When you don't get the blizzard you want

August 16, 2009, Sunday

The weather was not looking promising as we left home for vacation a little after eight this morning. I couldn't decide where to stop first or even which route to take to our destination Hancock in Michigan’s UP.

I finally made up my mind to go to Agate Falls. It is just off of Hwy 45, on Hwy 28, south of Bruce Crossing. You get to it on a trail from the Joseph E. Oravec roadside park. It is a cute little park, along the middle branch of the Ontonagon River.

From the park, you walk on a paved path, and then a boardwalk for maybe a quarter mile, under the highway and under an old railroad trestle to get there. The trestle is the coolest part. You can’t really get close to the falls; just view it from the observation platform at the end of the trail. But then we crawled up a rabbit path to the trestle, which is now a snowmobile trail. What a view from up there, would probably be even cooler though, if I wasn’t so terrified of heights.

A little ways up the road, Hwy 45 goes through the little village of Rockland. From there we took the Victoria Dam Road four miles to Old Victoria, a mining town from the 1800’s that is being restored. I have always wanted to go there, and didn’t think anything of it when there was a sign on the turn-off that said “Craft Fair Old Victoria today”. We easily found the little spot in the road known as Victoria. There were about four log cabins, a couple sheds, a few ruins, along with 12 or so venders with their canopy tents selling their homemade goods.

I would have been ok with it, because they had some cool homemade crafts and things, but you know how it is when you have your heart set on a cookie dough blizzard and you get a Reese’s pieces blizzard instead? It is just kind of made me sad.

When Un-prayed Prayers are Answered

“My dear brothers and sisters, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Your anger can never make things right in God’s sight.” James 1:19-20

I was having a bad day at work. We were working short-handed. Again. The doctor I was working with was an hour behind and his patients were relishing taking it out on me. One woman in particular had an attitude that just plain made me mad! It wasn’t my fault that she had all these problems or that the doctor wasn’t running on time.

We carry our notebook computers with us from room to room and I usually keep my e-mail open on it. I had just gone in a room with the next patient when in the corner of my screen the little box popped up informing me that I had a new e-mail. The heading was "slow to anger". A co-worker sent daily Bible scriptures and I happened to receive this passage right at that moment.

I caught my breath and nearly fell off my chair. I was even tempted to say something to the patient I was with; I actually almost wanted to give him a hug and tell him how much he was loved. That probably was not a good idea. Instead I refocused and finished questioning him about his symptoms and getting his vital signs.

After I left the room and pulled the door shut behind me, I leaned against the wall for a moment. All my anger was gone, the tension in my body had ebbed away. I smiled.

God is always with us. He knows our every need every second of every day. He answers our prayers even when we don’t pray. When things are dark and we don’t know how we can get out of yet another mess, God is there. Sometimes He sends the perfect e-mail at the perfect time, but most of the time we don’t realize until much later what He has done for us. But never, ever think for a minute that He isn’t right there beside you.

Lord, God Heavenly Father, thank you for the little things and for the big things. Help us to remember that our anger will never make things better; that the best way out of any situation is to turn it over to You. You are with us. Amen.

Keweenaw County, Michigan, 2009

This time we are going to one of my favorite places in the world, and having been to Kenya and Peru and a lot of the United States, it seems hard to believe that I only have to drive three hours to get there, but it is true. I have been to Houghton/Hancock and the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan’s UP many, many times, with both Mom and Dad as well as with Pat. There is this one wayside that is just engrained in my brain. Something about it just – it is magical. And there is Fort Wilkins and McLain State Park and some waterfalls and just plain Lake Superior alone would do it for me.

I cannot believe that in 12 years I have not brought Himey up here. Life just goes by too fast and we think we have to spend our downtime going somewhere new and far away. But like I said already, why not just drive 200 miles and be in a place where you know you will be happy, content, at peace with your soul. Sorry to be sappy but it is true. This is where my soul lies.

Ha, ha, with the purchase of my old new used laptop, in 2009, I wrote the remaining travel journal entries as they happened. Which means the next few weeks, until I am all up to speed in 2011, my blog entries are pretty much already written. And before you know it, I will be off to better and bigger things in this blog. Please stay tuned for lots of change.

Could I be the next Carol Ryrie Brink?

It seems like a long time since I wrote about our short vacation to Alma, Wisconsin, in 2009. So, I thought I should remind you where we were at before plowing in. My husband and I spent just a few days at the vacation home of one of his friends. It was a short peaceful trip with a wonderful view of the Mississippi River out the living room window.

July 28, 2009 – This morning we made the trip back to Pepin so we could go through the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum. They had some interesting stuff, and again I was afraid of getting sucked into the whole Laura thing. But I controlled myself, didn’t buy a thing.

Forty minutes later we were Laura’ed out, so we started for home. But as it turned out, another writer waited down the road.

Just in time for lunch, we discovered the Caddie Woodlawn Park. During the Civil War, Caroline Woodhouse, who was known as Caddie, was raised in this area of Wisconsin. Years later, her granddaughter, Carol Ryrie Brink was orphaned and came to live with her grandmother. Caddie told her all kinds of stories of life on the Wisconsin frontier. In the 1930’s Carol wrote a book, “Caddie Woodlawn” about her grandmother’s adventures.

On the property, was an old log cabin, along with the Woodhouse family home. Also, buried on the site in an unmarked grave was one of the Woodhouse children. Of course, it didn’t take long for my sexton husband to find what he was sure is the burial site. He walked across a little patch of different grass and a slight depression in the ground and knew someone was buried there. He tried to get me to coax me over it too, but I said that I believed him. Despite Himey’s gruesome observation, it was an interesting place.

Think anyone will every put a wayside park on the site of my childhood home? Someday I will have to tell you the story of the house where I grew up.

What does Labor Day mean to me?

I thought I would research the history of Labor Day and share that with you today. Unfortunately, my internet search showed some discrepancies. I formed my own opinions with that information and decided that I just did not want to go there on my blog. You really do not want to hear about my political beliefs.

So, to keep from starting a controversy, I will simply share what Labor Day means to me.

The paper mill in my hometown.

My dad worked there for 30 years, back when it was still Owens-Illinois. When I was a kid, that paper mill was the very life blood of my hometown. The parents of most of my friends worked there. The whole town, even five miles out into the country where I lived, smelled on warm summer days of sulfar thanks to that mill. For me, it wasn’t a bad smell, it was a smell that meant new clothes at Christmas and a bike on my birthday.

One time there was no supervisor available for a job Dad and his crew were doing. Management wanted Dad to be the supervisor just for that day. It wouldn’t mean any change of his duties or pay, it would be a token title. Dad still refused. He was there to work and not to supervise. That’s who my Dad was. A laborer.

(For more views of the paper mill, click on the "Creating My Blog" link above.)

What are my Plans?

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 New International Version

September first, 2008, I made a plan. I got a five subject notebook and gave each of the five sections a subject. I dove into my plan, hoping it was a two-year plan but not quite sure at that point. By last year, I realized that it was a three-year plan and now – I don’t know what to call it. But I will not give up.

I started reading the Bible in earnest three years ago. I’ve seen books and programs for reading the Bible in one year or two years, but I am not much into someone else’s structure. I came up with my own, writing in my notebook what I read every night, passages that really said a lot to me, things that were going on in my life at the time that were relevant to what I was reading.

I think the good Lord made me who I am so that I could read the Bible in my own way in my own time. But three years? Really? I should be able to do better than that.

I came so close. I only have fourteen books left. What should I have done differently? Should I have skimmed through them to finish in three years? Stuck with one version of the Bible, instead of occasionally dragging out the four different versions that I have to compare them, to understand them better? Should I have not taken any nights off, reading when I was too tired to see the words clearly, just so I read every night?

Is God disappointed in my sorry attempt to read all of His Word? Is He disappointed in other things I do? Or don’t do?

Lord God, Heavenly Father, no plan that I could come up with will ever be as good as yours. Your ultimate plan was sending Your Son to be my Savior, to be everyone’s Savior. Help me to remember that as Your child, even when I do disappoint You, You will never stop loving me. And no matter how long it takes me to read the entire Bible, You will be happy with me every time I open it and see Your Word.

From a Mall to a Log Cabin

July 27, 2009, pm - Pottery Place Mall is one my favorite shopping places in the world. At one time it was where Red Wing Stoneware Company made all of its products, but once they moved to a new facility on the other end of town, a developer took over the huge old building and filled it with quaint shops and an entire floor of antiques for sale. I cannot drive through or even near Red Wing without stopping here. It is a shame, because there are lots of other things to see in this Minnesota city, but it seems I never get past this mall.

Once Himey dragged me out of there, we stopped at every historic marker and scenic overlook on the way back to Alma. Who knew there were so many places to pull over in such a short stretch of road? When we drove into Pepin one sign really grabbed me. The Laura Ingalls Wilder Birthplace Wayside. It was just a little cabin, a reproduction, but still quite cool. And I totally knew that we had to come back the next day to visit the museum.
The weird thing is that three days before, I had read an article in Guidepost magazine about a family who spent a two-month vacation visiting all the places Laura lived from Wisconsin to Minnesota to Iowa to Kansas. It would be a great trip. Something else for me to work on.