Last weekend I took a much needed vacation to visit Anand in San Diego, knock two more stadiums off my list (Petco Park in San Diego and Angel Stadium in Anaheim), and meet up with the still-legally-married-for-now Brad and Russ. On top of the two baseball games, I also managed to visit a beach, go to both the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo: Wild Animal Park, and hike up a mountain. I brought my camera and had what Anand referred to as an “itchy trigger finger” taking over a thousand pictures. I’ve pared those down to about 250 and separated them by outing… I doubt anyone will look at all of them, but they’re here if you want to (linked to the subheading of each photo).

Thursday evening’s trip to Ocean Beach

Friday’s trip to the San Diego Zoo

Friday night and Saturday afternoon’s baseball games

Sunday’s hike up Mount Woodson

Monday’s trip to the San Diego Zoo: Wild Animal Park

As I write this, I am sitting in front of a campfire looking over Western Bay near Acadia National Park, having just polished off a lobster dinner and half a blueberry pie. (I’ll save the other half for tomorrow night.)
MGH is forcing me to take Monday off because some guy got lost trying to find India 500 years ago and I decided to take advantage of the fact that I own a car by heading “downeast” to go hiking at Acadia for the weekend. I didn’t think of this idea until earlier this week (when I realized that Monday was a holiday), and it seems that plenty of other people had a similar idea. So many other people, in fact, that all of the hotels and motels within two hours of Acadia were booked (according to various websites anyway). But the good old Kampground Of America was not booked, so I threw my tent and sleeping bag in the car and here I am.
The lobster dinner came from a lobster pound about 15 miles away and was delicious, even if the butter had re-solidified. The lobster was good enough that I didn’t really need it. Also, in case you were curious, lobster shells will burn in a campfire.
The blueberry pie came from an older couple’s house. I saw a sign for pie on my drive, pulled over thinking it would be a restaurant where I could get a slice. Instead, I was welcomed into the home of a really nice old man who led me into his kitchen and showed me the 6 pies that had been baked that day. I bought the blueberry one that had just come out of the oven and it was amazingly delicious.
Oh, and I am blogging because there is free wireless here. KOA’s definitely aren’t camping in the traditional sense that I usually imagine, but they have their own bizarre niche and are cheaper than any of the motels would have been. I’ll probably spring for their $4 pancake breakfast tomorrow morning.

Wednesday morning I took off with my sister from our house in Minnesota and headed north. Highlights so far include…
Wednesday

• Being introduced to the concept of “guerilla photography” (invented by my sister and father?) — hold the camera out the window and snap pictures while driving and hope some of them come out
• Lunch in Duluth, MN at Hell’s Kitchen
• Seeing the John B. Aird (boat) for the second time this summer
• Dessert in Two Harbors at Betty’s Pies
• Visiting Gooseberry Falls
• Being asked to pull over at an international border crossing for the first time in my life. (They asked me multiple times why I was moving, and what my new job would entail… I think they were trying to make sure I wasn’t fleeing to Canada, which is tempting, but not the case.)
• A night in Thunder Bay, Ontario after having to switch rooms when the first room was unopenable by any key in the hotel.

Thursday

• Lots of rain while driving along the Canadian side of Lake Superior
• Lots of fog too
• Stopping in Wawa, ON to see the big steel geese (three of them!) and buy some in-car fun (trivia games for “ages 8-18”)
• Dipping the toes in at Katherine Cove… in the rain
• Seeing Agawa Rock again… in the rain
• Camping on a beach on Agawa Bay… in the rain… resulting in a very angry sister
• Lots of card playing in a tent (which stayed surprisingly dry inside)
• Sleeping to the sounds of waves crashing on the shore… the rain had finally stopped

Friday

• Waking up just as the sun finished rising and catching the tail end of pinkness over the lake
• Wading briefly in Lake Superior and walking down the beach while the aforementioned angry sister waited back at the campsite
• Successfully building a small campfire… quickly stopped by angry sister wanting to “just get on the road right away”
• Shopping in Sault Ste Marie to buy sister dry jeans
• Trying in vain to find Mad Libs at at least five different stores
• Driving to many episodes of The Jack Benny Show
• Dinner and a walk along a Nipissing Lake beach in North Bay, Ontario
• Solving crossword puzzles while driving
• Stopping in Pembroke, the site of a Fiddlers and Steppers Festival and sleeping in a bed across from a snoring, much appeased sister

Anne, who is by far the better photographer, took many good pictures. At some point I’ll get them off the camera and post the highlights.
Tomorrow… onto Montreal.

I’m moving out of Ann Arbor in a few hours. First I’m heading to Minnesota to visit with the family, and then up through Canada landing eventually in Boston where I’ll start a new job at my old stomping grounds of MGH.
Also, Nathan Crockett is my hero as are Joshua Brammer, Mark Haynes, James Wiswall, Sarah Barbrow, and John Prensner, because all of them helped me pack my stuff into a little cube to be hauled away by ABF tomorrow. But double kudos to Nate for moving the most stuff.

After my previous trip to see the Agawa pictographs, I mentioned it to Wanda Perron, one of the Bay Mills historians, and she lent me a book about the pictographs written in 1992. While I knew I hadn’t gotten to all of the accessible pictographs because of the weather, official park literature told me that the last panel of pictographs was accessible only by boat. However, the book mentioned that if the water is calm and you are feeling adventuresome, you can veer off the coastal trail a bit a reach the other side of the rock. The potential for finding the remaining pictographs was enough to get me to go back this weekend, armed with a newer camera borrowed from the virtual museum project.
Saturday, before the alarm clock went off, I woke up at 5 am. As an extended aside, knowing the Olympics had started and that it was 5 pm in Beijng, I flipped on the TV and observed that while NBC was re-airing the opening ceremonies for a second time, the CBC (Canada) was airing live coverage of the first day of swimming prelims, including Michael Phelps first Olympic race. Guess which channel I watched… NBC take note.
After I had my Olympic fix, I got on the road. Before reaching the park, I took a detour to check out the Chippewa Falls. After stopping to get a park pass, I went straight to Agawa Rock where I found much calmer water than during my previous trip. (The two linked photos were taken at almost exactly the same spot.) As a result of the nicer weather, I saw both things I had seen before and was able to make it further down the rock and see pictographs that were new to me.
But that wasn’t the exciting part.

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Last weekend I went on the Agawa Canyon Tour Train, which takes you 114 miles into northern Ontario into areas where roads don’t go and drops you off at Agawa Canyon. Unfortunately, they only give you an hour and a half there, which is just barely enough time to see all three waterfalls and go up the lookout — if you’re fast. I saw everything, but it felt very rushed. Three hours would have been better.
I brought my camera and discovered just how difficult it is to take pictures on a moving train. Because the train doesn’t slow down just because you’re passing something pretty, taking a photograph pretty much consists of putting the lens against the window, snapping the picture, and hoping it’s not terrible. But nevertheless, I took pictures and, a week later, they are here.

This weekend I took advantage of being at the eastern tip of Lake Superior. On Saturday morning, I woke up at 5:30 AM (!) and drove two and half hours north into Ontario to Lake Superior Provincial Park. It turns out I was a little too early as I got there before the visitors center opened and thus couldn’t buy a park pass right away. But once that was settled, I saw Ojibwe pictographs at Agawa Rock and opted to go on the 10 km hike up a mountain rated “demanding” on a cloudy day. The latter was a questionable decision due to the weather — nothing like getting rained on when you’re isolated and alone halfway up a mountain. I might go back up there another weekend and try another trail.
Upon my return to the US, Brad and Russ arrived for a weekend visit and after a late night showing of The Dark Knight on Saturday night, we spent most of Sunday at Tahquamenon Falls. Russ (who is neither my father nor the Good Doctor) summed up our adventures with his farewell rhyme: “We watched Batman, went to the falls, and saw old people with tennis balls.” I’ll miss those guys.

Pictures:
• Lake Superior Provincial Park, including the Agawa Rock pictographs, the Awausee Trail (a 10 km hike up Agawa Mountain), and a few roadside lookouts off the Trans-Canada highway.
• Tahquamenon Falls with Brad, Russ and a beetle. Oh, and of course, I was there with them.

A few complaints have been made about my lack of blogging lately. Unlike some people who have become blogging fiends, I haven’t gotten uber-excited about any particular political candidate yet, partly because Michigan got itself disenfranchised out of the primaries and partly because I actually like both Obama and Clinton, so it’s pretty much a win-win in my mind. (I have a preference, but not an overly strong one.) It’s not like there was ever any doubt that I would go into November voting for someone other than the democratic candidate — I’m pretty consistent that way.
Speaking of the national political scene, I went and visited Jenn in DC last weekend. We participated in some (simulated) espionage, saw some monuments, and I failed to take a good picture of the Capitol at night. But I did get a sort of artsy shot of the Washington Monument via the Jefferson Memorial, which I kind of like. It might be better if I did some strategic cropping, but I’m too lazy.
In other news, I arranged a song for my a cappella group this semester. It’s not clear to me why I decided that I have that skill, but as of today’s rehearsal, it’s beginning to sound not-terrible. (The Chorallaries we are not — for many reasons, including the fact that we are all female and that we primarily sing jazz.)

Due to an odd confluence of events, I am not going back to Minnesota this Thanksgiving. Instead, I am taking Amtrak (leaving in three hours) to Chicago where I will meet my parents and sister for a family weekend in the Windy City. Because I’ll be on a train during traditional Thanksgiving meal gorging hours, I am bringing with me my own meal — sliced turkey, “cranberry celebration” (cranberries, pineapple, and walnuts), some buns on which to make a sandwich, mashed potatoes (in tupperware), miniature sweet potato and pumpkin pies.
This is not the Thanksgiving meal I’m used to, but it’ll do.
Happy Turkey Day, everyone!

Okay, to end the story of the road trip, we drove a lot on Thursday through Utah and Nevada. We stopped briefly at the Mormon temple, the Bonneville Salt Flats, and in Reno for dinner. But mostly we drove… all the way to Berkeley, where I got dropped off at Anand’s and Amy continued on to Mountain View.
And now, finally, there are pictures… they’re sorted by state, because that seemed as arbitrary as anything else.