolina Aquarium. With is being May, it seemed 

every school in the area decided it was a great day to do a field trip. We had

a nice time and Olivia was especially pleased when we discovered a nice playground outside of the aquarium.

 After we left the aquarium we made a brief stop by Cape Fear Military Historic Park before stopping for lunch at Mickey D's. We then drove back to Pat & Mark's, Sarah, Nate's daughter was waiting to play with Olivia. The girls are only a month apart in age and they had a great time together. We took them to a nice playground nearby to play for awhile. They really played hard, but we think Mark played even harder. After a wonderful supper that Pat prepared we all just enjoyed our time together. Sarah was picked up around 8 and she and Olivia hugged good-bye and said they would be friends forever. Everyone was tired and after Olivia enjoyed a bubble bath she once again chose to sleep in the loft on the love seat. We had a wonderful time visiting Pat and Mark and as such the time went far too fast. Thank you Mark & Pat for being such wonderful hosts. We will miss you a lot. We got up early Wednesday and after breakfast we said good-byes and headed towards Natural Bridge, VA. I'll continue with the rest of the trip next posting.

 Olivia & Sarah @ Barbie's Beach (at one of the neighbors)

 The girls enjoying the playground

The girls having fun with Mark

Travel to Scott & Melinda's Wedding

     Last weekend we picked up our 4 year old granddaughter, Olivia, in lower Michigan on the way to attend our nephew's wedding near Mt. Airy, North Carolina. Scott married a wonderful young lady, Melinda, who grew up around the Raleigh area and still lives there and works for the family business. The wedding was at Rosa Lee Manor on Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful, peaceful setting in the mountains. Our daughter Jenni, and her boyfriend, Songo, visiting from South Africa for 3 weeks flew in to Charlotte and drove a rental care up to meet us. Songo had just run the Toronto Marathon the previous weekend. Sunday morning we had some spare time so we headed out for a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway after we had breakfast.

Songo, Olivia, Joyce & Jenni @ Mabry Mill

Olivia enjoying the flume

Olivia along the BRP

Olivia & Jenni all ready for the wedding

Around 3pm we headed to the wedding and enjoyed a pleasant afternoon 

with temperatures in the low 70's but breezy. We enjoyed the ceremony

and reception that followed on the inn's property. Congrats to Scott & Melinda!

 Rosa Lee Manor

 First dance!

They're married!!

Melinda and her father Perry

Leaving the reception - honeymoon time

     We had a wonderful time at the wedding. We continued to travel over the next week with Olivia. We had a great trip and I will continue the trip in my next blog posting.

Changing Seasons...Enjoying Wildlife

Whitetail deer enjoying our front shrubs

     When we arrived home 3 weeks ago it was still very much winter at home 

in the UP. We had at least a foot of snow in the driveway with drifts nearly double that. We still needed to use snowshoes to go walking in the woods. With temps in the 30's & 40's the snow was melting slowly. We noticed that our front shrubs had been providing meals for the deer while we were away this winter. One morning a few days after we came home I was sitting in the living room watching the news when I noticed a pair of ears sticking up above the front porch wall. Sure enough there was a deer, in fact 2 deer, eating one of our shrubs even though it was covered by a snow and ice protection shed.

A day or so later I came down the stairs and noticed several deer on the north side of our house, including 2 laying down, as I looked out the bay window in the dining room. A day later in the same spot the deer had been laying a skunk wander up and laid down for an hour or so before moving on. It always seems like as the seasons change we see a lot of wildlife moving through close to our house.

2 deer laying just past the fence and others back to the right side

Mr Skunk taking a nap

     Finally over the past week we have enjoyed temps in the 60's and 70's with lots of sunshine. The snow is mostly gone and we are enjoying our daily walk in the woods for 3 or 4 miles on dry ground. We have had turkeys wandering around our property lately and have seen a few snowshoe hares as well. 

    Well we are off to North Carolina this weekend to our nephew Scott's wedding to Melinda. We are taking our granddaughter Olivia with us and will be gone a week. More on all this next time I make an entry to this blog.

Home at Last!!

Grandma reading Cole's favorite book

 "Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see?"

     We spent close to 10 days visiting Jeb & Lisa and our grandkids Olivia & Cole on the way home from the Smokey Mountains. We had a great time and our daughter Jenni was able to come over from Chicago to spend a couple of days with us as well. Jeb was in the middle of remodeling their 3 bathrooms and pantry. So in addition to spending time enjoying the grandchildren we were able to help out with the projects. Jeb was installing new travertine tile on the floors and around the garden tub. In the half bath downstairs he removed the pedestal sink and installed a new vanity, top and faucet along with a new mirror and light fixture. Upstairs in the master we removed the double vanity and toilet to install tile on the whole floor space. Jeb designed a special pattern for the center of floor.(see pics) We had to do some rewiring to accomodate two light fixtures where there had been one. Joyce did a lot of the painting, something she had done a lot of on our NOMADS projects this winter. Things are coming along quite well. Jeb may take a short break before starting the remaining bath.

 Master bath

 The medallion Jeb designed for the Master Bath

The first floor powder room

     Sunday morning we headed home to the UP. Of course there was more than a foot of snow still in our driveway when we arrived home. We took the trailer down the road to the boat launch and left it there while we removed the snow. We were amazed that all the time we were gone we had never lost power. We put on snowshoes today and headed through the woods today and were amazed that we did not see any trees that had blown down. Lots of cold and snow this winter but the winds must have been reasonable. This morning we took a nice 4 mile RT hike down to the bay and back. It's mid April and the bay is still iced in other than the shipping channel that the ice breakers keep open for the freighter traffic. Last year it was all open water before now.

 All in all it's nice to be home.

Alabama to the Smokies - Doing Trail Magic

     We left Blue Lake Friday morning around 7 and about 3 hours later we visited the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Museum. It's located at one of the airports they trained at in Alabama. We had a very enjoyable time looking back at this amazing part of our country's history. The museum was nicely done and will expand to another hanger this coming September.

     After the museum we drove to Sam's Club in Auburn AL and spend time looking for food and treats that we could pass out to some of this years crop of Appalachian Trail hikers. We decided on hot dogs, apples, bananas, assorted bags of chips, blueberry & banana nut muffins, mini donuts, and of course Coke, Mountain Dew and Pepsi to drink. Joyce also baked up a bunch of cookies for the hikers too. We then found a nice campsite at Fort Mountain State Park in northern Georgia. Saturday we drove up to the Fontana Dam area and got campsite at the Fontana Lodge. This put us within 10 miles of Stecoah Gap where the AT crosses Hwy 137.

    

   Trail Magic on Easter Sunday

We found a campsite just below the Fontana Dam, which is part the Fontana Resort. The campground was not too far from Stecoah Gap where the Appalachian Trail crosses about 18 miles south of where thru-hikers enter the southern end of Great Smokey Mountain NP. It rained all night long but was just cloudy at daybreak. We headed out to Robinsville, fueled up the truck and bought ice for the cooler and were at Stecoah Gap by 1030 or so. 

     Four hikers were coming down the trail just as we pulled up so we were able to get the magic going right away. Push-up a pleasant young man from New Brunswick Canada, Beerdra a nice young lady from New York state, Bones, Waffles - from Belgium, and Foxtrot from Grand Rapids. They all enjoyed the magic and stayed around for awhile and chatted while eating. Next came a lady named Jane from Hiawasee GA who was doing a section hike. A threesome of 2 sisters and Roadkill, the husband of one showed up. They were section hikers and Roadkill had injured his leg. They called Jeff & Nancy from the Hike Inn to shuttle them back to their car. It was fun to see Nancy again who remembered us from 2 years ago when we stayed with them.  A gentleman from Illinois named Moonshiner showed up next. He had been having a bad day and said we were just what he needed today. A few locals stopped by and took some time to chat with us. One guy had his Golden-doodle, named Moose, with him. We enjoyed petting Moose a lot. About that time Rabbit, from Virginia Tech, showed up and enjoyed the treats. He was fun to talk with…said his original trail name was Slug, but he was renamed shortly after starting the trail due to the his quick pace he does on the trail. 

     Finally around 3:15 the rain moved in along with about 5 or 6 more hikers. We got them fed well and after a half and or more in the rain we decided to pack up and head back to our trailer to warm up and dry out. 

Just as we were ready to pull out 2 more hikers came down the trail so Tberry ran over and gave them each a bag of chips and a few cookies to take with them. 

     All in all we probably served close to 20 hikers today. All were very appreciative and we were so pleased to meet and treat them all. A nice way to enjoy Easter Sunday as we had the opportunity to serve others.

Rabbit enjoying Moose

     

     Monday morning we hooked up the trailer and drove around to the northeast side of the Great Smokey Mountains NP and tried to camp at Cosby campground. We found it to be closed still until April 12th due to budget constraints. (too bad we can't get the Prez & VP to stay home in Washington more and save the $ for the National parks.) We drove a narrow, winding road for 8 miles to where the AT leaves the park. There wasn't enough room there to park the truck and trailer so we drove on down this narrow road to the Pigeon River near I40 where the AT comes out again about a mile or so beyond the park. We set up and enjoyed sitting in the sunshine watching for hikers to come down the trail on one side and enjoying river rafters on the other. About 12:30 our first hikers showed up. "Packrat", ZZ Topless", Ned - from Wales, "Eagle Runner", "Grim" and "Doc & Boon" enjoyed the food and relaxing with us for close to an hour. It was again fun to hear stories of their struggles and joys from the first few weeks of their hikes. Around 3 or so "Linus", Dan and "Whiteout" showed up to enjoy the final round of trail magic. We had an enjoyable day passing out TM and getting to know some of this years fine group Thru-hikers. Around 4 we packed up and headed to Cove Lake state park, about 30 miles north of Knoxville, to find a campsite for the night. Two days of passing out trail magic was over. We sure enjoyed ourselves a lot. It was a good time to remember the many wonderful times hiking the AT along with the tough times. Most of all the memories of all the wonderful people we met along the trail.

Blue Lake NOMADS Project - part 2

Completed bunks at Dogwood

Bill putting together bunk bed for Dogwood 3

Lon & Billie, Bill & Kathy, Duane & Linda, Jeff & Joyce, Larry & Linda, Dave & Joy

     We continued to work on many different projects at Blue Lake Camp. The ladies finished painting the north end of Oakwood, demolished old beds at Pinewood and built and installed new bunks as replacements, cleaned the 4 Dogwood housing units, painted the new wood storage sheds. The guys worked on building a Gaga pit, installed 9 bunk beds in Dogwood 3, replaced missing blocks in the back of 3 buildings at Pinewood, installed support frames at Pinewood, designed and built paddleboat storage racks at the Pinewood and Dogwood beaches, repaired dryers, installed water fountains. Other tasks were done but have slipped my mind for now.

The ladies removing old beds at Pinewood

Joy putting bunk bed together

    NOMADS usually love to eat out and this crew was not about to change that tradition.

Eating ice cream @ DQ after we had BBQ

Enjoying BBQ @ Hooks Smokehouse

The Pickers would love this place 

Cross reflecting on the lakes

We went to Fort Walton Beach with Billie and Lon

     All in all we had a very good project at Blue Lake. Larry and Linda Schluer did a great job of leading this project. We had first time NOMADS, Dave and Joy Tabor join us as well. I don't think we scared them off, so hopefully we will see them again in the future.