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Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Category outdoors

Waterproof Boots

October 14, 2007

Waterproof boots are a good thing. I’m not sure I think how far down the water in the Great Lakes is good, but it at least made for interest walking out along sand bars. The last time I was here at the point of Old Mission Peninsula just over 11 years ago the water was up high enough that one could swim out a really long ways in shallow water… Now it’s just walking on silt and rocks.

Different water for different times, I guess. Good thing times now are much better.

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Miller’s Big Red Apple Orchard

October 7, 2007

Sign to the barn at Miller’s Big Red Apple Orchard
(Click for more photos (photo gallery retired)…)

Today while trying to figure out something to do, Danielle and I headed over to Miller’s Big Red Apple Orchard. While we didn’t pick any apples, we did wander around a bit and acquire some donuts. I hadn’t been there since last going with and and a bunch of others a few years back. Being around 89°F today it was a bit unseasonably warm, so we didn’t spend too much time there, but it was still fun.

It was really obvious that the animals were really hot too with the sheep hiding in a barn, pigs laying in mud, and llamas just laying around. One of the llamas had recently been shorn, but I think that is because it was so matted with burrs that efforts were made to just trim it shorter. Currently its head still had at least 50 individual large burrs on it.

Oh, and of course, no rural Michigan activity is complete without a truck bearing many flag-waiving stickers.

For the rest of the photos, please just click here (photo gallery retired) and take a look.

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Tahquamenon Falls State Park

October 4, 2007

Southeast Lower Tahquamenon Falls
(Click for more photos…)

As mentioned previously, Danielle and I headed up to Tahquamenon Falls State Park in northern Michigan this past weekend. I guess I don’t have too much to say about it, except that it was a nice weekend.

In short, as I remember the UP is much like many of the scary southern states, except without the accent. There are loads of pretty parts, good food is hard to find (Pickelman’s Pantry was not very good), and long distances between things. There were lots of nifty things around the park to look at, including the falls themselves, hiking trails, multicolored mushrooms, puffballs, and people who don’t know how to row.

I found the gift shop particularly interesting, especially the wall of fantasy figures in the gift shop. I guess the 80s have finally reached the UP.

Hmm, I’m going to stop now and state that I’ll likely make a lengthier post tonight or tomorrow. For now I’m feeling a bit hungry, so I want to get home and eat. Finishing captioning the photos was the last thing on my to-do list, and now that it’s done I’m happy.

If you’d like to look through the photos, just click here (photo gallery retired).

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Vegetarian MREs

September 27, 2007

Well, these should make camping a little more interesting. Based on the descriptions they appear to be from menu year 2006. These are designed to provide 1250 kcal (Calories, as we know them) per meal and taste good enough that they don’t degrade morale. The last time I ate an MRE was in the mid-80s when my dad brought one back from either Panama or Honduras (wherever he was deployed at the time) and I ate a cold patty of what was essentially spam. I always really did like the dehydrated fruit, though.

I suspect these will be better, with the two menus as follows:

(Left) MENU NO. 14: VEGETABLE MANICOTTI

Vegetable Manicotti, Pound Cake, Wet Pack Fruit, Peanut Butter, Crackers, Cocoa (Hazelnut), Hot Sauce, Accessory Packet B, Spoon, Flameless Heater, Hot Beverage Bag

(Right) MENU NO. 12: VEGGIE BURGER WITH BBQ SAUCE

Veggie Burger w/BBQ Sauce, Dried Fruit, Chocolate Banana Muffin Top, Wheat Snack Bread (2), Potato Sticks, Beverage Base (CHO Fortified), Hot Sauce, Accessory Packet B, Spoon, Flameless Heater, Hot Beverage Bag

Of course, ACCESSORY PACK B contains:

Tea (Instant w/ Sweetener & Lemon Flavor), Salt, Chewing Gum, Matches, Toilet Tissue, Hand Cleaner

I don’t expect them to be good, but I think they’ll at least be decent. Unless I intend to eat about a gallon of soup, four Tasty Bite entrees, a pound of oat bran, and a pound of dried blueberries on top of these MREs I’ve way over-packed food wise for camping. That’s okay, at least there will be variety. It all fit within a pretty small box, anyway.

More info on MREs and other pre-packaged military rations from all around the world can be found here. By the way, it’s worthwhile for you to order a few cases of civilian MREs for survival food. mentioned a good idea of eating one every two weeks or so, then order a new case when one runs out, rotating the stock.

In a disaster situation two cases would safely feed you for two weeks, and the waterproof-ness ensures they will last through some pretty awful weather. The only down side is that, unlike the ones pictuerd above, the civilian ones don’t contain the heaters in the pouch.

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Wax On…

September 25, 2007

My Tent In The Garage, Covered In Nikwax Tent & Gear Proof
(Click for larger…)

My garage and part of my house smell vaguely of white glue, which is what Nikwax Tent & Gear Proof smells like. Since Danielle and I are going camping at Tahquamenon Falls State Park this weekend, and there is the remote possibility of rain (there always is, eh?) I wanted to waterproof my tent. Most of the areas which needed waterproofing were the seams, but I made sure to spray the whole thing down. Also, after letting it sit for a bit and soak in I wiped the whole thing down with a damp cloth, which seemed to do a good job of helping the waterproofing further penetrate the fabric.

After the job was done I tried to wash my hands, but they just became sticky and the water beaded up on them. Neither acetone or denatured alcohol would remove the chemical from my hands, so I took to dry scrubbing them with sodium percarbonate (Oxyclean). This seemed to do a good job, and then soap was able to remove the remaining slick C2H6Na4O12 residue. My hands still feel like they have a bit of the waterproofing compound left in them. Hopefully it’ll come out in the shower tomorrow.

We had originally thought about taking Danielle’s larger tent (see them both here), but we only had one 500mL bottle of waterproofing and the rainfly on hers seems to have a greater surface area than my whole tent. I’m glad I didn’t try waterproofing hers…

Hopefully the weather will cooperate. We’ll have the air mattress to sleep on, sheets and blankets, and (with any luck) a dry weekend.

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Heritage Harvest Days

September 20, 2007

Water-cooled engine powering a reciprocating saw.
(Click for more images (photo gallery retired)…)

After hearing about it from Danielle and I headed up to Seven Ponds Nature Center in Dryden, MI (map) for Heritage Harvest Days. We were supposed to meet up with and , but due to some confusion we went on Saturday instead of Sunday and missed them.

Seven Ponds is a private, non-profit nature center, and Heritage Harvest Days is one of its fundraisers. The event consists of a number of people demonstrating their crafts, music, and a few people selling things. Admission is US$5, and it’s very worthwhile. There were lots of nifty things to look at, trails to wander, and it was just an all around good time.

Here are some highlight photos:

· Tractor-powered sawmill.
· Guys sitting on the tractors which are powering the sawmill.
· Studebaker Pickup Truck.
· Frustrated-looking magician after getting out of a straight jacket.
· Danielle in the herb garden.
· Hummingbird clearwing moth.
· A sheep named Piggy being sheared.
· Cute sheep!
· Goat with a cast on its leg! (It got caught in a fence…)
· Reciprocating saw powered by the engine pictured above.
· Corn on the cob being steamed in a barrel.
· Danielle eating corn on the cob.
· Lake, at the bottom of the hill behind the festival.
· Raccoon poop.
· Cute goat reaching under the fence for leaves.

Of course, the rest of the photos can be seen in the Heritage Harvest Days at Seven Ponds (photo gallery retired) album.

When looking through the gallery you might notice that things look a bit… better. In order to make the page look fuller and cut out some whitespace I set the thumbnails to fit within a bounding box of 300 x 300 (up from 150 x 150) and made the default resized images fit within an 800 x 800 box. Around 30% of visitors to the site are at 1024×768, and when tested on a monitor running IE at that resolution, things were still plenty usable. A little bit of scrolling to the right was required, but only maybe 20% of the screen wasn’t visible without scrolling. As almost all other users were using a resolution above 1024×768, this seems like a safe sizing.

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Sheepie Preview…

September 15, 2007

More photos coming later…

This is just a preview of the Heritage Harvest Festival in Dryden, MI.

Due to some confusion Danielle and I attended the festival today instead of with friends tomorrow, but that’s okay. It was really nifty. There was a good bit of farm equipment, sawmills, animals, steam-roasted corn on the cob, trails to wander on, and stuff like that.

Anyway, more later. For now you get a really cute, freshly shorn sheepie. (By a multi-generation shearer who seemed to really care for her animals and made things from their wool.)

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Groundhog in Elizabeth Park

April 16, 2007

Groundhog!Groundhog in Elizabeth Park (Trenton, MI)
(Click for more…)

On the way home from Ohio yesterday I stopped off at Elizabeth Park in Trenton, MI to meet up with Danielle. She had procured a My Little Pony kite and was wanting to get out of the house and fly it. Well, after some kite flying we were getting cold, so we started to walk over towards the water.

As we got closer to the river we noticed a groundhog near the sidewalk. As I walked closer to the groundhog I knelt / sat on the ground, and the groundhog kept getting closer, and closer, and closer, seemingly wanting some food. Well, Danielle ran back to her car and grabbed a small packet of Cheetos Flamin’ Hot Crunchy snacks that she had in the car.

Sure, these aren’t the best thing to be feeding a groundhog, but it can’t be anything worse than what the groundhog would forage out of the garbage cans and from beneath picnic tables in the park. The groundhog happily ate the Cheetos, taking them from our hands and wrapping it’s little paw(s) around them, eating them one at a time, sometimes standing up right next to us.

At one point the groundhog was so close that the only way I could get a photo of it. The photo above was at 24mm, with the camera sitting on my knee and the groundhog about 1.5′ (or maybe less) from the end of the lens hood.

Eventually we were getting a bit cold, so after letting the groundhog nose around in the bag a bit, we decided to give it the rest of the Cheetos. Unfortunately, the seagulls in the park were being a bit of a bother, so the remains of the bag (but not the bag itself) were instead deposited deep into one of the openings to the groundhog’s burrow. Hopefully the seagulls weren’t able to get the bits there.

More information on Marmota monax, (groundhog / woodchuck) is available from this U of M site or this Wikipedia article. All of the uploaded photos from time in Elizabeth Park yesterday can be found here (photo gallery retired).

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