go see Harry Potter again. Tom and Dick hadn't seen it yet, so the rest
of us made the big sacrifice and went for the second time (wink, wink).
Jana's flight was uneventful, the way a flight should be, and she jiggedy jigged right on schedule.
Tom left early Monday morning, but his travel involved a few snafus,
such as getting to San Diego by way of Seattle and Alaska Air instead
of non-stop from Minneapolis on Northwest. These days, if you fly
Northwest, you must be flexible. By some miracle his bags arrived in
San Diego with him!
Monday was Chip's birthday, and we gave him the Great Wolf Lodge for one night. They had a great time - the water park is perfect for Chip and Dylan - they just love that! We met them for dinner Monday night and went to La Senorita - it's everybody's
favorite (well...really, it's hard to pick a favorite - we love the Mongolian Barbecue too). Tuesday morning after the gym Dick and I went to the Lodge to watch the guys play in the water - it's very entertaining! They spent two days doing that - they didn't get home until later Tuesday afternoon, and they were exhausted!
I'll never be able to remember all of the things that we have done this week - one night instead of dinner we went to Moomer's for ice cream - yum yum.
One afternoon L,C & D went tubing in the Boardman Rapids below Beitner Bridge. They had done that last year and had a really good time. The thing we didn't take into consideration this time was that Keystone Pond is being systematically lowered this summer because of the closing of the Keystone Dam. Consequently, the water is much more shallow, the banks are higher and unstable, and a lot of stumps and trash are exposed. It was a harrowing experience - the ground collapsed under Chip when he was standing on the bank, Laurie got some ugly bruises from bumping her back on sticks, stones, and stumps, and Dylan got a crayfish in his river shoe, which was quite unnerving. Everything turned out OK, but it could have been a disaster!
Dick took everybody geocaching, and we did some cache maintenance this week. Here are a couple of Laurie's logs:
August 1 by sharkie crew (177 found)
We found the cache with only one foot submerged in mud. Took a little bit of searching, but finally success!!!
Thanks for the adventure
August 1 by sharkie crew (177 found)
Practice makes perfect!!! Dad said how hard this was to find, but suddenly there it was. I'm sure the cache fairies were only having fun
We spent an afternoon on Spider Lake - boating and tubing behind the
pontoon. We've had perfect weather, and that was another beautiful day.
All we heard from back on the tube was "faster, faster!" There are more and more beauiful big homes on Spider Lake these days..it's fun to see them all. We loved seeing all of the "M" flags!
We had a problem with one of the gas tank connectors on the boat that day on
Spider Lake - our boat saga this summer is another story altogether -
we've had some major problems dealing with the Grand Traverse Marina -
it's a real horror story. Maybe I'll deal with that here later...maybe.
Chip left very early Friday morning to go back to work. So now there are just four of us left here - I still start out setting the table for seven! Wishful thinking!
Friday afternoon we went downtown to soak up some essence of film festival. Front Street was closed for a street sale, so it was fun to walk around and see what was up. I bought Dylan some fudge, and Laurie bought some flip-flops and some Film Festival T-shirts. I sat in the Jay Smith walkway,and the people-watching was fabulous. It was another perfect day.
Saturday, Dick had arranged to take more geo-cachers to Power Island to find Michigan's oldest cache. Laurie, Dylan and I had tickets to see the Film Festival children's matinee at Lars Hockstad. We saw Arctic Tale, the story of Nanu the polar bear and Seela the walrus. We all enjoyed it a lot, except Dylan didn't like it when the Auntie Walrus died saving Seela. After the movie we picked up ice at Jack's, a picnic lunch at the Bad Dog Deli, and met Dick at the Bowers Harbor boat launch. We spent the afternoon on Power Island for more people-watching, socializing with the cachers, and jumping off the dock. Well, OK, only one of us jumped off the dock. Repeatedly. We got home around 7 p.m. last night, put the boat away, and collapsed.
