Opal Lake

the opal lake cabin is a great place to relax. clear water, woods everywhere, a sauna, mostly quitet except for the retarted neighbors and the one old guy that just swears at his dog. i went for a week with my dad, meg + andrew, 2 of drew's friends, my bro, and the guy who owns the cabin - JR, a college friend of my dad. they killed soo much alcohol. i just had my bitch-drinks of armaretto, frangelico, grand marnier, and wine. i got to run a bit and hang out. timelapse camera died, dammit! but at least that bought me some time to work on other things. meg spent a ton of time each morning catching craw-fish and i rowed & kayaked. good times.

Wicked Sunset

One of the best of the summer.

Hobie Cat sailing

the hobie is as old as i am. i really like the feeling of sail boats. something about using the wind and the intimacy with the water. no gas-stink. it's a really great way to pass a nice day.

Hartwick Pines

There's a grove of old-growth forrest a few miles from the cabin. I was surprised that there was some small patch of michigan that wasn't all cut down by the logging industry in the last two hundred years. The pines were giant.

The whole crew went to hartwick on the tuesday. It was really nice to see the old logging mills - gives you a window on how things used to be. Andrew was bored, as all 10 year olds into sponge-bob and rune-scape would be. My favorite part was chanting in the wooden-church. Organized religion is funny.

Brian and I came back to do the two au-sable river loop hikes on thursday. It was nice to cover some ground and climb a moraine.

Snorkeling for golf balls

this has got to be one of the funny, typical-of-my-family stories. dad and brian love to hit golf balls into the lake. they are quite considerate though - they always go snorkeling to retrieve their balls. so, it was a cold grey day and dad was saying that i could have his drysuit. so we gave it a try. they towed me behind a pontoon boat by a rope in the dry suit with snorkel gear so i could dive down and grab golf balls. i got about 10 over an hour or so and didn't get wet at all. i found a bunch of giant clam shells too. it was awesome. i'll never look at that lake the same way again.

Fire is cool too.

I realized that if I took pictures of fire in twilight, I could get the logs and the fire at about the same light levels. It was neat.

Splash

Splashes are cool!

Dune Walking

Near the state park, there was a really cool set of dunes that we explored for an hour or few.



A guy saw me timelapsing and came over to chat. He had these rocks - fulgurite pieces - that had come from lightning hitting the dunes. Aparently it's all around the dunes. Lightning hits the dune and melts the sand into glass. He had some really cool pictures of bigger, dendritic chunks that he took.

Fishing

The fishing trip was run by a very crusty michigander. He made me remember a lot of what I don't like about this state. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice time out on the boat, but he took every opportunity to basically make fun of how we didn't know how to fish. As if the pinnacle of any life is being able to take tourists fishing in a small town in michigan. I was the only one to lose a fish that day. The fish was fighting me and I had turned my head to ask him, "how much tension can I put on the line before I break it?" but in that moment, the fish jumped off the line. He said "well, if you weren't goofing off and chatting with your dad, maybe you'd have caught the fish." I had been asking him about statistics that day and afterward he said "now you got what you wanted, you lost a fish and have a number to talk about". Prick. He reminds me of how many people here are way too quick to cop an attitude and assume that they're soo much better than you, even though for the most part they're fat, stupid, ignorant red-necks. I just wanted to know how hard I could pull on the rod without breaking the line, you crusty bastard. Sorry for doing other things with my life and not knowing how to fish. The group of dad's co-workers with us took out a different boat but had something even worse happen - shouting, no instruction, no questions answered, shoving them out of the way, similar attitude.

Now that that's out of the way, here's the funny & nice things - it was a really strange cloud-day. The cirrus was thick enough to let the sun through, but dimmed. The sunrise was awesome and the colors on the water were really cool. I had only had 30 minutes of sleep that night - brew, dad & his co-workers got trashed and were loud as all hell (think cackling hens) until 330am (complete with all the neighbors yelling "shut up" periodically). The alarm went off at 4:15 to make bitch-coffee. Somewhat fortunately, I was in a daze all day, and just watching the waves was fun. I didn't like being the crusty one, but it was really ridiculous and somewhat not cool. You're car camping with a bunch of kids sleeping around you, and you're up late swearing at full volume, with all your "neighbors" about ready to shoot you? No wonder we were threatened three times the next day by each of the care-takers. Anyways, here's the pics.

Red dawn.
I got the big one!
Weird, overcast sparkle.

A crusty bastard, cutting fish. I worship the ground you walk on because you know how to cut fish better than anyone else. If only I hadn't made the mistake of going to college, maybe I could fish like this.....

More fishing pics

Beach Day

We had a beach hang-out day - it was relaxing. Only when you have nothing to do for hours on end can your thoughts truly wander. Megan is quite a spunk. She's almost 8, fearless, and down with whatever. A pleasure to hang with.
Turn the tv off!!

Caustics!!
No hands anymore.

Ludington Day

We drove to Ludington on the west coast to camp a day before a "fishing trip". It was nice to get out into the woods. I'm always struck by how flat Michigan is. We got to the beach for a sunset & a hang before passing out.

Bounce

I love the trampoline. I can still flip almost as good as I used to, but I'm a little off balance. Megan and her friends got really good!