Nickel Pickle

I thought I would post some picture updates of my garden.  In actuality, what it looks like today is quite different from the pictures, since I took the pictures about two weeks ago.  We have had some chilly days here and it seems that fall is here in Pullman.

My sunflowers turned out pretty nice and brought a lot of bees to my garden.  I would go at night and see them frozen stuck on the flowers.

My corn ended up not getting so big and I am not sure I am going to have more than a few ears to harvest.  I guess I will at least get one meal out of it.  The potatoes and onions are quite ready to be pulled out of the ground.

 If you notice in the picture above, you can see my cucumbers just went crazy.  In one day, I harvested over 60 pounds of cucumbers.  So I made pickles.  A lot of pickles.  It was actually a ton of fun.  My first canning experience was so much fun.  I wish I had more things to can.  But I guess I will have to go buy some stuff.  I did buy about 5 lbs of apples at the WSU produce market, but those are going to an apple pie and apple crisp.  Maybe I'll buy some more to can some preserves or apple pie stuff.

In other news, I put new fenders on my bike to make it look awesome.  Interestingly, the past two days, both days, people pulled up to next to me in their car and asked if I wanted to race.  I don't know if it is the fenders, but something is going on that makes people want to race me.  And for the record, I lost the first day, but won the second day.

Nick's Adventures Out (Mid)West

Its been pretty crazy here since I got back from my Michigan visit, so sorry it has been so long since I've posted anything (for my one or two readers).

Well, this post is going to take a break from my Adventures out West and explore some of the adventures I had while I was back in Michigan (and some other of the Midwest).

First off was Steve and Melissa's wedding!  It was a great wedding ceremony, reception, and plenty of other fun events throughout the weekend to celebrate their marriage.  On the day after the wedding we had a day full of activities, which started out with a great brunch at Zingerman's Roadhouse grill.  Then later in the day, we all went out for a nice paddle down the Huron River.  It was a lot of fun to get out and enjoy this, especially since I had never actually been on the Huron River before.  And then the day ended with a lot of fun and hanging out at Steve and Melissa's place.  Sorry I don't have any pictures from the weekend, but Congratulations to Steve and Melissa!!

After the weekend, I headed back to Jackson to hang out with the fam.  One of the days, Arika and I took a great adventure down to one of our National Parks, the one in Ohio.  It is Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  In addition to this write-up, Arika also wrote a nice bit about our adventure to the Worst State Ever here: http://godmadedirtanddirtdonthurt.blogspot.com/2013/09/adventure-with-my-brother.html.  We didn't get to experience the Park very much because while we were there, it was pouring rain like I haven't seen in a while.  We caught a break in the hard rain just long enough to take a wooden path down to see a pretty cool waterfall shown below.  Besides that, intermingled in the Park was neighborhoods and houses.  It was kind of weird to be driving through neighborhoods instead of campgrounds while at a National Park, but I guess each one is unique.  Also, it was pretty hard to take a picture of this awesome waterfall without having the road in the background.

After a very brief visit in the Park, we headed North towards Cleveland and checked out the James Garfield National Historic Site.  It was a really cool spot where they made his house a museum, which included a library made in his honor by his wife after he died and actually started the tradition of the Presidential Library.  Below is a picture of a memorial made by his wife to honor his military career, which includes a 38 star US flag behind it.  Also below is a picture of the library.  The picture didn't turn out very well, but it was awesome.  I think it is what I want a library in my house to look like in the future.

Very close by the James Garfield National Historic Site is Kirtland, OH, which is one of the stops along the way of the Mormons as they kept getting kicked out of places that they lived before finally making the trek out to Utah.  In Kirtland, the Mormons built the first temple.  There was quite a bit more history there, but we were getting hungry, so we scooted out of there and went to Cleveland to get some lunch.  Below is a picture from inside the temple.

From there, my adventures took me back to Jackson for a few days and then up to stay with Arika and Sheldon at their new house up in Clio, near Christmas City Frankenmuth.  We had a great dinner at Frankenmuth Brewery and then had a lot of fun racing go-karts at an indoor place in Clio.  Then on Friday, I headed down to Monroe for a quick stop at the River Raisin National Battlefield Park.  It was a very cool stop, but mostly more for the history of it than anything else.  I think it is still a pretty new National Park Service site, so it isn't developed very much, so there wasn't much to see, but the history behind was fascinating.  That night I spent hanging out with Sean in Ann Arbor before heading back to Jackson on Saturday.

On Saturday, I took Jacob and Jessi for a little adventure out the Whitetail Museum in Grass Lake, MI.  It was a pretty cool place where they have deer that you can feed, including a bunch of white deer.  Here is Jessi feeding some apples to one of the white ones.

This guy and a few of the others were trying pretty hard to get rid of their velvet, which caused a lot of concern for Jessi because she was worried about them, so I had to explain the annual cycle of deer antlers to her.

Then we went inside and checked out all the mounts they had on display.  Below is a picture of one of the two full rooms they had of deer mounts.  Also below you can see a picture of one of the "weird" ones they had.  They had a bunch like these, where they deer had some kind of antler tumor.  Jessi again had a concern for the deer, this time why people kill them, so I explained conservation to her and the benefits to animal populations of hunting by humans.

Then on Sunday, Arika, Sheldon, and I went to Marshall to eat lunch with Grandma.  Pictured below you can see them in front of the building that used to be my Grandpa's doctor's office.  Now it is a sandwich joint.  Then after lunch with Grandma, we had second lunch with all of the Todd's to celebrate Lauren's birthday.

And that's all folks.  It was a really great trip and a great vacation.  It was awesome to see everyone after such a long absence.