Fishtank - Staining

Following our trip out east, Yannie was back to work on the fishtank stand. We moved it inside for the staining portion and slept in the living room to avoid the stain fumes.

Here are some photos of his progress.

Glouchester, Massachusetts & Joel's Wedding

On Friday, we drove down to Glouchester, Massechusetts for Liza's cousin Joel's wedding. We didn't take many photos at the wedding, but here's Ariel and Beth at the reception.


Galen on the beach.


We stayed in a little motel right on the beach. It was a funky little place, but great location.





At midday, a rainstorm hit. Everyone left the beach except for this group of people with their brightly colored umbrellas. It was a beautiful scene with the stormy sky over the ocean and a small grouping of umbrellas alone on the beach.


That evening, we went into town to walk around the small shops of the quaint fishing village and had dinner at the local Mexican restaurant.

Maine - Tumbledown Mountain

We spent Wednesday hiking Tumbledown mountain. After a little driving around trying to remember where the entrance to the trail we wanted was, we started our hike up the mountain.

Here's Liza and Shine contemplating the more difficult part of the climb ahead. We chose to take the closed trail up the left side of the mountain for a little adventure. We had the trail all to ourselves! (you'll soon see why)






About 3/4 of the way up the mountain, we hit an old rock fall where a big boulder, at some point, had rolled into the trail. We could see where the trail once led and a metal ladder had been drilled into the rock. The ladder was crushed and no longer usable as rocks blocked the path. There are only two ways beyond this point. One can either squeeze through a small, damp opening about ten feet above trail level (if you can climb up without slipping), or rock climb up around the big boulder. Shine was well prepared with a rope and caribeeners, so we, one by one, scaled the side of Tumbledown (or a small portion of it, anyway). It was Yannie's first rock climbing experience.

Here, Yannie waits for Beth to climb up with the lead rope so that she can tie in and belay from the top.




Yannie's first climbing experience.


Shine's turn.


We finally made it to the top for lunch and a chance to relax in the sun.

Maine - Round Pond & Pemaquid Point

After our visit in Boston, we drove north to stay with Liza's family in Jefferson, Maine. It was very nice to get out of the city be near the ocean.

We spent the first day kayaking around Muscongus Bay with Maine Kayak. Sea kayaking is a little different from the river kayaking we'd done on the Chicago river. We had to get used to keeping our balance in the waves and using the rudder on the boat. It was hard work, but a lot of fun. We saw lots of wildlife and even saw some bald eagles in their nest along the coast. Midway through the trip we had a lobster lunch at the Round Pond Co-Op before heading back to the van.

On Wednesday we visited Liza's Grandmother, Thereas, in Round Pond and took a walk around the land across the street from the house.



You can never have too much lobster! Following our visit with Grammy, we took a short drive to the Co-Op for some more lobster.

After lunch we headed down to Pemaquid Point to enjoy the view and the salt air.





On the way back to Jefferson, we stopped at Pemaquid Co-Op to grab some more lobster for dinner. We dropped by Clark's farm, a small home run farm up the street from Liza' parents to pick up some freshly picked tomatoes and other produce for dinner.

Boston

We took a trip out east for Liza's cousins wedding and decided to do a little visiting while we were there. We started the trip in Boston, Massechusetts.

We stayed in Cambridge at the Hotel Marlow
The hotel, while not in the Harvard part of town, sits right along the Charles and is walking distance from some nice parts of Boston. These images were from our walk back across the bridge to the hotel.

While in Town we had dinner at Kristie's new house with Kristie, her fiance Rob, our friend Samantha and her boyfriend. Rob grilled us a yummy dinner while Kristie gave us tours of her new home.

The next day, before heading north, we had lunch with another friend from college, Rick Johanson and his fiance Laura

Yannie's Building a Fishtank Stand

Finally catching up on some overdue blog posting. Here's what we've been up to since last summer. . .

Yannie started building a fishtank stand in July last year. I'll periodically be posting images as it progresses. Here are the initial stages of construction.

Since we live in a 1400 sq ft condo, we don't have much room for saws and such. The table saw fit on our front porch, but there was a lot of squeezing around tools and piles of wood.

Cyprus Swamps

The cyprus tree swamps of Southern Illinois were one of our favorite parts of our trip.

The swamps were incredibly still and quiet with not one mosquito. The trees have these fuzzy, soft looking needles.

Biking the Tunnel Trail

We did a day of mountain biking in southern illinois. The Tunnel trail runs about 75 miles, so we had Rick from Peddles and Paddles (www.peddlesandpaddlesinc.com) drive us about 34 miles or so from our car so that we could do a one way trip. The trail sits where an old train line once ran, so there are many trestle bridges and a long tunnel in the trail.









The tunnel was a nice cool break from the hot sun. The most amazing part of the tunnel was how deceiving the brightness in the tunnel is. As you can see, we were able to see the light on the far end of the tunnel. When we road into the tunnel, at about 1/4 of the way in it becomes impossible to see anything. There is a spec of light at the far end of the tunnel, but the light doesn't reach you , so it is difficult to keep balance in pitch black. We had to concentrate on the light ahead to make sure we were heading in the right direction While we knew about this before entering, it was hard to imagine until we were actually experiencing the darkness. It makes you wonder how many spiders were lurking around us.

Hiking in Southern Illinois

We did a little hiking in the area around the Cache river. There were some beautiful, green woods. The only downside were lots of ticks. Liza had 3 on her by the end of the day.


The area has some very rocky and hilly areas, a nice contrast from the flat lands of Chicago. That's Yannie in front of the cave.









There were dragon flies everywhere and we discovered that, in the swamps, there were absolutely no mosquitos. Apparently, any that would even get to hatch would be immediately eaten by dragon flies or birds. It was amazing to be in such a lush, swampy area without mosquitos!



This is one of the largest cyprus trees in the area. While it was not the "state champion" cyprus, it was pretty big.

Canoeing in the Cache River

While in southern Illinois, we explored the swamps of the area via canoe. Rick from Peddles and Paddles gave us a tour of the swamps and lots of history and stories of the area.










These were some of the unique swamp plants we found. The little white flowers were completely round with little white "petals" growing from them, giving them a fuzzy appearance.


Yannie paddling through the algae covered swamp. It looked like we were paddle through a grassy field.









The State Champion Cyprus Tree. These trees were close to 1000 years old!











This was the cyprus tree with 209 knees.