Actual wildlife that is – there has been no excessive partying in the woods (as yet!)
I missed getting pictures of the couple of wolves I’ve seen on the gravel roads in the area as well as the large black bear that wandered out onto the highway in front of our vehicle as we drove to Canada last weekend. I haven’t gotten any pictures of the doe and twin fawns who come around every day either.
I haven’t been totally unprepared however. I did get a picture of this cool stone figure near the harbor in town.
There were probably 50 stone statues of various shapes in the same little area. They were amazing to see and examine but it was difficult to get a good picture of them all because they also blend so nicely into the larger rocks upon which they sit. I loved the little man above because he was so nicely proportioned and had a round head!
Ten little ducks went out to play…
The mama duck was herding her ten babies around the shallow edges of the rocks in the harbor. She didn’t seem to mind the picture taking and it was certainly safer than getting up close to take a picture of a wolf or bear!
My step-mother continues to feed the foxes in her yard, but this year’s litter isn’t quite as tame as last year’s. They have started coming close enough to the house to be entertaining though. I practically had to run one over to get out of the drive way yesterday morning!
I interpret the above pose as an “No fair, Mom!” moment.
Last but not least, a big happy birthday to my own daughter who is 11 years old today. Where on earth does time go??? All in all I’m very glad that human children don’t grow up as quickly as babies in the wild, but time is still going a little too fast for my liking…
Regardless of state budget crisises and the closure of state offices, when it’s a nice day, you just want to take advantage and spend some time outside – which is what we did on Friday.
I admit that my years living in the Middle East have left an impression on me – I don’t always follow the rules if there is no one around to enforce them! In my defense, I wasn’t the only one parking on the side of the highway and walking into the park around the barrier.
We’ve been to this park a number of times but I never get tired of visiting. What could be more pleasant on a warm day than a walk along a river?
It’s been a wet year so far and the river is really high. This spot, at the lower falls, is normally a place we’d spend a little time, rock hopping and exploring, but many of the rocks were submerged and the mist was flying thick off the waterfall. It was difficult to take any pictures before the camera lens was covered!
The upper falls along the river is called the Devil’s Kettle – so called because the river plunges down a hole on the left side and, so they say, no one knows where it goes. In years past I’ve been able to walk on the rocks right up to the edge of the hole and look down. Not this year!
There is always something new and interesting to see, like this butterfly buffet!
I don’t know what kind of butterfly this is, but it sure is pretty.
The trail in the park area isn’t so very long (though you could keep following it – eventually you’d end up either in Duluth or Canada!) but it can be challenging. You basically walk in and out on the same trail. The stairs don’t seem so bad going down, but going back up all 176 of them is a bit more work on the way out!
I know there are 176 because I had my daughter count them – 2x! Mwhahahahaha…
What could be better after a long walk at a river than lunch and then a swim in Lake Superior? Not much, particularly on a day when the lake was still and fairly warm. It was up to about 60F where we were. The kids ran in and splashed happily for about an hour while I sat on shore on a large, hot rock.
Our outing on Friday was made that much more sweet by a weekend filled with rain. I’m glad my car has heated seats, but I never expected to still be using them in July!
The children and I have done many long haul trips together, but primarily by plane. This year we are driving up to the north woods of Minnesota since we are already on this side of the Atlantic Ocean and we have a car. I told the kids that it would be better than flying – that we’d be able to make our own schedule, eat what and when we liked*, and I even borrowed a dual screen portable DVD player for them to simulate that plane experience (which is more than I ever had on our long drives from Louisiana to Minnesota when I was a child we didn’t even have air conditioning or radio for many years!)
I also told them we’d have more space in the car. I may have misled them a bit on that count. A Volkswagon Golf hatchback holds more than you’d think, but not quite as much I’d like. Every square inch of space is taken, including the back dash and the floor space in the backseat. On the up side, no one will be reclining the front seats into their laps, the kids have about twenty new-to-them movies to watch, and all the other stuff I told them is true – we can eat when and what we want, *provided of course I can find anywhere to stop in the rural areas we’ll be passing through.
I expect the drive to take between two and two and a half days. I used to make the 19 hour drive between Kent, Ohio and Baton Rouge, Louisiana in one shot back when I was in grad school by leaving at 3am, but I think if I tried that now, I’d have a mutiny on my hands. Besides, I’m not 22 years old anymore. One benefit to air travel is that someone else is doing the driving so you can nod off if you wish!
Given the limited nature of the internet connection at my father’s house, I may post a bit irregularly in July and August. That’s okay – it’s summer and I’m sure you have better things to do than haunt my blog anyway, right? I’m sure I’ll be around at least a couple times a week though – after three years of blogging, I’m well and truly hooked on it!
While the children were outside playing tag and chasing fireflies at the Wigwam Village, I took advantage of the quiet and watched a few episodes of Extreme Couponing on TLC (they were running some sort of marathon). I admit it: I love a good deal and if I end up moving back to the US, I’d love to learn a bit more about taking advantage of coupons.
The show was interesting, but ultimately I was disappointed by it. I am sure that the people who were featured are very good at getting a good deal at the grocery store, but the way the show was presented left a lot to be desired in my opinion.
First of all, you didn’t really learn anything about *how* the people figured out which coupons to use when and there is definitely timing involved in getting the most bang out of them. Second, the people on the show had obviously been told they should set themselves some sort of challenge for the benefit of the show – which was fairly extreme and not necessarily how they would shop on a normal basis. Third, by showing the sometimes bordering on absurd stockpiles of merchandise these people had already accumulated, the show was not so much showing how rewarding saving money with coupons could be, but instead made the people look a bit like lunatics. Who wants to see open shelving for groceries all through the house? Storing 4000+ rolls of toilet paper under every piece of furniture does not come across as sensible or desirable.
One woman set herself a challenge to purchase $1800 worth of groceries for nothing. She actually achieved her goal, in fact she made $.31 on the transaction, but she also spent almost 2 HOURS at the register! A man who was on one episode I watched had a goal to buy supplies to put in care packages for soldiers in Afghanistan – a noble cause, but he already had 1000 tubes of toothpaste in his basement in addition to countless other things. Why not just use some of that??? Surely it will expire before he gets to it himself. There was also a set of twins on the program, one of whom had bought enough diapers to last a baby nearly 2 years and yet neither had any children. Crazy. Why buy more than you can actually use? Even if you get it for free, isn’t it a waste of time and energy and space in your house?
The only woman on the show who made any sense to me was one who was buying things with a goal of making a big donation to a food bank. She knew how to get stuff for free so she wanted to do it, but she wasn’t warped enough to think she herself needed 50+ bottles of mustard.
The show has a compelling voyeuristic quality, but instead of promoting couponing, it seems to subtlety denigrate it as a pursuit for borderline hoarding types.
In fact, you don’t actually have to spend 8 hours clipping coupons or make your shopping list in a spreadsheet. The friend that I’ve been living with for the last few months is great at using coupons. She looks at the weekly ads for her area stores, compares it to the coupons she’s collected from the newspaper and online, and combines coupons and sales when she can to get the biggest benefit. Sometimes that means she divides her list to get some things at one store and other things at a different store. She has a quick mind for math and a good memory for which store charges what for various items she buys regularly – and she doesn’t have a basement full of things she isn’t going to use but ‘were too good a deal to pass up.’
Her method doesn’t make for as good a TV show but watching her get $200 of groceries for $85 was still impressive… and inspiring.
There was a very dramatic thunderstorm the night we stayed in the wigwam. One lightening strike was so close I began to wonder about the odds of us experiencing a lightening strike while sleeping in a concrete teepee. Fortunately, we survived the storm but it was still raining when we woke up. There would be no Lost River Cave tour for us this visit.
Instead, once it stopped raining, we decided to visit another nearby attraction: Kentucky Down Under.
Honestly, if someone had given me a stack of brochures and just told me to choose a couple of places, I probably would not have selected this one. An Australian themed petting zoo in Kentucky??? Skipping it would have been making a mistake. We had a wonderful time.
The admission price may seem a little steep: $22 for adults and $13 for children under 14 years, but the price includes everything and is good for two consecutive days. I only wish I had known that on our first day!
Our first stop was the Budgie house. I have never been all that interested in birds – I like to see them in the wild but they don’t do much for me when they are in cages. This was a bit different though: you walked in with a cup of bird seed. I still might not have gone in if the children hadn’t wanted me to go with them.
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This was a prime example of not knowing what you are missing until you try it. The birds knew the drill and swooped down on us the minute that we entered their space. What fun! My children were a little weirded out by having birds all over them, but I went back for seconds on seeds!
Our next stop was the Woolshed where we got to watch a demonstration of a dog herding sheep and then learn a little bit about various aspects of sheep farming in Australia. After the talk, we were invited to pet the sheep. Doesn’t this guy look content?
We had a little time before our cave tour so we visited the exotic bird garden and also the Lorie cage. These birds are a bit larger and the children were not as keen to walk inside the enclosure. Perhaps this sign (outside the parrot and cockatoo cages) put them off!
I finally managed to talk my son into coming in with me and at least taking my picture.
The birds were beautiful and it was amazing to have them land all over me. I am happy to say that the thief on my shoulder was unsuccessful at dislodging my earring!
Kentucky Down Under also has a cave to explore and we were lucky to get there in time because they only do the tour once a day.
It wasn’t the largest cave in the area but it was lovely. I felt a little like a muppet in Fraggle Rock wandering around all these passages and stairs in the rock!
This was a mammoth stalagmite that has already pretty well blocked on side of the stairs (we came down on the right).
From the cave tour we went to the Outback Walkabout to pet kangaroos – why yes, it did seem a bit surreal! Kangaroos are much softer than you would think they’d be. They are so soft, I’m surprised that you don’t find things made from kangaroo fur – or maybe you do when you are in Australia!
Did you know that kangaroos continue to grow right up until they die? Also, they can jump 9 1/2 feet straight up off the ground. I was glad that they remained calm while we were in their yard walking around with them!
The only two things we did not have time to do were attend a program on Australian Aboriginal customs and traditions including things like boomarangs and didgeridoos and also the presentation on snakes because we had to get on the road to drive back to Ohio. (Sshhh! I might have omitted the snakes on purpose!) We made one last visit to the Budgie house before getting in the car to drive back to Ohio, high on our wonderful day at Kentucky Down Under.
So, having taken the children to see Kung Fu Panda 2 on Friday, exploring caves in Kentucky over the weekend, not to mention the Wigwam Village fun, is it any wonder the children awarded me the Best Mom Ever award on the way home?
Would you think less of me if I admitted that when I was considering making the trip down to Kentucky to visit the caves, that the idea of staying at the Wigwam Village was what truly sold me on the idea? I have a real weakness for anything quirky or weird or retro and this place had high marks on all of those criteria.
The Wigwam Village was built in 1937 and is only one of three that remain in the country. The entire area was like going back in time to the 1950/60s which is something that I enjoyed tremendously. (Is it a surprise that I also enjoy vintage clothes and purses and watching Mad Men?)
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The children were both intrigued and skeptical when we pulled up in the parking lot outside. They’ve stayed in more than their share of nice hotels with all the traveling they’ve done at their young ages. Fortunately, they’ve also stayed in some real holes in our tours around Egypt so they have a wide range of what is acceptable!
The room was actually much larger than it looked from the outside. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was clean and everything worked. The bathroom was a narrow strip on the back of the wigwam – the mirror above the sink was actually hung at a downward angle because of the slope of the wall – and the only fault I could find with it is that the shower had no light source and an opaque shower curtain so it was dark in there!
The best part of the Wigwam Village was the open space. Because the rooms were not designed for staying in and lounging, the playground was the place to be. There were many other families with children staying that night and all the children found each other outside and played tag and hide and seek until the fireflies came out, at which point they all started chasing the bugs instead. It truly warmed my heart to see them all having such a great time in such old fashioned ways.
While the children were playing, I wandered over to the office / gift shop to have a look around. When I went in, the owner was there by himself so I started chatting with him. Ironically, he is an Indian man from India. When I started to tell him about living in Egypt and all the places I’ve traveled (including India) he really seemed pleased to talk to someone with an international perspective (me too!). I was planning to purchase a couple of postcards featuring a picture of the hotel but before I could he made a gift to me of two postcards and also a plaster replica of a wigwam that he has made locally.
He suggested that I might clean it up a bit and paint a “15″ on the back to remember the room we stayed in. I just might. I like my little wigwam quite a lot and every time I look at it I remember that pleasant conversation.
What can I say about the Wigwam Village except that I loved it. So much of America has been franchised by chains of one sort or another that there are fewer and fewer truly unique places out there anymore. If you like the homogeneity and assurance of a certain level of quality that the big hotel chains offer, then the Wigwam Village is probably not for you. The Wigwam Village did not have a pool, the playground equipment was in need of some attention, there was no Wifi, and the cable TV was snowy. On the other hand, because there was nothing much to do in the rooms, people came outside and mingled and children played in the twilight.
There is an area of Kentucky only a few hours away from where I am currently staying that apparently has the world’s longest known cave system, with more than 390 miles explored. I’m always up for seeing something interesting so I packed up the children and set off for some weekend fun.
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Our first stop was Mammoth Cave National Park. They have big caves and several tour options, so it seemed like a natural place to start. TIP: if you should decide to visit the park yourself, book your preferred tour online. We arrived just before noon and most of the best tours were already sold out. Since we were there, we did a self led tour which was just the ticket to whet our appetites for seeing more.
I’ve never had any reason to visit Kentucky and have never given it much thought except as a place I need to pass through to get to some place else. It really is a beautiful area.
Mammoth Cave is so called because it has a really large central chamber – the scale of which is hard to appreciate in this picture. As it turns out, it is only the sixth largest chamber of caves in the area. We didn’t see the others but I was pretty impressed by this one so I can only imagine that the other would be more impressive yet.
Apparently the cave was mined for salt peter during the Revolutionary War to use in the production of gun powder. Interesting!
Seeing the cave at the park only whet our appetite to see more so we headed off next to see Diamond Caverns.
It’s hard to appreciate the beauty of the caves in photographs – things looked so much different with and without a flash.
With a flash…
And without.
Each cave has its own beauty and you can appreciate the depth and scale so much more with your own eyes – and also the cold drips from the ceiling!
The guide called this formation “cave bacon”. It reminded me a little of the alabaster pots I have in Egypt, which glow so prettily when you put a candle inside.
See the stalagmite slab cut off in the bottom left of the photo. Apparently people used to believe you could date a stalagmite as you do a tree, by counting rings. A lot of effort to cut it off to be WRONG!
There were many levels to the caves. I think the deepest under ground we went in this one was about 80ft.
There were clear rules when we entered the caves: No purses or bags, No touching the cave formations. Obviously people were not always so observant of preservation of natural wonders – note the stalagtites which are snapped off flat.
By the end of our tour of Diamond Caverns the children and I were so high on cave exploring we decided to try one more: the Lost River Cave. Long time readers might have noticed by now that I’m a bit of a sucker for adventuring, but especially adventures that involve riding animals or interesting vehicles. The Lost River cave tour is in a boat in an underground river – the only such tour in Kentucky according to their brochure. How cool is that? Unfortunately, the tour was not operating that day due to excess rain fall – the water level in the cave was too high. Disappointing, but now we have something to look forward to next time we are in the area.
I have been in idling mode this last week. Technically now that school is over, summer vacation has begun but it doesn’t really feel like it yet. I’ve just been killing time.
I’ve been told I’m a good mother, but I am not without my weak points. For instance, I am no good at organizing housebound activities. Though I am a crafty person myself, I am no good at directing craftiness in my children. They are always enthusiastic about making things, but inevitably the set-up and clean-up portions of the program last much longer than their actual interest in the project. Also, they take a much more haphazard approach to making things and I have a hard time not interfering in their process. In short, I either take over or make it an unpleasant process for us all. (They want to make pet rocks and bottle cap magnets for an upcoming arts festival in Minnesota… god help me!)
It’s better for me to just step away from the paint pot / glue gun / glitter glue and leave that to their teachers at school.
I much prefer just keeping the kids moving and active. Tennis lessons, swimming, zoo trips – anything where we can get out and go. It not only keeps them busy and entertained, but it usually has the bonus of making them tired as well. Win-win for me.
I’m starting my summer this weekend with an overnight trip to Cave City, Kentucky. It’s apparently one of (the?) largest natural cave formations in the world and it’s only a few hours from here. How could I *not* go to see it? One of the cave tours is offered on a boat. Cave exploring on a boat? I am so there.
There were some kind comments last week referring to what a good mom I am. I appreciate the sentiment but I think you give me too much credit. I am obviously still learning in this motherhood gig.
I did a couple loads of laundry over the weekend, one dark load of clothes followed by a load of sheets and towels. When the dark load was finished I stuck them in the dryer and took the children to a movie (Judy Moody: The Not Bummer Summer – pretty mediocre if you ask me but the kids seemed to like it) When I got home, the dryer was done so I started to unload the clothes when I noticed something – many items had blue splotches on them.
I could not imagine what had happened until I found an empty blue crayon paper. The dryer is stacked on top of the washer so I had to get a chair to investigate further. The inside of the dryer drum was coated in blue wax, particularly near the lint trap where the other half of the crayon had landed and melted on.
When, oh when, will I learn to check pockets? Previously the pocket litter has been limited to candy wrappers and coins, perhaps the occasional Lego piece or small toy – none of which particularly mattered when I was limited to line drying as I was in Cairo. A melted crayon is messy, messy, messy – and of course a new pink shirt my daughter had just bought herself was in the load.
I promptly got online to seek remedies. Toothpaste, a sponge, and a plastic knife were enough to get the crayon out of the dryer (and also leave it minty fresh). There were several suggestions for the clothes and I decided to try them in ascending order of difficulty.
I started out by dabbing big blue spots with Dawn dish liquid then used a cup of detergent and a cup of Borax and washed in hot water on the heavy duty cycle. Warning: that combination of detergents and booster does create a huge amount of sudsing that not all washers are going to like. Since I was using a front loader, I had to stop the cycle and do a rinse and spin before I could go on. The next cycle I used a cup of detergent and a couple scoops of Oxyclean also washed in hot water. Many of the items seemed to come clean by that point, and frankly I suspect it was the hot water more than anything else.
A few items were reluctant to release the stains so I tried the next suggestion: oil. The internet suggested WD-40 but others said that baby oil would work much the same but with less smell. I would caution anyone not to try the oil unless the clothing item is a lost cause anyway because it is oil afterall. I soaked the spots with the oil, then dabbed them with the Dawn and washed in hot again. Some things worked, some things didn’t – my daughter’s new shirt was among the didn’t works for the blue, a red shirt of mine was among the oil casualties.
By this point, getting the crayon out was more of a personal challenge because I had succeeded with the majority of the load and also clearly spent more than my daughter’s shirt was worth in detergents and hot water. I gave it one more try with hot water and Borax but added a few new items to the wash, just to fill out the load – and ended up turning a couple pairs of socks pink.
I called it a day and bought my daughter a new shirt.
Yesterday the children painted some birdhouses they had made last month. They were wearing giant t-shirts as smocks, but my son managed to get a splotch of blue paint on his shorts – ironically, a pair of shorts that escaped the crayon load unscathed.
I wonder if the baby oil will work to get the paint out?
It seems impossible to think that I left Egypt five months ago. I had no idea of what to expect when we left – of how long we’d be gone or if we’d even be able to go back but what I wasn’t expected was five months of wait-and-see.
Our decision for me to stay in the US with the children wasn’t an easy one, but I’d like to think it was the most sensible thing we could do under the circumstances. I am more willing to take chances with my own safety (which I proved when I had my picture taken with a tank (what was I thinking??)) but we weren’t willing to do the same with our children.
There really are no words to describe how utterly fantastic the children have been through this whole period. They left Egypt with us believing us when we told them it was going to be a short trip, an unscheduled vacation of sorts. We struggled through homeschooling for a month before we came to Ohio to stay with my high school friend, then they had to settle in to a new school here.
Adapt to a new school might be a better description because it was not simply a matter of not knowing their way around the building and having to make new friends. They went to a British curriculum school in Egypt. Here in Ohio they not only had to learn a new American curriculum but a whole new set of teacher expectations.
I wouldn’t say it was an easy process for them to find their way, but they certainly made it look easy. After initially struggling a bit, particularly in math, my daughter brought home an honor roll certificate on her last day of school. I am particularly proud of the “B” she earned in math. It was hard won, and if she’d have had another couple of weeks of school it might have even been the “A” she was striving for.
Both children were teary when I picked them up in the afternoon – simultaneously wishing to return to Egypt to see the friends they left behind and also wishing they could turn back the clock here so they could have a bit more time with their new friends. My own heart ached for them both from a mother’s perspective and from my own – I know all to well that feeling of being torn between places and friends and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
With our summer vacation, life just may begin to feel a bit more normal. We’ll spend the next few months doing our usual Minnesota north-woods summer thing. After that? Things are still a bit up in the air, but if nothing else I am confident that my children will land on their feet.
I write books for fun so why is it so hard to write my own bio? I am an American currently living in Cairo, Egypt. Aside from writing, I'm a married mom of two under ten, a decent (if reluctant) cook, an encyclopedia of random scientific / medical facts, a wine lover (but not a snob!), and a Capricorn. I love to travel, spend time with good friends, and laugh at life's surprises. View of life - definitely half full.
