War Whoop Road

War Whoop Road, or actually, Warloop Road is a place which shall live on in the memory of all those who have given-in to backseat drivers. Or, it will live on at least until I’m told to take this video down “if I know what’s good for me”. Picture this scene:  You’re driving along, knowing you’ll have to head south about 18 miles before connecting with the only road heading back north again. Then, you hear it.   A suggestion to turn the car around, and go the other way, down a dirt road that surely must connect with the highway, because it seems to be pointing in the right direction. Why go south when you can go north on this dirt road instead?

The link here to the first video sets up the story, and the second video shows you what happened next on Warloop Road itself. 

The road shows up on the g.p.s. as a major time saver, shaving almost 40 miles off our trip home from a hike in the Ozark National Forest. But, that shouldn't be the only factor in deciding whether or not to take a route. Should it?  How about considering whether or not you have a chainsaw in the trunk to remove trees that have fallen across the dirt road? How about considering that it’s the first weekend of deer hunting season in Arkansas and you’re not wearing blaze orange? How about it’s getting dark and if we get stuck, AAA isn’t coming to the rescue, and you’ll have to hike over to that farmhouse/meth operation to ask for someone to tow you out with a tractor?  How about considering that it may be time to turn around when the road starts out like dirt, then turns to loose gravel with mud holes, then washed-out gravel as the walls on both sides begin to narrow, then broken rock with small saplings growing up in the middle of the “road”, then larger and larger boulders in the road, then completely impassable unless you’re on a dirtbike. 

Speaking of dirt bikes, I googled Warloop Road, and there’s a video of some guys on dirt bikes going down this very same road. Take a look at minute 4:08, just as they make a banking turn to the left. That’s where I was finally able to convince the backseat driver that it was a bad idea, and even though the g.p.s. said we only had 2.3miles to go, we weren’t going to be able to go forward another inch. I put it in reverse headed up a bit, turned the wheels and rammed the rear end into the embankment, cut the wheels all the way and was able to turn the car around and begin the un-nerving climb out.  Did I mention we did this all in a Honda?  No, not the SUV, the car.

Since the Warloop incident, I’ve done some research on the area and found several references to the condition of this road, but this one pretty much sums it up “WarLoop Rd is littered with various mud pits and washout, with plenty of rocks to deflect any and all round wheels”, and this one ,“thankfully this road ends at a small service station where you might be able to get your ATV repaired”, and my favorite “take this road if you have a good friend with a tractor and a long length of chain”.

That’s about all I can say about Warloop Road.

We had a much better experience the following week on a hike in the same region. Jack got in a good nap during the hike.

We hiked up a peak in the Boston Mountains for about a mile, then traversed a rocky area on the way to what I think was called Fern Gulley. It was very erie walking through this tight gulley with lots of growth on the trees and weird bird noises.  After a while, even the bird noises stopped, and  Jacqui got spooked by all the signs (poop) of animals (probably wild hogs and bears). There was a notice at the trail head about black bears in the area. Good thing we brought that little bell.  Next time I'm bringin' the Ruger.

The farmer’s market season is ending on the Fayetteville square, so we took one last trip and listened to some old-timey banjo music.  I should have let Jack bring his harmonica and spoons.

As Thanksgiving approached we prepared to celebrate the expulsion of the Dutch (Jacqui’s people) from England (after being thrown out of the Netherlands), and their subsequent arrival on our shores. We get out our pox blankets and whiskey and buy all the fixins for a big meal. Some of us still want to play baseball.

November is also time for the big Alpaaca show here in town. Did you know that Alpaaca are herd animals and very social.  So, if your neighborhood association allows it, and if you want one, you need another for a pal. Other fun facts: The fur is sheared once a year and the gestation period is 11months. Huh? Who knew? Maybe this event will be a new family tradition.

As for Thanksgiving traditions, we had a great meal and plenty of adult beverages. Our friend Chad joined us, and Jacqui made an incredible cranberry glaze for the bird along with the usual sides and a great corn casserole that I may want to request each year. I instituted a few of my family traditions, some of which were embraced (pimento stuffed olives, kosher dills, cracking whole walnuts), and some of which were not (jellied cranberry sauce from a can).

 We like to celebrate traditions here. It’s one of Jacqui’s traditions to go out on the first weekend after Thanksgiving and get the Xmas tree. So, we went out and I believe we might have been the first people to get their tree this year. I think everyone else just hangs stuff on the ones out by the stil.

 As we took all the decorations out of their boxes, we were reminded of the many good memories that went along with each of them. There’s the paper cake I cut out of a magazine and hung on my first Chicago Xmass tree (because those were lean years and I had no lights or ornaments). Here’s Jack playing with the “Matt-Johnson-High-Kick-Santa” from one of our white elephant parties. He doesn’t care why it’s called that. He thinks it’s just fun to try to say it. There are all the “Chicago Tribe” ornaments from that first post-divorce Xmas party. There’s the creepy Christ/Mary hologram manger that I picked up at one of the Wicker Park art fairs. Good times.  

It’s also the traditional time of year to read from the “Chronicle of 1620”, as recorded by N. Morton, keeper of records at Plymouth Colony, in what later became Massachusetts.  It’s one of the first records of how our first settlers (the dutch - see one above) felt about living in their new and strange land.

…Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain them…If they looked behind them, this mighty ocean which they had passed was now as a main bar to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. 

Sitting here in Arkansas, I sometimes feel just like an early Pilgrim.

I think that’s about it for now.  We hope you had a good Thanksgiving, and hope to pass along more about our View Of Life In The South next month.

Getting Back To Basics in October 2011

October has rolled in and we’ve kicked off the fall season with all of Jacqui’s favorites (Football, Tailgating, Octoberfest, etc).  We killed two birds (not litterally) by taking in the Arkansas vs. Auburn game over at Razorback Stadium but stopped first at a tailgate party with some people Jacqui knows, for the mandatory “Calling Of The Hogs” (see my low res. video below or click the link here)  

Had a few adult beverages, some great grilling, and a few games of baggo. They call-em about 10 times in the stadium, and after a while your arms get tired, and your voice is horse. Arkansas won, and we had a blast. 

 It was a great game and we had a blast.

Jacqui celebrated Octoberfest in Chicago at Andrea’s bday party, and from what I understand, it’s probably best that I don’t have photos, as they might be used in their DJ’s slip and fall lawsuit.  While Jacqui was out of town, I let Jack get into as much trouble as he wanted (climbing on rocks, playing in the mud, eating like a hog and running around outside like a nut).

Bonnie came down for a visit so we took the opportunity to bring Jack out to get some pumpkins. 

Jack wanted to smash the gigantic ones, but settled for picking our own like a good field hand.

 Here, Jacqui models the appropriate footwear for walking in a muddy pumpkin patch and going on a hay wagon ride.

We put Jack on this chemical barrel ride before we realized the tractor was going to pull him about half a mile down the dirt road and around the field.By the time he got back he was sobbing like he thought he was never coming back.

They did a good job on the hay ride.  They had set up scary scenes in the corn field, creek bed, and down in all the hollows ("hollers?").

We went on a couple of great hikes and the foliage has been good. I’m hoping we’ll have another shot at camping out in the tent before the season is over. 

 Maybe we'll take the tent out over Veteran’s Day weekend at Mt. Neebo.We should come back with some good video from that one if past history is any indication.

I thought I’d throw in this photo of Jack in the street it's hard to put it in context.  Usually at half-time during Razorback away games our neighbors go out into the street to toss a football around.  These guys just graduated last year, (you may recall that one of them asked me how old my “grandson” was).  Anyway, Jack was invited to throw the ball around with them, and you would have thought it was Christmas, Easter and Fourth of July all-in-one (if you click and zoom on the photo you can see the wierd look of ultimate joy on his face). But, when half-time was over, and they headed inside to watch the game, he tried to follow them inside hoping for an invite.  When the door shut behind them, he was crushed.  Very difficult to watch that.  He wouldn’t even let me console him.  He hung his head low and started walking down the street (like a runaway) and told me not to follow him.

We had a few Halloween events for Jack to attend in his Shark costume (he says “a shark is eating me”).  The daycare had a thing that I brought him to on Friday, while Jacqui was out of town.  And, on Saturday, the neighborhood association had the street closed off for a party (pony rides, keg, piñata), but it was the day Jacqui got back from a work trip to MI, so a late start resulted in not too much time spent there. 

 

We did go to a party that Jacqui's boss held that night, out in the hills where she lives (ghoulies, whole hog, haunted tree house, hay ride). On Monday we were spurned by the neighbor moms who held a party three doors down from us, and when they took their kids around to trick-or-treat, they didn’t even stop here (haven’t figured that out yet).  Maybe they found out we’re Catholics.  We’ll keep a look-out for them burning a cross on our front lawn.

Sailing season runs through November into the first week of December, and we’re in contention to win the fall series and to repeat last year’s first place finish in total points for the year.  Maybe I’ll try to get some video of the next few races and will post a link.

Well that’s about it.  Hope you liked the photos, and we’ll hope to catch you up on our View Of Life In The South next month.

Succumbed in September

The Red Sox are not playing in the post-season.  Maybe they could have used local ace Red "Swamp Thing" Pooter (pictured here in an undated photo). What happened? They've done better with worse teams. Looks like it's the pitching guys. In September seven starters combined for a 4-13 record and a 7.08 ERA. I think that's got to be the worst in MLB history. The Boston sports writers are pointing at Theo Epstein saying that he didn't replace Buchholz and Matsuzaka injured and out back in July, and Ownership is pointing at the coach (the Coach?) for not being able to "reach" the players (the pitchers?). Bunch of babies.

We're not all baseball down here.  We went for a ride the first week of September and stopped at a road-side craft fair. I chased Jack around while Jacqui looked for a wreath for the front door. There were a bunch of old farm tractors on display so we took some photos. We went into an old historic two-room house and Jack ran around like a nut. It was built on a platform of planed logs, had two enclosed rooms (one for all the beds and one for cooking, eating, living) divided and separated by a pass-through, and was covered by one roof. No electricity, no indoor plumbing, no insulation.  It was built in 1940.

We had a good weekend on 9/11. On Friday night we saw a Texas League playoff between the Naturals and the Travelers and didn't have to worry about terrorism. It ended up being the only game they won in the best of five series. As always, Arvest Balbark was a good time, but Jack needed a distraction from the baseball, so we took him over to the area inside the park that had slides and a jungle gym.

His bad behavior over there (he pushed someone for crowding him) got him a time-out, and his subsequent melt-down unfortunately resulted in a quick departure. He’s still talking about this pushing incident, and getting pulled off the slide for a time-out, so I’ll assume it made an impact on him. Then, on Saturday we asked friends Chad & Theresa to join us to watch a polo match in Goshen, the town to the east of us.

We brought Jack, but not surprisingly, he was more interested in throwing a football around than watching the polo ponies run back and forth. After the match, we all went back to our place for more food & drinks, and to watch the Notre Dame game. Exciting game, but the result was a big disappointment, as Michigan scored twice in the last 1 ½ minutes (insane).

 On Sunday, Chad, Joel and I headed up the road to Rogers, AR to walk the course at Pinnacle Hills, and see the final round of the LPGA event there. We followed Morgan Pressel, Paula Creamer, and the Spaniards, Belen Mozo (above) and Azahara Munoz. The course was in great shape too.

 Jack has been asking to go outside to kick a ball at the neighbor’s fence and for us to chase him around to fake like we’re going to take it away from him. It’s like running wind sprints in high school. I can taste lung. Also, it was biker weekend here in Fayetteville (they call it BikesBluesAndBBQ's) so we included a few photos of Jack on his Harley Davidson big wheel ("my WHEEL") that he thinks is going a hundred miles an hour. He’ll pedal it for a few feet untill he gets some momentum, then takes his feet off the pedals. He leans back and gets this look on his face like he’s thinking about bailing out.

Watch out for road rash. We walked up to the neighborhood elementary school playground and Jack rode his tricycle ("my BIKE") until he got tired and made Jacqui push him. He and Jacqui went down the slides for about two hours and I took a ride on my bike. I’m thinking about mounting the video camera on the handlebars to give you a view of the ride around the neighborhood and the local trails.

On 9/18 weekend it was a rainy and cool so we took Jack to see the movie Lion King in 3D. That movie is about 20 years old and still doesn’t look too bad, but Jack didn’t like wearing the 3D glasses, and the story-line was a bit beyond him; Where did the daddy lion go? (He’s dead); Where did the little lion go? (He turned into an adult in 10 seconds Jack. It’s called magical realism); Why is that other lion in trouble? (He murdered his brother). He did like eating handfuls of “BOPcorn” though.

Anyway, how about a laugh? Jacqui has been saying she wants to get into birding, and she purchased this bird feeder to get started (click here for video).

We got to watch some football and baseball on tv over the rainy 9/18 weekend. AR beat Troy (but not by much due to turnovers) and looked to have a serious challenge against ‘Bama (they lost). Jacqui was very conflicted watching Notre Dame (as an MBA alum) beat her undergrad alma mater, MI State. And, after winning only 4 of their last 18, and loosing all 3 against the Rays, the Red Sox were only 2 games ahead of Tampa, and were looking more like they’d struggle to be a wild card team instead of the conference champs they looked like two months ago. There was still some hope, with 7 of the 11 remaining games in September, to be played against last place Baltimore (Tampa also had the tougher schedule with 7 of their next 11 against the Yankees). BUT, it didn’t work out and the Sox went on to lose 20 games in September and blew it in spectacular fashion.

The post season Red Sox fall-out may be just as devastating: they didn’t renew Tito’s option (and he’s rumored to be going to the W.Sox), and there’s talk that Theo Epstein may go to the Cubs (but yet they have him making some crucial personell moves?). The fan support for Carl Crawford, that had already been deteriorating since before the All Star break, has completely disappeared (7 years and $142 million?). Focus now shifts to Tom Brady not throwing any more interceptions for the rest of the season and then looking forward to seeing the Celtics roll their wheelchairs out onto the court for another winning year.

And, here’s a typical day of Jack returning from school: Walks in and says hi dad, goes into his room to get his Lightning McQueen car; goes into the other bedroom that is set up with his Matchbox car ramp, and then smashes them all into each other; looks in the little kid kitchen set for a treat (usually a cracker or some cheerios I put in there) and comes back out to tell me there’s a car pile-up on the ramp that I have to look at. What else is he into? Here’s a summary:

• Turning all the lights and ceiling fans on
• In bed he wants to hold but not use his pacifier
• Skipping some afternoon naps (click to see video)
• Not wanting his hair washed
• Eating Mom’s home-made oatmeal,
• Eating broccoli and asking for more
• Not eating any of his food unless you stand over him
• Taquito’s are still his favorite food
• Tearing the pages out of flip-books
• Pooping on the couch
• Continuing to get bitten at school
• Not wanting a band-aid
• Asking to play the game “we throw the football to each other” (called catch)
• Moving up to the size 5 diaper and asking to sit on the pot but not going
• Pretending to be a sleeping, snoring, codfish

We went to the air show in Forth Smith about 30 minutes south of us. They did a re-enactment of the bombing of Pearl Harbor (with fireballs and explosions) including a narration that was trying to be patriotic, but ended up being a little uncomfortable to listen to. We looked at some helicopters and planes, but Jack didn’t seem very interested until we got him a red toy airplane. The Thunderbirds were there but Jack was melting down so we headed home. 
Well, that's all for now, as we bring a close to summer. Next month you might see: Tu-Tu's visit; pumpkin patch pickin’; photos from Jacqui’s d-i-y furniture refinishing project; hike in Hobbs State Park or maybe out towards the Buffalo River to look for some fall foliage; we head to the AR vs Auburn game to call The Hogs; and Jack’s Halloween costume. Also, I think this will be our last shot at going to the Backwoods Barn BBQ before the weather turns.
We’ll be sure to keep you updated with our “View Of Life In The South”. Also, as Jacqui likes to say, "Fall is all about getting back to basics."  So, whatever that means, you'll be seeing it too.

August in Arkansas and visiting the Mainers

August has been another unusually hot month here.  We finally had to water the lawn, so I can’t say any longer that our grass is truly heat and drought resistant.  We have an automated system and the good news is that watering all month put less than $10 on our water bill.  Cheap water down here, but our electric bill is almost five times what it was in May. 

You would think the upside of these endless sunny days would great news for the garden, but the lack of cool nights has resulted in a less-than-stellar crop of tomatoes. I think we’ve pulled fewer than a dozen so far. I re-applied some local manure, and am hoping for a late season surge in production. The peach crop wasn’t great, and even though we had been looking forward to the local watermelon festival, it turned out to be more faux-fest than melon fest.

We even had to leave the county fair early due to Jack having heat exhaustion. Hopefully cooler weather in September will bring more successful attempts at living the southern life.

We looked forward to leaving the heat of Arkansas for our annual trip to visit my family in Ocean Park, Maine, and  the New England weather did not disappoint.  Though, you really do have to expect every type of weather while you are there. 

Here's Jack at low tide diging a hole to China, and as the tide rolls back in, burying the feet in the sand, over and over again (for two continuous hours).

We made a few side trips while we were there.  We took a 2-hour drive north of Ocean Park, to the Penobscot Bay region of Maine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aFXSVq0qvo to visit Camden and Rockport. Highly recommended if you're looking for the rural New England experience.  In the span of a few hours, the weather included 80 degrees and sunny, a land breeze, hail, fog, pouring rain, lightning, then back to sunny, with a slight ocean breeze. But, as they say in Maine, “The’as no such thing as bad weatha’, just bad clothing”. A’yup!

While we toured around downtown Rockland, we got a good feel for how much different this part of the state (mid-state) feels from the southern part where we were staying.  You’ll see sharp black rock cliffs leading right into the ocean vs the sandy shores in the south.  We had a great lunch at The Brass Compass Café and enjoyed their Lobster BLT, made famous by winning a “throwdown” against celebrity chef Bobby Flay.  It was awesome, and huge.  Try a pound and ½ of lobster, three slices of slab bacon, native tomato and lettuce with garlic aoli, on home-made texas-sized toast. 

We toured a few art galleries and shops, but by the time we got to the Farnsworth Museum, we were arted-out (http://www.farnsworthmuseum.org), so we decided we’d skip the Andrew Wyeth exhibit and go for a drink.   After a bit of walking, we found a spot out at the end of a pier, and in keeping with the theme of large Maine portions, I had a rum drink prepared Mainer-style (fill a pint glass with ice, pour it half-way up with spiced dark rum, squeeze in the juice from half a lime and a squirt of tonic water). 

If you do this, you may want to consider a long walk afterward, or get a hotel room, because that’s a big boy drink. We picked up a couple of children’s books at a small Rockland bookstore, which are now among Jack’s favorites (The Wicked Big Tohddlah, and Leroy the Lobster (featuring a wicked big green codfish)). He now refers to himself as a codfish and to the closets as codfish caves.

In addition to enjoying the beach and the unusually warm Maine water, family time included sitting around the fire pit telling stories, celebrating my Mom's birthday, listening to the Red Sox on the radio, playing LRC on the porch, great meals every night.  We got to say goodbye to niece Julia (she attends Penn State in the fall), heard niece Mia play guitar and provided her with her first babysitting gig (including a giant diaper change).  Nieces Hannah and Camy included Jack in lots of play, and nephew Drew selflessly donated all of his matchbox cars to Jack. 

 Nana and Pa got to spend some time with him, though it seemed he was more interested in racing his new cars around than in being picked up for reading or sitting on anyone’s lap.  He wanted to run to the beach every morning (but would end up being carried half of the three block distance), was only interested in burying his feet in the sand and filling pails with water.

  He’s still a few years away from jumping in the waves, and exploring I guess.  All in all, the whole family was great about including him in the fun, and in just showing him attention.  We took the kids over to Old Orchard Beach to go on the rides (Jacqui went on more than Jack).

We enjoyed an evening down in York, ME with my hometown friends from Dracut (Steve & Beth, Jim & Jody, Greg & Kim and Pete & Kathy) who had all decided to take a trip up.



We had dinner ocean-side with the whole crew, with waves crashing on the rocks, and the smell of the ocean spray in the air. I think the restaurant was called The Anchorage.

Afterward, we went out for a few drinks, and then walked out across the mudflats at low tide to look at the stars and the moon. Good times. Pete drew the short straw to drive the 30 minutes back up to OP, and schooled us on how to “drive with the orderly flow of traffic” even if that means going 80. The next day we drove down to my hometown in Massachusetts to spend some more time with Pete & Jim, and had more lobster. One of the menu items at this restaurant was $15 for 3 lobsters in shells with sides. When Maine lobstah is running about $4.00/lb. you don’t feel bad about eating it at least once a day, 7 days in a row.

About a week after we got back from Maine, we did get a brief break from the heat and humidity. The temp dropped to 89 so we headed out for our first hike since father’s day. We did a three hour hike at Devil’s Den, which is about 30 minutes south of us. It was a great hike, moderate incline, but Jack is gaining weight, and we carried a lot more water than we usually do. By the end of it, we were pretty wiped out, and I eventually had to perform some minor first aid on Jacqui’s knee.

Speaking of first aid, if you’re ever in need, I’m ready, and qualified to render assistance if you’re injured or having a heart attack. My CPR certification recently lapsed (they’re only good for 2yrs), so I attended a course at the local Red Cross office in Springdale, AR. CPR certification is one of the requirements for competing in most offshore sailboat races, so I got my first one before a Chicago Mackinac race, years ago. I was able to get a combined certification here for adult, child and infant CPR, along with certification for use of an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and general first aid. We had a good instructor, and I did learn a few things I didn’t know about AED (even after watching it used on about a hundred tv shows). For example, with infants you want to put one pad on the chest over the heart and the other pad in the center of the back. With adults, it’s one on the heart, and the other below the armpit, on the side of the heart. I thought I’d need to put those skills to use on the 30th, while Jacqui was out of town. I heard what sounded like Jack cough or choke, so I walked into the next room to make sure he was ok. He was lying face down on the floor, and didn’t respond to me. Every parent’s nightmare, right? So I grabbed him by the back of the shirt and flipped him over, only to see a curious expression on his face. He was only watching the shadows of his matchbox cars race down his ramp.

That cough of his had developed over the past 10 days, so Jack will be going back to the doctor tomorrow to make sure it’s not turning into pneumonia. The sickness started as a head cold, turned into an ear infection (which we got an antibiotic for), and now it’s a weird cough. If anyone has a really good process for getting the kid to take chalky, bitter medicine, we’d love to hear it. We had been practically water-boarding him to get him to swallow it, but we’ve evolved to threatening a "time-out", with loss of use of the cars, cars book, little cars and cars ramp and cars movie. Around here that’s called “the nuclear option”.

That’s it for now. We hope you enjoyed seeing the photos, and hearing the stories. We look forward to sharing more of our life here with you, as the temperature cools, and football season starts. Next month you may hear about Labor Day in Little Rock, Razorback football, the re-start of sailing season, and hopefully, finally, catfish at The Backwoods Barn.

The Great Escape

July in Arkansas isn't any cooler than the 105 temps we saw in June, so we headed on the road to Michigan, with quick stop-overs in St. Louis and Chicago.  In St. Louis, we couldn't get a room at the Drury, so settled for the Hilton.  I was praising Shatner's Priceline the whole way there, for getting us a 1/2price room, on 4th July weekend, with 3days notice.  My words of praise turned to shouts of "curse-you-Shatner", when we saw that our room was little more than a twin bed, in a closet, behind the front desk.  Have you ever seen a hotel room door open into the hallway, rather than opening into the room?  Still, would have laughed, except the bathroom door rammed into the ceiling light when you opened it, which constantly woke Jack, and the hotel was packed due to the softball world series (do they really need one of those?), so we couldn't change rooms.  

We left St.Louis in the dust, and headed for Chicago, to celebrate our nation's independence from G.B., and get Jack some much needed running around time.  Our stay with the Mays was awesome, and Ollie let Jack mess with all of his toys, including cars and trains.  We enjoyed riding in the third-row seats like an extended family, and the boys immediately wanted to head for the trampoline.

The cookout at the Johnson's was great, and we enjoyed a laugh about the top 40 tribe moments, evaded the pink-eye, and climbed on the swingset.

We got a chance to hear tales of jet-set travel in Europe from Kristen and Scott.  Here they are enjoying a campari and soda.

The next morning Jerry came over to make pancakes, and we headed for MI to go on Jim B's boat, to cruise and watch the fireworks.  In the photo below you can see the old Coast Guard station at the Grand River entrance to Lake Michigan.  The main building seems to have been renovated, but the boat house needs quite a bit of work.  Buying and renovating this place would be on my "to do list" if we won the lottery.

Talking with Jacqui's mom about the plume-line, the constant movement of the dunes, and the musical fountain

Which cooler has the beer?

This photo needs a bit of back-story.  On the way to MI, Jacqui said all we need to do is drive to Bon's and change Jack before we get on the boat, because Bon was nice enough to take care of all the food and drinks for everyone.  Bon even called to see what kind of beer you like.  It's already on ice in the cooler.  Great! I said, "I'll just pack a few extras just-in-case".  Woaaa, there mister, you don't need any "extras", I was told.  When we got to Bon's, and Jacqui wasn't looking, I added a few beers to Jack's milk cooler (just to keep the milk containers from tipping over).  Turns out, "just-in-case" came in handy again, because the ladies forgot to bring the beer.  Usually not a big deal, but we're talking about 4th of July, on a boat, from 3pm till 10pm.  That sort of ups the ante in my book.  No worries, we had a great cruise, great food, Jim B. provided the patriotic soundtrack (Connie Francis, Jim Neighbors, etc.) and we enjoyed the fireworks show.

 We enjoyed our time on the water so much that Jacqui suggested we rent a boat for the day.  We had some fun cruising and eating lunch in a cove, and really opening up the throttle, once we got onto Lake Michigan.  Jacqui had that thing flying, and now I know she loves speed.

The main purpose of the trip to MI was to attend Jacqui's cousin Meghan's wedding.  Meghan married a guy from Pennsylvania that she met in North Carolina.  This guy, Clayton, lived in my hometown in MA, while he went to grad school.  Small world. 

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We got to spend some alone time hiking and going to the beach while Bon watched Jack taking naps.

We pass this site every time we go for a hike in the dunes near Bon's house.  Would be happy to hear what you think it is supposed to represent.  What does holding the flag over an angels head signify?

We got to spend time with family friends the Petersons, before they kept Jack overnight during the wedding.  Jack learned more about dogs, and the Petersons learned about Lightning McQueen.  Colin may have learned the difference between the front and back of a diaper, information which will serve him well in the future.  I took Jack out on the beach to watch the volleyball girls, and he had a big cry because I wouldn't give in to his request "just let to touch it" during the game.  We kidded Bon about taking Jack on a 2hour beach walk (with no drinks) that we will from now on refer to as "Bon's Bataan death march". Jacqui's dad came down to spend some time with her and the boy, took us to breakfast, and for a walk along the jetty.

I've added a few photos here from last month.  Below, you'll see photos of the construction of Arkansas' Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.  There is one part of the building that looks like an armadillo (there's lots of these around the area).

Looking at the site from the viewing platform along the hiking trail

We mentioned we have been spending some time at the Springdale Aquatic center.  Jack really likes it though he hasn't quite figured out why the ground in the sunny area  is hot and the shady area is cool. 

I'll buy this round

 Here is a photo of Jack sweating like a hog at our campsite (tent packed full of stuff including a partially deflated air mattress).

enjoying the Lake Ft. Smith pool

We noticed a verbal explosion on the MI vacation. Jack's describing and commenting on everything, but mostly the Cars Movie, the Cars Movie Book, Lightning McQueen (aka: the 9-5 car, MY RED CAR), Mader Truck, Flying Purple Car (Holly Shiftwell), Mack The Red Truck, dinosaurs eating everything and trains crashing into everything.

We got a notice from school that indicated that Jack hit one of the biters, I mean classmates, in the face with his Lightning car.  As a result, he has lost the privilage of bringing it to school.  It's been a challenge to get it away from him before he goes to school, because he almost never puts it down.  Bad timing on that, because I'm scheduling a meeting to discuss Jack moving up to a class of older/other kids and improved curriculum.

We'll leave you with one last story.  Crime recently came to the Clabber Creek neighborhood.  There have been some incidences of theft from open garages, defacing vehicles and  an attempt at stealing a Harley.  We even had a brush ourselves.  I noticed a purse, and a steel case containing poker chips and cards, leaning against the side of our house.  It's in an area that is a bit sheltered from the street (near some bushes).  While I was on the phone reporting it to the police, Jacqui was violating the crime scene, going through the purse, and noticed the wallet had no cash, but did still have credit cards and a drivers license and a bra.  This incident has caused me to take a poll.  How many of you (women) carry an extra bra in your purse, and why?  As you may now know, I'm a fan of "just in case", but how does that apply to a bra?  I figure there was some neighborhood strip poker going on (maybe they moved from the Glenn).  I asked the cop for his opinion, and he suggested somebody just "forgot it there, you know, probably drinking".  That's a lazy explanation in my mind, but they are not known for the best police work here.  Maybe they'll get some clues when they send it to the CSI crime lab.

That's it for now.  Next up in August will be Ramadan in Maine (August 1st) and celebrating my parent's 50th with the whole family at the beach. When we get back, you may hear about the watermellon festival, catfish at the Backwoods Barn, and our tomato harvest.