Vacation

Just got back from a camping trip to Fort Custer State Recreation area, in Augusta.












I have been there before, but Charlie had not. I had it confused with one of the other camp grounds where we had camped.
Some of the sites at Custer are a little samll, but most of them hav a lot of wooded space between sites. On Thursday about noon while the guys were off doing something, I drove around the park there were only 13 sites occupied. The first week of June, before school gets out is not a bad week to go camping if you can manage it.

We got set up on Tuesday and Charlie and the dog went for a walk. I was alone at the camp site and heard, in the distance, what sounded like somebody pounding on a tree with a hammer. It got closer and closer, then I saw it a huge Pileated Woodpecker, I went to get may camera and it was gone by the time I got back, but this is what it looked like. The sound it makes when it is peeking at a tree is really loud. Like I said like someone hitting a tree with a baseball bat.

While I'm talking about birds, I don't know if I have every mentioned this site before, but it is really cool, it has great pictures of birds, and you are able to hear the song, or call.

Ed came on Tuesday and went to gather fire wood he came back with a piece of wood about 8 feet long.
He and Charlie took a long time to cut it up so it would partially fit in the fire pit. We never did figure out what kind of wood it was, but it was really hard, and didn't burn very hot.

While we were gone, something got into the hen house and got several of the baby chicks, Charlie found parts and pieces of at least 7 chicks and we think a duck it got a duck because we haven't seen it around. Charlie thinks it was probably a raccoon and says he his going to sit out with his gun tonight and wait for them.

In the strange critter happenings category.

• A neighbor down the road said he heard a cougar in the woods in back of his house. He said the horses and dogs were all upset. He called a few nights later and said it was out again. We went out and heard nothing from our yard. We drove down the road and definitely heard something but it did not sound like a cat, or a dog, maybe a mad raccoon.
• A couple of other neighbors, said they have seen very large tracks that looked like dog track but had claw prints. One of them had a 40 pound bag of dog food carried off, leaving a trail to the woods.

Camping with Horses

We went camping with Charlie's 4H horse group Memorial Day weekend. The camp ground is small (40 sites), privately owned, right next to a State park so there are 25+ miles of trails for horse back riding.

Update added May 29.
I forgot to tell you that the weekend, did not start very well.
On Thursday Charlie and Kayla, had to take her horse to the vet, and ran over something that blew out a trailer tire. So they put on the spare.
The were working with horses, put one in the trailer, Kayla was driving around the block and got about a mile away when the spare blew. I mean shredded.

On Friday we were on the way to the campground with the camper when a tire blew, again shredded about 5 miles from home.
We had to buy two new tires. those were apparently dry rotted. Now we have to get the other 3 tires replaced and a spare before we go Up North in August.

The campground was full because of the holiday week-end.

There are 27 sites with electricity, and 13 rustic sites, Port-a-johns and no showers. But the port-a-johns are kept really clean.

Charlie would like to go back for a few days when there are not so many people around.

There is a pond for swimming and fishing. One of the kids caught a nice bass.

I walked some of the trails to help set up a “treasure hunt” for the kids to follow on horse back.
It took about and hour and my back did not hurt. Another plus of losing weight.

I think every one had a pretty good time, but I was amazed at how rude and disrespectful some of those kids are. Calling their parents names etc. It probably didn’t help that 3 or 4 of the eight are 13 year old girls.

Camping in a Swamp

Just got home from camping, at Chain of Lakes, in Albion, Indiana. Things did not start well.
I rode down with my sister and her husband, we got a later start than planned because they had some problems with their camper, the slide out wouldn't slide back in and there was a problem with the hitch. It rained most of the way down.

We got there about 5:00 PM, set up as did my nieces and their husbands. One in their camper, one in a tent.

We had dinner, sat around the campfire and it started pouring- it rained HARD all night long.
I slept in my brother's pop-up, which was nice and dry, but a little noisy what with the rain hitting the canvas pop outs and the metal center roof.

This is what we woke up to on Saturday morning.






































I think my nephew will be writing a review of his tent on his outdoor blog, Simply Outdoors

The park rangers did let us change campsites, the rain stopped sometime early afternoon and although it was cold, we managed to hang in.

Sunday morning was beautiful, too bad we had to leave.

But as I have said before, we have to have something to remember our camping trips by this one will be waking up in a swamp.

First camp of the season, sort of

My sister and part of her family went camping this weekend, at som property they own. It is within the village limits but is set back off the road behind the houses. They have a pond and have built a pavilion. When your out there it feels almost like you are way out away from everything.

We went out for the day yesterday. The weather was really pretty chilly and it rained on and off all day, but it was an enjoyable day.

A couple of geese landed on the pond, We tried to get the dog, to chase them away, becasue they would rather not have geese nest on the pond and have to deal with all of the droppings. The dog, would have nothing to do with the geese, he would retrieve sticks all day, but not chase the geese.

One of my sisters's daughters and her husband just bought a new camper. They were loving it.


The 19 month old, kept us all busy. He loves being out doors, and anything that has wheels, a moter and moves, the lawn mower, the tracter, the 4 wheeler, even the stroller thingy that is made to pull behind a bike or jog with. He'd set in it and say vroom, vroom while somebody pushed him aroud. Kids are so cute at that age.

I am going camping next weekend with my sister, and brothers, Charlie is not going because he doesn't want to pull the camper 2 weeks in a row, and is too busy with his horses.

Getting our camper ready to go, we are going with Charlie's 4H group on Memorial Day weekend to Waterloo.


The weather today is not real great either, but I did manage to pick some lilacs for the table.


Happy trails... talk to you later.

Late Fall Camping

Charlie and I went camping this week-end, Since we bought the camper in August, we have only had a chance to use it once so we decide to try it this week-end the latest we have ever camped. I checked with DNR and Bruin Lake State park is open until November 30, so off we went, I rather short notice although we had talked about it for several weeks.
The address for Bruin Lake is Gregory, but it is about a mile (by road) to Unadilla (I love that name, the way it sounds.)

The weather was great, a little windy on Sunday morning, and the rain held off until we were all packed up and pulling out of the campground.

We have been to Bruin Lake before, several times but we figured out that it has been at least 10 or 11 years since we were there last. We usually go there when we want to take someone novice canoeing because it is not far from the Huron River, a great beginner canoeing river.

Charlie went over on Friday afternoon and had things set up by the time I got there after work, and stopping to pick up a few groceries. Only one little glitch, he was backing the trailer in the site, make sure not to hit the fire pit and hit a tree. Not a lot of damage to the trailer but...

We also realized during our conversations that this was the very first time we have ever gone camping alone, just the two of us. some.

Fall is a great time to go camping, there is hardly anyone at the parks. Bruin Lake has 186 sites, and we counted 20 sites being used. Don't tell anybody, they might decide to try it, then it wouldn't be as nice because it would be too crowded.

Oh, the restrooms were closed for the season, but they did have an porta-john and we had the bathroom in the camper.

We ran into some people who said they had been camping for 3 weeks, there were two couples left, for this there last weekend. They had up to 7 families there at one point during the 3 weeks. They said they have been doing this for the last 10 years.

We went for a ride on Saturday, and found a horse riders campground. it was packed with trailers and horse people of all ages. Charlie had heard there was one in the area, and was checking it out for some of the kids he will be working with this year. He is going to be the horse 4-H leader, more on that in another post.

When we go camping, Charlie does most of the cooking over the camp fire. On Saturday night it was beef stew, it tasted great.

There are not a lot of trails but Charlie and the dog managed to find a few, they even walked to Undilla Sunday morning, about 5 miles cross country, on the trails and down a little private road.

We had a some nice campfires, I had to take a picture of this piece of wood, it looked a little strange. That is all one piece of wood See the picture below on the right.

We have talked about camping at least once a month, trying a different camp ground, each time, I was thinking April -October, but I found out that there are 10 state parks that are open year round. We are thinking about going sometime this winter, Anybody interested?

Labor Day Week-end

We used the camper for the first time this past week-end. We camped at my sister's property in Olivet. I know that sounds a little strange, but it is about 12 acres back off the road, they have built a pavilion, and although you can see a couple of back yards it feels more isolated.

This is a panoramic view of the campers taken from the hill near the pavilion

We saw several deer and 3 or 4 wild turkeys, although no rabbits or raccoons.
They have a pond with lots of little blue gill and bass, and some that are getting to be decent size. We even saw a blue heron fly into the pond, but it didn't stay more than a few seconds, too many dogs and kids.

Friday and Saturday was just family, including some of the dogs. My great nephew will be 11 months old next week and is toddling around and has a fascination for anything on wheels that makes noise. He particular likes tires, and they have to watch him like a hawk, because as most babies, he wants to see what they taste like.

My brother brought his dog Otis, who is about 14 years old and has arthritis in his hips and cannot hear very well. One day I watched him take a few steps, stop and do this have crouch lunge thing for a second or two, take a couple more steps and lunge again. I made the comment that it looked like he was doing exercises. (see the picture to the right).

Every camping trip or family vacation has to have something special to remember, this one was no exception. Sunday night, a lot of friends and extended family came for dinner. there was probably 30 people. There were a lot of people there who were dog people so they petted and played with both his dog and ours.

At some point in the afternoon Otis came up missing and without a huge announcement half of the people were looking for the dog. In the pond, in the "tall weed" in the briars, in the woods, and down the road. For about 15 minutes.

Then somebody notices that my brother-in-law's propane camp stove is in flames. He had left it on to burn off some of the grease and in the process of looking for the dog, forgot about it and the grease caught fire.

About 8 of us were trying to decided how to put out the fire before it burnt the pavilion down. We did get it turned off, but the grease was still burning. I had said don't use water it will just make the grease fire worse, they didn't listen, flames shot to within inches of the rafters. Somebody tried opening the lid that gave it more oxygen, same effect. They tried beating with a dry towel (yeah like that's going to work). My niece got a fire extinguisher from a camper, (out of date and no pressure) finally Charlie yelled but a wet towel over it. duh!!!! Sorry, don't have any pictures of the fire. (sorry no picture of the fire we were too busy trying to put it out)

OK, back to looking for the dog. Which we found about 20 yards from the campfire ring, lying in the weeds in the shade of a big tree. See the large tree behind
Charlie to the left of where he is setting, that's about where we found Otis.

Like I said every trip has to have something to remember.

Vacation

Well, it has been awhile, I just simply forget to write, because I lead such an exciting live. NOT!
Last week we went camping with my family. There are pictures of that trip on my nephew's blog at http://www.simplyoutdoors.net/2008/05/22/camping-the-first-trip-of-the-year/

There were 11 people who camped and my one of my niece's in-laws came for supper on Saturday.

Michelle had the baby there, Benjamin is 7 months old, and they are so cute at that age, I forgot to take any pictures - AGAIN, but you can see some of them again on Arthur's blog at http://arthurandjenn.com/wordpress/?p=727

We had 3 campsites and our camping "gear ranged from tents, to pop-ups-to trailers, to mini-motor homes.

From Pokagon State Park we went to Redbanks Mississippi, to see Charlie's son Terry and his family.

We had a good time and as usual Charlie did a lot of things with the kids and came home with a little back ache, I don't think he's used to riding a bicycle about 5+ miles.

We hope to have them, or at least the three kids, come up sometime soon to see and ride the horses, and so we can show them around Michigan.

I took a few pictures, but I didn't get any good ones of Terry or Amy or Ruth. This is one of Logan age three, the great grandson, Sarah age 10, and Daniel in the background, age 14. Ruth is 12.