During our backpacking trip on the Apostle Islands this August, I recorded some video to help us remember the trip. Our two night, three day trip gave us so much video that I ended up with three videos! If you want to see more of our adventures, subscribe to our YouTube channel.
I hope you enjoy a glimpse of our adventure there.
We woke up today in Site 65 in Saint Andrews State Park, just outside Panama City, Florida. Quite notably, this is the exact place we were two years ago, December 10th, 2013.
In 2013, we were headed west, ultimately to Southern California. We had just enjoyed Thanksgiving with friends in Tampa, and spent the next few months traveling West. Now, in 2015, we are heading east, making our way to the Florida Keys where we will spend Christmas.
Being here, on the same day, forces me to remember my former self, and recall our plans, emotions, goals, and fears. What were we thinking!?! How could we possibly travel full-time, exploring as we go? How can we live in such a small space? Will this really work? Will home-school work out? Can we really afford to do this?
Since then, our little family has enjoyed countless adventures, just a few of which I’ll highlight, in no particular order:
Have faith, former selves. Your next two years will be amazing, challenging, rejuvenating, exhausting, wonderful, and frustrating. And ENTIRELY worth it.
I am pleased to announce yet another place that you can follow along on your adventures: Our YouTube Channel! We blog about our adventures for detail and philosophical ramblings. We post pictures on our Instagram accounts to share places and short form experiences. We’ve been experimenting with video, and we like the way it allows us to remember places with greater detail and emotion. We love watching old videos and remembering the adventures we captured.
When I say ‘experiment’ with video, I really mean it. I have over 60 videos posted on that channel, but we’ve never said much about it on our other channels. Really, this was a way for me to hide a bit as I experimented with different video and editing styles. I’ve tried and swapped equipment, editing software, and both filming and editing styles. This doesn’t mean I have it dialed in: I will warn you that I’m still not particularly good, and I hope to be improving as I continue.
My most recent video is about a wonderful and unexpected day in the Porcupine Mountains on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We had a wonderful day, and I’m happy with how my shooting and editing went. Have a look, and tell me what you think!
My main motivation for capturing video has been mostly as the ‘new’ form of home video. Keeping individual video clips on my phone doesn’t help tell a story. Editing down a video forces me to filter what I captured and attempt to thread it together. I love what we’ve been able to capture, and the benefit it is to us. In the spirit of sharing, my videos are public and you can follow along too, if you like.
I’m slightly behind on editing at the moment, having just begun to edit the video we captured on our Lake Superior Circle Tour. If you subscribe to the channel, you will next see videos about Backpacking in the Apostle Islands and our other adventures as we circle the lake.
Our visit to the Bruin Lake Campground of the Pinckney Recreation Area was intended to be a little quiet and boring. Our loop of Lake Superior and subsequent re-entry into the USA and visits with friends left us with a list of stuff that just needed to get done. We even passed on a wonderful invitation to a nearby art show just to have a little peace and quiet. The park was perfect. Peace and quiet abounded, and Jess and I were knocking down to-do list items right and left. The limited recreation options nearby made it easy to focus on working hard.
The trouble was the lake. It is beautiful, and the fall weather was amazing. We were surprised to find that canoe rentals were still possible despite being well past labor day. Hmm… I thought, a canoe rental sounds great.
It was such a good idea, yet somehow, I completely managed to botch it.
A sign near the entrance to the park provided the phone number of the park concessionaire that offered the canoes for rent. The canoes themselves where already on a rack trailer near the boat ramp, but paddles and lifejackets were provided after you paid for a rental. I called the number listed and talked to the rental guy, who also happened to be running an ice-cream shop in the nearby city of Hell, Michigan. With a rental, he would swing by and drop off our gear in the morning, at the price of $42 per day. He even offered to let us keep the gear till we left (3 days total) for just $50. I told him that we’d think about it, and hung up.
Round One of Sam vs the Canoe Rental was a game of mental issues. The price had been higher than I was expecting, and I was slightly reluctant to fork out that much money. I imagined that I’d probably get a paddle in per kid, and perhaps two with Jess. In my mind, it was hard to weigh that money against the value. I was also worried about being distracted when I was really trying to get stuff done. The shop closed at 5pm, and I hadn’t made up my mind by then. I was still kind of thinking about it, but I wasn’t sure.
Round Two of Sam vs the Canoe Rental was unfortunate timing. I got up early the next day and plowed through an incredible pile of work and various chores. I pushed through a pile of work till the afternoon, when I spent an hour or so playing frisbee with the kids during what became a spectacular fall afternoon. I began to think about the canoe again, but decided not to push it. I really try to avoid trying to ‘improve’ something that is already great, and we really had fun throwing the disc around.
The next day was another good workday, but our focus was wearing a bit. About 2 in the afternoon I took a break and resolved to do this canoe thing. I called the rental guy back, only to discover that he was on the way to a doctor’s appointment and would be out the entire afternoon. I couldn’t even drive to pick up the gear, as the shop was closed in his absence. I really needed a break that afternoon, but it wasn’t going to be paddling. Jess and I snuck away for some ice cream later that night, but I was still missing a paddle.
At this point, it was time to give up. The original (and in retrospect, generous) offer to keep the gear for 3 days for only $50 had reached it’s effective limit. We already had plans to visit the Jiffy factor in nearby Chelsea and wouldn’t have much time past that.
It is also worth considering why we don’t travel with a canoe or kayak, since I do enjoy it so much. Given our small space situation, we have to be pretty picky about what we travel with. We travel with bikes for the whole family, and there just isn’t enough room for both bikes and boats. We do use the bikes quite frequently, and I do love to ride. We normally have no problem renting canoes or kayaks while we explore, but we’ve discovered that the off-season limits our opportunities.
So here we have been, right next to some particularly nice paddling lakes, and no canoe. The real lesson here is that I should have immediately agreed to the original offer on the spot. We all would have enjoyed some time out on the lake, and it would have been a wonderful activity to break up the otherwise work filled week.
As it happens, Jess and I walked over to the canoe rack to take the above picture to tell this story. To our surprise, there was a paddle sitting nearby, as if somebody had rented the canoe for the day and left the gear for pickup. We might have borrowed the canoe for a few minutes. It was a fun few minutes, but our short paddle only confirmed that I really should have jumped on it when I had the chance.
We’ve recently completed a circle tour of Lake Superior, and we had a great experience. One surprise in our journey was the shipping traffic on the Great Lakes. I knew shipping on the great lakes was a thing, but I had not considered how we might learn about it or experience it during our journey.
Fairly early we began to see ore docks used to load mining ore onto lake boats. We first saw half-dismantled docks in Marquette, but also saw functioning ore docs as well. We never ended up seeing a ship being loaded, but the docs were very clearly still in operation.
We arrived in Duluth to discover the obvious hub of activity around it’s active ports on both sides of the Michigan / Wisconsin state line. The large ships enter port by traveling under the Aerial Lift Bridge, which we visited in our stroll downtown. Right next to the bridge is a Maritime Museum with all sorts of neat displays about shipping on the Great Lakes. This museum is free, and was great for us adults but slightly boring for the kids. In the museum was information about when ships would be entering or leaving the port, directly under that awesome bridge.
Our timing was not excellent, and it just wasn’t convenient to be in place to watch a huge ship pass. We did enjoy the bridge with a walk under it and across it, and we did get to see the bridge raise to let a few small sailboats under it.
The huge discovery in Duluth was that big boat watching was a thing. We soon headed up the North Shore in search of adventure, but I remembered the shipping.
As we traveled the Trans Canadian highway on the final few legs of our Superior Circle Tour, I was contemplating my goals for Sault St. Marie. The shipping traffic on Lake Superior must pass the 15 foot drop at the rapids of the Saint Mary’s river. My research revealed a viewing platform perfect for lock observation. Before I talk about the locks, let’s talk pronunciation.
Sault is an old French word for Rapid. I’ve been pronouncing it like ‘salt’ ever since I discovered it on the Ticket To Ride board game, but it is actually pronounced ‘Soo’. The spellings are actually used interchangeably up here, but it is pronounced the same way in either case. Sault Saint Marie translates to “Rapids on Saint Mary’s River”, which is a pretty darn accurate description of the place.
When we got here, the viewing platform was very obvious. Parking along passage avenue is metered, so bring quarters. The platform is really an ideal place to watch the locks in operation. I visited twice, and enjoyed a few ships each time.
The real trick to enjoying lock operation is to know when ships will be at the locks. The easiest way to discovery this is to call a magical phone number [ (906)635-3224 ] where the day’s passages are available on a recorded message. The times are given in ‘military’ time, so 0423 is 4:23 am and 17:12 is 5:12 pm. Jot down the times that seem to match your schedule best and plan for those. Clusters of ships can make for a fun viewing experience as well.
The other way to learn about the ships is by viewing a real-time map of all the great lakes shipping boats. This will tell you about each boat, including it’s size. Visit the awesome BoatNerd site and keep an eye on the boats. With some fiddling, you can get it to estimate travel times to the locks, and you can look up information about the boats passing by.
While watching boats travel the locks was extremely interesting, these mammoth ships are also impressive all by themselves. Our campsite had a great view of the boats going up and down the river, and we also enjoyed just sitting out and watching them go by!
SAMSUNG CSC
Knowing a little about the procedure can help make the experience more exciting for both adults and kids. I really loved it! Ships and Physics and Stuff!