Christmas Vacation in Florida

I just got back last night from my trip to Florida for the last week and I am beat.  The whole week was full of adventures and we never had a dull moment.  It was a great week full of family, friends, and lots of fun.

Unfortunately, my camera broke over Thanksgiving break, so I didn't take very many pictures, and I only have a few from a couple pictures other people took, but I can still tell a good story.

I got there late on Saturday night, so we went to a neighbor's Christmas party and mainly just hung out.  Sunday was a good day that started on the beach and then finished spending time at Erin's parents with them and some family friends.  We had a good dinner and a lot of fun hanging out with everybody.  The picture at the top is of the beach we went to in the morning.  There were a lot of cool rock formations along the beach.

Monday was our big fishing day.  The water was supposed to be relatively calm, but it turned out that for most of the morning, we were riding through about 4 foot waves.  It was a very wet and rough day in the boat, but it was still a great day in the boat.  We ended up being out on the water for about 9 hours, but because of my bad fishing luck, we only caught one fish.  And it was a really tiny fish.  But again, everyone says, "A bad day fishing is better than any day at work."  After my clothes I wore that day dried, they were able to stand up on their own because of all of the salt water that came over the boat while we were driving around the ocean.

Tuesday was Christmas eve, and the majority of that day was spent on the bike for the second annual Christmas Eve century ride.  It started out fine enough, as a nice and casual ride.  It ended more as a hammer fest, but it was still a good day and quite an adventure.  The picture below is of the group right around where we turned around at mile 50 right near some nuclear reactors for a power plant.  After the ride (and after we ate at Five Guys), we went to church for a Christmas Eve sermon and then had a very nice dinner with Erin's family.  

For Christmas on Wednesday, we did the usual Christmas morning thing and then went over to Erin's parents where we did more Christmas morning stuff and then ate a lot of food.  Christmas dinner was great and the deserts were even better.  It was a great Christmas.

On Thursday, Ryan, Erin, and I went out for a kayaking trip up the Loxahatchee River, which is right at the end of the canal in Ryan's back yard.  We kayaked a little over 10 miles.  It was good for Ryan and Erin, who were in a two-person kayak and were able to take turns paddling, but I was on my own and got pretty tired paddling the whole time by myself.  We saw a lot of animals- birds, turtles, fish, and gators!  I didn't think I would be scared of gators, but when the ones that we got a little close to decided to go under the water and we couldn't see them anymore, it was a little unnerving.  Our turn around point for the trip was a place called Trapper Joe's.  It is basically an untouched homestead of a man that moved down from Vermont and lived off of the land almost exclusively and eventually turned his property into a zoo and a campground.  He died mysteriously in the 60's and his place is almost exactly as he left it, including stacks of wood that he didn't get around to cutting (he cut wood three times a day, apparently).  It was again a very nice day, and rained on us as we were finishing up the trip.  We had fishing poles, too, but the only fish that were caught were by Ryan whenever my pole wasn't in the water.

After the kayaking trip, I went up to visit with Mike and Caroline and the Doves.  We had a good time hanging out and catching up and then Mike drove me back down to Ryan's on Friday when we had a good lunch and Mike and I spent some time at the beach and had some fun trying to body surf in the waves which were actually pretty good sized.

On Saturday, we spent the whole day out on the boat with some of my friends from Montana, Shourjo and Neelambari.  We went out to the sand bar in the middle of the intercoastal with my nieces.  We got to see a really big hermit crab and a dog that was loving life digging into the sand.  Then we went spearfishing, except the water was too cloudy so we didn't really get to see much.

On my last day on Sunday, Ryan took my surfing for my first time ever.  That was a crazy workout and I am very sore from that still today.  It took me forever even to get out to the waves because I was paddling as hard as a could, but the waves kept crashing down on me and pushing me back to shore.  I almost stood up twice and then actually stood up for about 3 seconds once.  Not too bad for my first time ever trying to surf.

Overall, it was an absolutely amazing week full of adventures.  I was sore most of the week in places I hadn't ever been sore before.  Surfing probably did the most to make me sore in weird places.  I got to see some awesome wildlife and spent a lot of time out in the water.  I got to wear shorts and flip-flops almost the whole week.  And I got to spend some good quality time with family and friends.

Wall Street Journal Article on Where I Work

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about the Bear Center where I work.  It is a pretty good article.  It is pretty cool that it is kind of nationally popular, at least for a couple days.

Here is the link:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303330204579246003604081632?mod=e2fb

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I usually don't get too into the Christmas spirit, and if I do, it usually isn't sooner than about 36 hours before the actual day.  But last year I got excited about it and went and cut down my own Christmas tree.  This year, I've done even more.  I have even been listening to Christmas music the past week or so.  Weird.

Sunday, my roommates and I got our house all set up to look a lot like Christmas.  We braved the cold in the morning to string lights up on the house.  When I say cold, I mean it was -2 F while we were working and we had to hang lights for a few minutes and then take a break inside.  It is quite unfortunate that to be able to hold a nail with a glove on, you have to sacrifice a lot of insulation and warmth.  But it worked out and we got the lights up in time to take a drive up to the Coeur d'Alene National Forest to look for a Christmas tree.

Not too bad for my first ever attempt at hanging Christmas lights.  Unfortunately, our ladder wasn't tall enough to get the left corner of the higher roof, so it looks a little goofy.

The place we went this year was so much better than the Forest I went to last year.  It had much healthier trees and more choices.  In the end, though, we ended up with a tree that looks fairly similar to the one I got last year.  At least this year, it was a lot easier carrying it out, since I had two other people with me.

Here is our Christmas tree in its natural setting.  It was much taller than would fit in our house, so we are going to use the rest as firewood.

While we were driving back off of the mountain, we got to see an amazing sunset (pictured at the top).  Then, after a stop at Cabela's we headed home to decorate the tree.

It is a little fuller than my Christmas tree last year.  It looks pretty good, and it has a nice story behind it.

A Great Smoky Mountain Thanksgiving

Last week, I headed back out east for Thanksgiving break.  I flew into Detroit and spent my first night there hanging out with Steve, Melissa, Sean, and Kirsten.  We had some great time eating dinner then at Ashley's.  It was great to see friends again, even though it was such a short visit.

Then on Monday, Arika and Sheldon picked me up in Ann Arbor and we headed down to Tennessee where my parents rented a cottage in the Great Smoky Mountains.  On our way down, we stopped at the William Howard Taft National Historic Site in Cincinnati, which wasn't quite as cool as the Garfield site Arika and I had stopped at back in August, but it was still good.

Before he was president, he spent some time out of the country.  Here is his key to Manila.

We drove by the new "touchdown Jesus" statue.  They completely redesigned the new one after the old one burnt down after getting struck by lightning.  The new one isn't anywhere near as comical as the old one.

We got to the cottage late, so we just hung out the first night.  When we woke up the first day, it was so foggy and rainy that we couldn't see the mountains!  We took most of the day to head into town to get some rain gear for Arika.  We got back in time to go for a very short rainy hike.  We just followed a creek as far up a mountain before we figured we would run out of daylight.

Here is my bed in the cabin.  It was king sized and very comfortable.

Here is our view from the cabin on Thanksgiving after the fog, rain, and snow finally lifted.

On Wednesday, it was still very foggy, but today it was snowing, so we headed out to the National Park to go for a hike and see some wildlife.  We headed up Abrams Creek Trail, which, as the name implies, follows Abrams Creek.  The goal of the hike was the Abrams Falls (pictured at the top).  It was a very fun hike, especially since we took a detour off of the trail and got to the peak of a local maximum in order to find some better views.  Luckily, while we were up higher, the fog lifted enough that we could see farther than we had been able to so far on the trip.  

Arika spotted a sow and her 3 cubs climbing a tree while we were driving through the park.

This is part of Cade's Cove.  It is supposed to be a great place to see wildlife.  All we saw were a bunch of whitetails (which a bunch of other tourists couldn't help but get out of their car and take pictures of).

Arika and me along Abrams creek on part of our Wednesday hike.

Here is the nice view we found once we went of trail and gained some elevation (the trail followed the creek the whole way, so it stayed in the valley).

Another great view afforded by our higher vantage point.

Arika and Sheldon up in the mountains.

Then of course we had a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner, with participation from multiple families to add great variety.  Thursday night, everybody went up into the park with the goal of climbing to the high point of Tennessee, but the road to the trail was closed, so we just hung out for a little bit at an overlook along the Appalachian Trail.

Friday, Arika, Sheldon, and I headed back up to Michigan and we had dinner in Ann Arbor before they dropped me off at a friend's house.  And then I flew back to Washington Saturday morning.  It was a great trip and I had a great time seeing friends and family again.