We headed for Chicago today. But first we had breakfast with Melissa's cousin Bob, his wife, and his Mom (Melissa's Aunt Romie).
When we got close enough to see the sky scrapers we were all peering out the windows. Neither Melissa nor Marla has ever visited the city before. We were super surp…
After a few photos we departed Lake Vermilion for Minneapolis.
We spent the night at Maple Grove and had dinner with Melissa's cousin Bob and his wife.
The weather was cold and windy so we decided to head into the small town of Cook to wander around the shop and see an antique boat show at the landing. They had a ton of old boats, mostly Cris Crafts that had been beautifully restored. When we arrived back at the cabin, the sun was setting and Mel…
After a big breakfast of Eggs Benedict (Melissa made hollandaise from scratch), we headed off in the boat to see the lake. Melissa wanted to stop by Saint Mary’s Island where we spent many summers with our cousins as children. Uncle Bob owned the island for years before building the cabins in Cana…
Joyce and Melissa got up early again this morning to attempt some more sunrise pictures. The plan was to light up the cabin this time in an attempt to see if we could get some pictures with the cabin more visible. Alas the weather didn’t cooperate and the sunrise wasn’t anything like as beautiful …
This morning Melissa got up at 5:30am and met Joyce in the kitchen. We had agreed the night before to head out early to take some sunrise pictures. They turned out great.
After lunch we headed out on the boat. Melissa was snapping pictures. Classic Uncle Bob behavior. Not…
We awoke to weather that looked like this:
So we hopped on the pontoon boat and headed for the upper Manitou – a 60 mile trip.
Uncle Bob was showing us his lake, and there were lots of things to see. First were the Indian Petroglyphs. No idea how old they are – but the suspicion is that th…
For two days we’ve basically been rained into the cabin. It is still August, right? We played cards, baked bread in the wood stove, did jigsaw puzzles, and read books. Dave and company started assembly on a “garage” for the pontoon boat. One night Marla slipped on the paving stone path and hit h…
First thing this morning we opened up a jigsaw puzzle and started to work it. It was clear that most of the day it was going to be cloudy and drizzling. It is still August, right? After Uncle Bob fixed us sausage and French toast for breakfast, we hung out working the puzzle. Uncle Bob finally g…
Today we got up to a lovely breakfast at the B&B and then we were off to try to find the boat landing on Lake Manitou in the middle of nowhere. No that’s not right, it’s beyond nowhere. You go past nowhere, keep driving, to the middle of nowhere, and then you get to the lake. We found the landing…
This morning we went to see the Air Museum in Brandon. Its where they trained the Canadian pilots during WWII. We saw a lot of cool stuff. The volunteers there gave us a personal tour when they realized that Dad actually flew some of the airplanes they had in the hanger. The hanger itself is qui…
The past few days we have basically been lazy. We hung out in Canmore, just outside Banff because with this view from the hotel deck, who could resist just hanging out!
We were supposed to spend one day in Calgary but no one was feeling “big city” so we just drove through the town to say we’d s…
After a great breakfast at the B&B, we headed off to see the Kimberly Mine. The tour starts off with a train ride up to the mine operation the same way the miners got there years ago. Though their trains weren’t painted bright red:
This is Bill Roberts our tour guide. He was a miner his wh…
This morning we headed back to Coeur d'Alene to pick up the UPS overnight package with Marla’s passport. It arrived with no issues, so all was well. Meanwhile, Melissa tried to get her Verizon phone replaced as its now burned up two batteries in the past week. This was the usual fiasco where Veri…
Today we headed back to the bistro we ate at last night because the food was so good we wanted to try their breakfasts. Eggs Benedict and fresh made corned beef cash did not disappoint. Had we been in town longer we would have tried the Ruben sandwiches for lunch. Then it was off to Lake Pend Ore…
After running some errands, we picked up Melissa’s Dad, Chuck and his wife Marla and headed for Moses Lake. Not much to see, but we did find a really good restaurant in Moses Lake called Michael’s Market & Bistro. It’s a casual deli style place, but they have great food and service. And they…
We got home yesterday and spent the bulk of the day getting our doctor’s checkups in. Dave visited Zetron and had lunch with the COO. In the afternoon we headed to the hanger to pick up a second car. We were shocked to discover it had been broken into. We had thought that a facility with barb wi…
After an uneventful trip – 19 hours door to door – we are home in Seattle!
Melissa is super excited as she has been writing a few articles and submitting them to sailing magazines. Today she got word from SAIL (one of the two largest sailing magazines in the world) that they want to publish an…