They're Off

The return trip to Palm City was effectively launched around 10 a.m. The guinea pigs were cleaned out and loaded, Dylan had his book and his game thingy, and all was right with the world. We are left here Home Alone with bunches of memories. We'll most likely see them again at Christmas.

While she was here, Laurie cleaned out some of her boxes in the gray barn. She threw away a lot of "stuff", but she actually took her Dancerina doll home with her!

She found lots of ballet shoes, costumes and programs - all very nostalgic. I love this picture that she took before she packed everything away again:

Nostalgic Last Day of L, C & D

Most of their packing is done, and so the kids are almost ready to leave tomorrow morning. We all wanted to spend one last day in town together. Horizon Bookstore is a great base of operations. I grabbed an open table outside (not an easy task) and we were set for the next hour or so. The Gillespies went on one last tour of the downtown shops - the weather was perfect for ambling and people watching.




They have some weird animls here at the bookstore!


After spending the afternoon in the city, we headed out to Gallagher's Farm Market to get sweet corn for dinner. Laurie and Dylan enjoyed watching the chickens, sheep and goats.




They have some weird animals down on the farm!

GenFest 2009 Big Star Lake

A PICTURE IS WORTH 10,000 WORDS !!!!!

Dune Day

Off to the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore for our annual Dune Day! Luckily enough, it was also the weekend of the Oneida Fair, so we had a big day.

We started with a stop at the Visitor Center in Empire, and I bought a CD which narrates the tour on the Pierce Stocking Trail - a good investment! Look at the size of that cougar!


Lunch was at Art's in Glen Arbor (you just have to love Glen Arbor!)

Next stop was the Oneida one room school house where a very competent teacher was using volunteers from the audience to illustrate subjects and problems from one hundred year old schoolbooks. Dylan went to the chalkboard to solve a math problem. He's more accustomed to writing on a white board! That's new even since I retired.

We walked around the World War II and Civil War camp exhibits, and toured an old house.




It was a lovely cool day, so when we arrived at the Dune Climb we were sure that nobody would be stricken with heat stroke! The Gillespies all went up and hiked around for quite a while and returned still happy and healthy!



The driving tour of the Pierce Stocking Trail is a perennial favorite, and today was the perfect day for it. Most enjoyable.



We stopped at Sleder's on the way home and two of us had the all-you-can-eat Friday night fish thingy