A promise is a promise

Well, now that I am home and staple free as of today, slowly starting to feel better and hurt less--I thought I would go ahead and tell you of the last snowmobile trip of the season.  In my previous blog I did share a couple photos, from the ice shelf on Lake Superior. 

This has to be the most amazing thing. I know it's not super significant, but since I have never seen anything like this, nor had my husband or my son, it made the trip worth it.

Let's start here, snowmobiling is NOT my favorite thing to do. I actually find it very boring, let me tell you why. First, you ride by yourself and talk to yourself, please don't misunderstand; you have a group of people, but you are on your own snowmobile using hand signals unless you stop. Second, it's very easy to get cold. Third the trails can be really rough. Fourth, the towns you stop at, usually miles apart, consist of a bar/restaurant and a gas station, usually not very nice.  Fifth, well I could go on all day as to why I don't like it...but I think everyone gets the point.
Do you want to know why this trip was the best trip ever?
We went all the way up to Newberry in the U.P. The last trip to Newberry, well it wasn't great. This time we arrived right after a snow storm which made for wonderful trails.

It was also really cool when you were riding down the trail and there was snow as high as you! When we were stopped, I stepped off the trail to take this photo

and the snow was up past my knees!
The whole time I was riding, I kept thinking I can not wait to blog a bout this trip! The trails were smooth, the snow was piled up and the tree stumps looked like mushroom because of the giant piles of snow on top of them. It was beautiful!  As many times as I have been snowmobiling, this trip will always be remembered, with the smooth like butta trails and the ice shelfs!  Oh it was the first time I got to go snowmobiling with my son too! 


More photos:






This blog should have been done sooner, like right after I got off the snowmobile, so you would have been able to feel my excitement, but like I said, I will never forget this trip.
Until next time friends!

Beauty.........

So as I was wrapping up the photos from the Camden Pageant (a little late, I know)  there were a few that I thought were really worth sharing.    Before I entered into this gig of shooting the pageant I had no idea what entailed.  It's a lot of work, not for me as much as it was for the moms and the girls.  Now mind you, I have only been to this one pageant, I am sure that they get harrier in the bigger pageants, but this was a pretty big deal.    These girls worked hard and so did their moms and families, so when I found some of these shots that I caught I just wanted to share.



This was one of my favorites, though I have no idea what she was feeling, she was just so adorable.
This was my second favorite

--I loved her dress and her expression--
There was a lot of waiting around time for the girls.

At the end, a LOT of excitement






I hope I get to do this again next year!   By the way, I am so glad I have a son!!!

When in Milwaukee....

Catching you up----here we go!  Last week, my husband and I took our boat from Grand Haven, Michigan to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the Holiday.  Oh my gosh, we had such a smooth ride over.  It took 3 1/2 hours to get across Lake Michigan! 


The view from the water, isn't this amazing!

The sunset on our first night there, and I took this from the back of our boat!
Here was my view after the sun went down:


We went for the Holiday and Summerfest, which was totally awesome! I seriously can't wait to go next year!

I will get you more ASAP!  There is MUCH to tell!  

Stage two

Here is the rest of the story. When I left off I had gave you the photos from the first and second floors of the abanonded factory. Here are the rest of them, although I didn't count the remaining floors.






The higher we got, the more nervous I got. This building has been partly torn down for reasons unknown, and through out the buildings there are holes cut in the floor and tons of dangerous stuff, I must admit that I was afraid of the stairs not being able to hold us as we climbed higher.

This was the top. The roof of the building! We didn't go any further than this because of the snow and my gigantic fear of heights--oh and it probably wasn't very safe up there either.





Here we found the old office areas. We didn't go down any further because it was too dark, and I admitted to being scared of the dark.
This scale was the last thing in this building I photographed. Why? Because there one was one single light on. The building is supposed to be dead, no power! We found the first door out and that was the end.

We trudged on over to through the silos and into the loading building-or that's what I thought it was, and these are the last photos of the trip




This is not the end of the abandonment series, I will fill you in on last weekends adventure, and then follow up with the up coming outing, and I hope it will certainly be an exciting one!

Spam fest videos

Saturday at the marina was our 2nd annual spam fest. What is spam fest you ask? One of our fellow boaters, Harlin, thought it would be fun to have a sort of pot luck buffet of food all made with spam in it. Last year was the first spam fest and I have to say the food, all laced with spam, was much improved this year!! My Husbands Spam 4 Cheese noodles won second place! Here is last years video, and it was shot  by Kim: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-EQbzYNMA . This years was shot by Kim with some help from her husband Rick, and it is also available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuhWyOL1zfA . Here are the winners--http://www.youtube.com and there are tons of photos of the dishes that I am aiming to get available tomorrow.

Ludington

Last time I was here, I described our trip to Ludington. Here is some of the stuff we seen while we were away.

This is the Ludington lighthouse that I made look like an old photograph.
Here is a HDR version:

Ofcourse we seen way more than this light house, but something that was really cool about this light house was we actually got to go into it

We walked all the way out the break wall and there was a sign that said adults $3 and Children $1. This is the first one we have gotten to go into. Of course it's only the second light house that we have walked too.
So here is the light house up close:

When you walk through the door, there isn't much to look at. The "volunteers" have set up a table and spot for little souvenirs, they take your money which goes toward the up keep of the light house and what not, and they tell you some stories about it, and about how you yourself can be a "volunteer" and you can stay in the lighthouse for a weekend. I couldn't imagine staying in it, but I am sure it would be an experience! There really isn't much inside to see, and as you go up the space shrinks!

Here is a couple of shots that show the view from the top floor. There was four people and a dog up there, and I squeezed up there for a minute and that really took away from the elbow room! I say a second because I am terrified of heights, but I am trying to over come it, at least for photo ops!


This is what it looks like looking up! If you look closely you can see my famous dog! She is in the bag and famous because she got to go all the way up into the lighthouse. We took her out on the walk with us so she could get out for a bit and get some exercise, but when we were on the break wall there wasn't enough room to let her walk on the leash so we put her in my bag, she never complained!

This would be the third floor. This is the floor where the bell or whistle is blown. The signs there talk about how loud it is. There wasn't much inside to photograph, but this gives you a slight idea. Here is looking out the window of the third floor.
Here is the second floor, not much going on here:

The boat trip

Last Thursday, would have been the 23rd of July, we packed our boat full and waited for the morning to arrive. Rather early, we unhooked all the lines and shoved off for our very first boat trip away from our marina. We were heading for Ludington, 56 miles north of Grand Haven on a very smooth and calm Lake Michigan! This is Sarah and Harlins boat on the way to Ludington. Gives you an idea of how calm the water was.

That is the sand dunes behind them. Silver Lake Sand Dunes to be exact.
This is their boat again, and we are actually leaving Ludington and that's the light house we got to go up into, but more on that later.

While we were gone, I took over 400 photos and that's just with my big camera. For now all I have is boat photos, from the ride there and the ride back. We started to head home on Sunday, but we were facing five footers that we heard turned into eight footers (waves) so we turned into port at Pentwater. We had a lot of fun there, even though I complained a bit about the lack of luxury! It wasn't so bad and we had tons of fun in the one night we were there. The town was adorable and had tons of shopping. We left out of Pentwater at 7:30 because we wanted to beat the waves that were going to build, and the waterway would be shut down at 1:00 in Grand Haven for the Coast Guard Fest that would start last weekend!
So here is Rick and Kim on the way home! It was a very nice ride home, we were so glad we waited until Monday.


Here is Tu Dogs, Herb and Kathy, also on the way home. This was such a nice trip we can't wait to do it again. There is plenty more to talk about, as I said earlier, I took over 400 photos on this trip! More Later!