Amish Geo-Birthday

We spent last weekend in Clare - it was my birthday request. I wanted to tour the Amish settlements and maybe find an Amish bakery! Geocaching was part of our adventure, too. Dick logged in some simple ones that didn't involve a lot of hiking so we could both enjoy everything.

It was a very successful weekend. The only downside was that it was very nippy and windy, so it wasn't exactly sweatshirt weather. We found all of the Amish things that we were looking for except for a bakery (darn), and we found 15 geocaches over the weekend. It was a very pleasant birthday!

On the country roads around Clare it's fairly easy to tell which farms are Amish.


This woman had gone into town to shop at the big grocery store. Her husband was waiting in the buggy, and he let her load the groceries.


We were lucky enough to be at the Yoder Amish Auction on Saturday when it was open. There were buggies parked everywhere on the auction grounds.


The men are checking out the horses, while the woman were grilling hamburgers.



All weekend we were sharing the road with buggies. It's fun on the dirt roads because they leave better tracks and you can tell where they came from and where they're going. You can see the clippety clop tracks in the dirt.



I was especially interested in the Amish school houses - you can tell from the pictures that they don't waste a lot of money on the buildings or the plumbing. The schools were listed as having 17 students in grades K-8, which is as high as they go. Evidently you don't need a lot of book learning to run an Amish farm.



We saw several signs like this one.


At the Colonville store you are waited on by Amish ladies. You can buy kerosene lanterns and lamp chimneys of all sorts - a whole aisle of them. They have an entire wall displaying black stockings - even black stockings for infants in pink packaging. There were many, many books - mostly religious, but not all. Many were Amish romance novels, which all seemed to have a moral at the end. There were piles and piles of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie books. Dick was fascinated with the tools, hardware, and the huge cauldrons. There's an entire aisle of straw hats for men and boys. It was a step back into the 1800s.

Arthur, Illinois

Historic photo!

This picture was taken at the homestead of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother William and Caroline Kanitz in Arthur, Illinois. Allegedly, all of their descendants at the time are shown - children, spouses, grandchildren, etc.

My grandfather and grandmother, Charles and Sarah Kanitz are the first couple standing on the left.

Hooray

Yay hooray! The city is getting cleaned up for Spring! Yes, Virginia, there will be a Spring - no kidding.

At the marina today we saw a front loader and a dump truck moving huge piles of snow left over from plowing the parking lot all winter. Near the Harbor Master's, there was a pile that resembled the Rock of Gibraltar, and today it is totally gone. Yaay hooray!

I asked Dick what are the chances of having no more storms and heavy snows this season. He said the chances were slim and none and slim just left town. He likes to say that, and he says it a lot, so I'm not discouraged that much, only a little bit.

The other day we drove up M-22 to see how far north the Bay was frozen, and it was frozen all the way out to the island. That is the official requirement for saying that the Bay is frozen. Dick said you would think that they would put something in the newspaper about that. The next day, on the front page, there was a story about the frozen bay. It's the first time since 2003 that the Bay was officially frozen.

Railroad Cars

Ron, our therapy tech at the gym, filled us in this morning on why the silver, double-decker passenger cars are parked out by Cherry Growers! He said that they were moved out there sometime last fall, and that there was an article in the Record Eagle about it.

The cars had been parked down in the Bay City/Midland area just being stored. They became a target for vandalism - people broke into some of the cars, and spray painted graffiti on some of them. The graffiti is still there - it's really noticeable. The company decided that there would be less of a vandalism problem up here, and so they were moved to the Grawn area.

Cabin Fever Cure

A little bit of cabin fever set in on River Road today so Dick invited me out to lunch. We took along some recycling and some things to mail because almost every trip around here involves some errands!

Driving through the blowing snowfall, we planned to eat in Grandma's Kitchen at Interlochen corners. Gee, I said, I think I heard that it has changed hands. In actuality, it was closed up tight - dark and empty - a definite change.

Next to ex-Grandma's Kitchen is Ric's Food Center - and guess what...across the street is an almost complete, huge new almost finished Tom's Food Market...looks like trouble for Ric's! It's really a lovely store - it carries everything you could possibly want, but it may not be able to compete with Tom's.

Across the highway is Clancy's Kitchen, which seems to be taking up the slack from the closing of Grandma's. Clancy's is relatively new - it features plain American style food which is home made and tastes home made! They seem to have a sweet potato fixation - it may be a tad overdone - sweet potato fries, pie, pancakes, egg rolls, and on and on. We had a great dinner and really enjoyed it, although it wasn't so much fun watching the cars outside dealing with the blowing snow!

After eating we bravely headed out into the storm to go to the Interlochen recycling center. Guess what - it's gone - there's nothing there. Things are really changing over there in Interlochen.

The Interlochen Post Office let us down because they don't have a drive up mail drop. On this blizzardy day it required walking up to the front door of the PO to deposit the letters....well actually Dick was the one who walked up to the mailbox, but still...

We spent a couple of months in warmer climes this winter, and I think we really missed something exciting. On the way to Interlochen, just past Cherry Growers, there are approximately 20-25 railway passenger cars parked on the tracks alongside the highway. The tracks by our house provide the only access to TC and Cherry Growers, and so we missed seeing all of those cars go past! We see a train around once a week when the weather is good. Those trains usually have an engine and a couple of cars - but certainly not 20. We have no idea why those cars are in that particular spot.

H a p p y P r e s i d e n t' s D a y ? ? ? ? ? ?

Good intentions - the car all packed up with trash for the dump, grocery list in hand, check ready to go to the bank, going to the Sprint store to replace lost cell phone - and we were off to run errands. Two out of four is not that bad....

The East Bay Compactor Station is closed because of Pres. Day. The whole back end of the car is loaded with trash - we haven't been to the dump for ages because of traveling since Sept. Looks like we won't go for a couple of more days yet.

Driving through town we turned in at the drive-through bank to deposit the check, and there was no line...it was closed because of ...(see above).

The grocery store was open, and we put our groceries in right next to the trash bags...

The Sprint store was open and it was the bright spot of our errand afternoon. Tina was very helpful, and we now have a replacement phone with the same cell number.

Today on Facebook Adam posted that he and Melanie will be having a baby girl! The pictures were labeled "Isabelle Jean" - what a nice name. Congratulations to the Hardy family :)

Something's Fishy

La Jolla is home to the famous Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the Birch Aquarium. We enjoyed another glorious San Diego treat today, and spent the afternoon at the aquarium. The pictures speak for themselves. I'm beginning to think that Dick is a natural photographer!

The Big Tank


Historic tuna fishermen - three rods for one tuna


A school of sardines in perpetual motion!


The fountain in front of the aquarium


After the aquarium we drove along the seashore and stopped at a sea lion beach to see what we could see. We saw three sea lions in the water, but none on the beach. It was wonderfull just to be able to see the sea!



So far this year, we have been from the Atlantic to the Pacific - from sea to shining sea :)

Super Zoo Day

Not being particularly interested in the Super Bowl this year, we took off for the San Diego Zoo instead. Of course we expected Chip's Steelers to dominate, and they almost did. At least they won the game. We got home in time to see the end of the 4th quarter, and the fabulous catch in the end zone. Go Steelers.

Believe it or not, many people were able to get along without watching the Super Bowl today - I know this because many of them were at the Zoo, too. Tom's friend Brandy and her brother Hunter came with us. It was another perfect San Diego day, and we had a great time. Afterward they asked me what was my favorite part, and I could narrow it down to five things - but I decided that the overall favorite thing was the giraffe exhibit.

A view of the Zoo from the Skyfari ride:


Dick's favorite was the gorilla exhibit - he especially got a kick out of this young gorilla checking the the Big Boss to see if he was doing his gorilla thing correctly.


Big Boss Gorilla


Me with Tom, Brandy and Hunter


Dick got this great picture of the endangered rhino.

Baby Maya

We were invited to Amy's Mom's house for dinner, and the Washington family came down from L.A, bringing (of course) the baby!

We started the day in an excellent way - Tom took us to have dim sum for breakfast - another first for us. It's a little like Chinese tapas, or small plates - kind of individual dumplings and wontons filled with all good things - shrimp, pork, chicken, beef and you name it. It's a very enjoyable way to go out for breakfast!


Being in Joyce's home is another unique experience - she's such a good hostess, and her home is so inviting - you feel like one of the family. Well, actually we are family in a shirt-tail kind of a way - great-aunt and uncle of her son-in-law - is that close enough? The baby is adorable, and very entertaining - we all got a chance to hold her and cootchy-coo at her a little bit - she's a happy baby! The food was magnificent - a real feast - we had nine people at the table, and enough food for nineteen...plus two desserts!

The Washington Family:


Talking to Sharon on the phone while holding her grandchild - is that really fair?


Me with Amy's dad, Richard, the grill chef for the day.


Tom and Babycakes


Grandma Joyce and Maya Grace

San Diego Days

After the big Bar Mitzvah weekend, Dick and I had 3 days at Tom's to entertain ourselves while Tom was at work. We mostly did geocaching, driving around, resting, and playing WoW. Wednesday noon we met Tom at Val's house {Darkdru) to meet her baby, Connor. He is a perfectly beautiful bouncing baby boy, one year old, a real sweetie and a total charmer.


Thursday we went to Sea World. It's an amazing place. We went to all of the shows - sea lion, Shamu, and dolphin. My favorite was Shamu, just because the animals are so big and beautiful - it seems like it would be quite an undertaking to try to teach them tricks - but they were spectacular. The other two shows were great as well - similar tricks that look just as difficult to train.


The plantings at Sea World are so colorful -try seeing this in a Michigan winter!

There is also a fascinating walk-through aquarium, where the sharks and fishes swim all around you and over your head.

Who knew that walruses were this big?!?

It was incredible watching the polar bears at feeding time.


On Friday, Sniders came down to see Tom and his house, and to go whale watching with us. We were incredibly lucky - the weather was perfect, we saw a multitude of dolphins very near the ship, and we saw two gray whales breaching and diving several times. It was a most successful three hour cruise :)
Ready, set, here we go!

These dolphins were very close - it was quite exciting to see so many of them jumping together.

Here is the tail of the gray whale as he dives under the water. I promise you there's a whale tail in there somewhere :)

We are intently whale watching.


Whale watching afterglow at Joe's Crab Shack.