#71: Walk on the beach, 20x

First, let me say that I am posting this from a fort! It's a pretty grey, sad looking day, so I built myself a fort, taking over a corner of the living room, and blocking off the bathroom from Robert (bwahahaha, there's no way his giant self can crawl through this fort!). It's complete with couch cushions to lay on, lots of pillows, and twinkle lights strung up to make it extra-cozy. I'm loving this thing.

In the past few weeks I have gone on two camping trips on Lake Huron. One with my friend Jess and her 2-year-old daughter, Lively to East Tawas ("The Cape Cod of the Great Lakes", apparently). We hung out on the beach, I flew a kite, and we went swimming in the lake, but didn't necessarily go for a walk on the beach.

The lake was beautiful there, we were sort of in a bay, and the water was so clear. We walked out probably about 1/4 mile and the water was barely up to our hips, and we could still clearly see our feet.



Then, the next week, I went camping with my mom in her RV, to Sleeper State Park, in the thumb, right outside of Caseville. (Okay, so, Michigan is shaped like a hand, right? I think everyone knows that. Us Michiganders use our hands as maps quite often, pointing to places on our palms and fingers. So, the area that is in what looks like the thumb, we literally refer to it as "The Thumb".) We went for a walk on the beach both nights that we were there.





That's Mom explaining to me the scientific theory of arches. She was such a scientist on these walks. On the other walk she explained to me that zebra muscles are bad because, "They eat something or do something." But seriously, Lake Huron, in most places, is pretty murky these days, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the invasion of the zebra muscles. Just another reason why Lake Superior is the best Great Lake, we didn't have zebra muscles, and our water was very clear!


That's Professor Debbie herself.

We also went to a farmer's market while we were in the thumb, thereby checking off another one from list item #60: go to 50 farmer's markets. (I really gotta pick up the pace on this one! I've only got 8 down)


I think we did it wrong. First of all, it was the weirdest farmer's market I've ever been too, because there were way more flea market/antiques/sunglasses/knock-off louis vitton handbag booths than there were actual produce booths. Plus, puppies for sale! We spent time wandering around all the booths, not looking at much, other than antiques and a book/cigar box booth that kept us occupied for awhile. By the time we got to the actual food booths, they sounded the horn that the vendors could start packing up. To top it off, we had brought a lot of produce with us on the trip, so we didn't need any more for our trip, and we couldn't remember what we had at home or what we'd need. So, by the time we left, I had bought a cigar box, and Mom had bought two cigar boxes, a few books as gifts (including one for me about airplanes in the '40s. Let me tell you, that is all sorts of right up my alley), a plate of brownies, and a cinnamon roll. Oh well.

Here's a couple more cute pictures from Mom and I's trip, mostly on a walk through the hiking trails in the park. (I went for a jog through them at dusk...I was doing my cooldown walk until I looked over and saw a deer staring at me...and promptly screamed and ran! I'm not interested in talking to any wildlife at nighttime! If there's a deer looking at me, there's probably also a bear or bigfoot with its eye on me.)