Tag Archives: Vacation

Wilderness State Park – 2024

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As the title would imply, I’m at Wilderness State Park in Petosky, MI, this week. I arrived yesterday afternoon, late enough to take everything out of the car, put it in my cabin (the Sturgeon Cabin), drink some bourbon, and go to bed.

This morning, after a breakfast of granola and berries (I’m hillbilly like that), I drove to the Walmart in Cheboygan and picked up 3 new lanterns. The cabin is DARK. Got back, got things organized, and I guess my vacation can now REALLY begin. On Election Day, no less.

Wilderness State Park? I found this place last year, when I was trying to book a week at Pictured Rocks and discovered that Michigan is now closing a lot of its parks (yes, Pictured Rocks is a national park, but I group them all together) on October 15th. This did not sit well with me, since I like for my Michigan sojourns to be at least a bit chilly, so I went on the hunt for the northern-most park in Michigan that I could reserve in November. I found Wilderness. And I spent a week last November living at the park in a tent.

It was glorious.

On one of my walks last year, I stumbled upon the Sturgeon Cabin, and instantly fell in love with it. It’s a log cabin that’s about 3 miles from anywhere, right on the shore of Lake Michigan. No power. Hand-pumped (tannin-filled) water out front. A vault toilet about 100 yards away. Wood crib that holds about a two cords of wood. So secluded that you almost don’t see it if you drive past on the “road” (literally a couple of dirt ruts) that goes past it. When I saw that I could reserve it for the second week of November, it was a no-brainer to grab it. I’ll have some pictures up in a future post.

This is smaller than the cabins I’ve stayed in at Cheboygan State Park. It’s probably 18×22 inside, with two bunk beds and another single bed, a table and benches, a counter with two shelves, and a wonderful little wood stove. Behind the stove is a stonework that looks like it may have been an actual fireplace at one time, but it is now just a great place to store wood – and whoever was here before me left me a good supply, so I probably won’t have to go to the wood crib before I leave.

Behind the cabin is a short path through some trees and shrubs to a private beach on Lake Michigan. I say “private” because – due to the way the land lies – you’d have to REALLY want to get to this beach from anyplace other than the cabin. On the other three sides of the cabin are fairly thick woods. This is the type of place that I’ve fantasized about retiring to for the last 30 years. I may never (let’s face it, I’ll never) get to realize that dream, but I can live it a couple of weeks every year.

So that’s a description of where I am. Over the next week, I’ll try to get daily entries in – with photos – so I can remember what I did this week in November of 2024.

To Canada and Back

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Sandie and I got in the car two Fridays ago (July 5th) and pointed it north for our third annual sojourn to Magnetawan, Ontario. Stayed in Perrysburg, OH, Friday night and arrived at Camp Ulvik mid-afternoon on the 6th.

We spent a week there, doing what people do for a week at The Mag – sitting on the porch or our cabin, jumping in the lake, eating great food, drinking good bourbon (or, in Sandie’s case, wine), playing cards, visiting Parry Sound and Huntsville, eating pierogis from the snack bar in town, and generally relaxing with friends and family. The group this year was composed of Cy, “T,” Jamie Tall and his partner Alee (pronounced “Allie”), Trude and her friend Wayne, and Sandie and myself. An older group (Alee, at 29, was the baby by far), we may have done more sleeping and less “athleting” than in years past, but Jamie, Sandie, Cy, “T” and I did get a couple of hours in on the tennis court late in the week. The fence around the court was replaced (at ridiculous expense) sometime between last summer and this, and it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity.

Sunset on Ahmic Lake

It did rain a couple of times. For the most part, however, the weather was phenomenal. It was pretty drizzly for most of the day Monday or Tuesday, so we all went to Parry Sound and – except for Cy and “T” – we took a 2-hour cruise around the Georgian Bay on the Island Princess. I’d never done that before. It was interesting and a good way to kill a couple of hours. Not something I’d put on a “must do” list by any means. Particularly at $56/person.

There were at least 11 loons in the cove near our cabin, which was pretty sweet. I only heard them a few times, but it’s nice to know that the population is doing okay.

Last Saturday (July 12th), we packed up and hit the road by about 10AM. Crossed back into the States at Port Huron, MI, (the Blue Water Bridge there is terrifyingly high and narrow), and stayed in Lima, OH, Saturday night. Got home at around 7 Sunday evening, much to the joy of Mojo, Sandie’s little dog – and hopefully Joshua and Chamberlain were also pleased to have me back. They were not as ebullient in their happiness as was Mojo.

The 2024 Ulvik Gang

I wasn’t thrilled to get back to work on Monday morning, but fortunately I got another respite on Tuesday. The big boss came over from England, so the service team met him out our office (yes, there’s actually an office in Atlanta), where he went over our new application with us for a few hours and then took us all out for an afternoon of lunch and bowling, It was the first time that I’d ever met three of my 5 co-workers, including my immediate supervisor. The bowling alley SUCKED (after two rolls, I didn’t even try to shoot well), but being able to see people who I’ve only known from Teams meetings for the last two years was nice.

Cold Snap

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I woke up early this morning, and quickly discovered – on my way to the latrine – that it had gotten markedly colder than it was yesterday. The temperature itself wasn’t terrible, having only dropped a few degrees into the mid-twenties, but the wind was back with a vengeance. Not sure what the wind chill actually is (I used to have a chart for that), but I’ll just say that it has been COLD all day.

That being the case, I’ve spent most of the day inside the cabin, reading, snoozing, and listening to podcasts. I did bundle up and take a walk this afternoon – explored some of the Duncan Bay side of the point, and got in a bit more than 2 miles of exercise. Was forced to wear a gaiter than Cy gave me several years ago or my face would have frozen off; and I had on a tee, flannel shirt, windbreaker, gloves, and flannel-lined pants to keep the rest of me warm.

Today was pasta day at the old cabin. Made some ravioli on the wood stove for brunch and had some dehydrated spaghetti and meat sauce about an hour ago. Both were pretty good, but I’ll give the nod to the spaghetti. Mountain House makes some good dehydrated food.

It has also been snowing off-and-on for most of the day, although I got a couple hours of sunny clear skies during and just after my walk. No accumulation to speak of, but the sidewalk that I so carefully shoveled could probably use another scraping. That won’t happen today, as it’s already dark.

For some reason, the picture that I keep trying to attach to this post (a shot of my cabin kitchen) won’t upload, and my email doesn’t seem to be updating, either. That being the case, this post might not publish – but I’m going to click the “Publish” button now anyway.

Monday in the Woods

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I’m not sure what I said that I was going to do yesterday, but I’m fairly confident that I didn’t do it. I spent nearly the entire day in my cabin listening to podcasts and/or watching a couple of movies. I’d hoped to be able to watch the Falcons game, but my YouTube TV apparently doesn’t get live feeds in this area (one more reason that I’ll continue to experiment with that on a month-to-month basis).

As it turned out, the Falcons got crushed by a terrible Cleveland team, so I didn’t miss much.

I did get a nap in for an hour or so late-morning. Also brought in another load of wood (my third since Friday) and made some very good beef stew. Did that last on my old Coleman stove, which was the first time that I’ve used it at all since arriving here. My wood stove has done an admirable job of heating my water AND my food for the last few days. I stocked up on Coleman fuel for this trip, but it seems to me that I’m going to use very little of it. What I did not stock up on was lantern fuel – and since it’s pretty much pitch black in the cabin by 5:30 at night, that may have been an oversight. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve got a couple of tent lamps, at least one (I think two) head lamps, and a couple of flashlights, so I should be okay. If not, I don’t mind going to sleep when it gets dark.

Should you be wondering why I have so many flashlights and head lamps, it’s because I brought my “brain” on the trip. It’s the little bag that sits on top of my backpack, and I’ve said on many camping/hiking trips that, if necessary, I could live out of my brain for a week. It contains a lot of the ultra-light stuff that I’ve collected in the last 20 years while striving for the ultimate light pack, and usually has a couple of light sources, fire sources, spare food (oatmeal, cliff bars, coffee), water purifiers, various drugs and ointments, a spare knife, and lots of other things that may come in handy in an emergency. My brain only weighs about a pound, but it’s definitely a worthwhile weight for overnight hikes.

I did some snow shoveling this morning. Cleared the sidewalk between the cabin and the outhouse, and also cleared a path between the cabin and the wood shed. Salted everything, and that should take care of any slippery spots for the next day or two. It has continued to snow since yesterday afternoon, but it’s not sticking, so I don’t foresee any problems with actually driving out of here at the end of the week.

I did rouse myself out of the cabin stupor for about an hour late yesterday afternoon and took a rather brisk walk on the beach for about a mile (and another mile in the woods). My plan for today is to make a long loop on the various trails – head to Cheboygan point on an interior trail, circle back and head east on the beach all the way down to Poe Reef cabin, then head south through the woods to the campground, west on the other side of it, then back north through the cedar swamp to my cabin. I’m not positive about the distance, but I think it will be around 10 miles.

Or maybe I’ll just sleep, eat, and watch videos.

I meant to point out earlier that the picture at the top of this post is, I believe, one of loons that were hanging out in my little cove yesterday. There were 6 of them in total. Lots of water birds here. In addition to the (I think) loons, there is a flock of about 20 swans, at least two eagles, ducks, and lots of seagulls.

Later. My 10-mile walk ended up being a little over 6 miles. That’s fine, because my back, quads, and feet really didn’t want to go any further. Between the sand on the beach and the snow, walking was tough!

So that was a couple of hours this afternoon, since which time I’ve made a dehydrated turkey casserole (quite good), listened to a podcast, and played in the wind a bit. The wind has picked back up dramatically, and it has gotten quite cold on the beach. Since the sun is going down in the next hour or so (it’s already pretty dark), I think I’m probably in for the evening.

Loving that wood stove….

Snow Day!

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I woke up this morning to a beautiful Lake Huron sunrise, strong winds, and a couple of inches of the white stuff. As I sit here at the table in my cabin, listening to a Furman football game, I’m looking out at something I’m pretty sure that I’ve never seen before: snow in the foreground and the lake, with huge white caps, in the back. The wood stove in the cabin is doing an amazing job – I’m in my underwear and have cracked a window, both to cool things down a little bit and to let me hear the wind, which is constant and incredibly soothing. I played my wind game for about an hour earlier this morning, which I haven’t been able to do for several years.

Wind game: try to find a spot outside that allows me to simultaneously be in and out of the wind. I invented it as a small child in Shoreham – the perfect spot was behind the berry bush between the roots of the Elm tree in the front yard. The best spot I found today was in a Cedar Grove near the beach.

Took two fairly long walks today. The first one took me to Cheboygan Point, about a mile from here. I wandered around there for a while, then walked east on the beach back past my cabin to the edge of the park. Came back to the cabin for a lunch of chicken and dumplings, then opted to walk over to the campsite on the southern edge of the park rather than take a nap.

I’d just arrived back at the cabin after that trek when one of the rangers showed up to give me some rock salt and – you called it, Dad! – a snow shovel. I shoveled off the front of the cabin, where I have my “settin’ outside” chair, before coming back in to listen to the game. Later today, I might get enough energy to shovel off the walkway that leads to the latrine.

A bit about the cabins here at Cheboygan State Park: there are three of them, all available year-round, and all basically the same. I stayed in the Poe Reef cabin last year. This time, I’m at 14-Foot Shoals, which is about a mile further off the main road than Poe. A quarter-mile further along is Lighthouse Cabin. 14-Foot Shoals has a “porch” of sorts, which is missing in the other two cabins. It’s just a little 3-foot overhang across the front of the cabin, but it’s a great place to sit outside without being completely exposed to the elements.

Other than that, the cabins are all pretty much the same. They’re square buildings – I’d guess about 20 feet per side – with a single room under a peaked roof. Each wall has at least one window (2 on the lake-facing wall), and there is a small counter in one of the lakeside corners. Each building also has a wood stove, 4 sets of bunk beds, a table with two benches, and a number of wooden chairs. Hooks in the rafters provide a good place to hang a lantern (there is no electricity). Each cabin also has two out-buildings: a vault toilet and a large woodshed. Water is available from a hand pump outside (kind of yellow this year, but seems to taste alright), and there are two picnic tables and two firepits – one set at the forest side of the cabin and the other on the beach.

I’m sure that, during the summer, the beaches here get crowded. In late October/early November, however, I’ve had the place pretty much to myself. Yes, there are people staying in the other two cabins, but they are distant enough to not exist, basically. Solitude is what I like, and this place has it.

Still Alive!

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So it’s been a while. Figured I’d try to catch up on things while I’m sitting at Tires Plus waiting for new tires. Also testing out a WordPress app on my phone, which may allow me to post more often and, hopefully, will work well enough so that I can use it when I’m in Michigan in a few weeks.

I guess that’s the big news for now. I rented a cabin at Cheboygan State Park again this year, and I’m planning to stay there from November 9th to the 16th. It’s a lovely spot and I’m really looking forward to having a week by myself in the middle of nowhere to decompress and think about things. That week will come immediately on the heels of a week in Toledo, where I’ll be on a project for work. Not looking as forward to that, but it works nicely financially, as I’ll be reimbursed for mileage for around 1300 miles out of my entire trip.

Work has been somewhat exhausting as of late. The X-Company really built up the numbers in L1 support staff this year, and I’ve now got 10 direct reports and am expecting 1 or 2 more by the end of the year. Having been back in the management gig for nearly a year now (the last time I had directs was around 2006), I’ve sort of settled in to it. Managing people is, for me at least, much more stressful than just dealing with misbehaving computers. I get particularly annoyed when one of my people feels the need to take an emergency day off because, “My kid threw up,” but I guess I’m not allowed to admit that. I also have a few scenarios every day when I’m deep in the heart of working a problem which has been escalated to me and I get interrupted by someone who needs help with something that, to me, seems incredibly obvious. Maybe not the solution, but definitely the troubleshooting steps required to find it.

I haven’t gotten to get out much this year. Did go up to Whigg Meadow two more times since that weekend when Brett and I discovered it. Both trips were really nice (I hiked up both times, rather than subjecting my car to the terrible drive), though I did get absolutely soaked the first time – caught on the trail in a downpour with no rain gear.

I’m still looking for the perfect place to buy some land for a tiny cabin to live in in my old age. Have not found it yet, and I’m again wondering when I’ll be able to actually do this. I looked at my 401k yesterday and see that in the last 2 weeks I’ve lost everything that I gained during the first nine months of the year. Wouldn’t call it depressing, but it’s certainly not encouraging.

…

And now it’s the next day. I did get my tires put on, and had the front end aligned, which makes my car feel like a new car. Very nice. Jenny and I went to a Gladiators hockey game last night. Once again, we saw them playing the Orlando Sun Bears, which I think is the team that we’ve seen play every time we’ve gone. And once again, the Gladiators lost. We have a bad hockey team.

After I got home last night, I saw that I had an email from Dad. It had been written while I was sitting at the tires place, and it mentioned that he misses seeing updates to my blog. Well, here you go, Dad!

I guess the last little bit of news is that I’ve got a concert with the Gwinnett Wind Symphony later this afternoon. We’re performing the Suite from West Side Story, the Candice Suite and something else that I don’t recall right now. The band has been sounding pretty good for the rehearsals, which is different for this group.

So, we’ll call this test over. This app appears to do a pretty good job of allowing me to update my blog on-the-fly. The Voice Control isn’t all that great, but it’s faster than typing on the little phone keyboard. I do have to go back and correct things fairly often.

I don’t know how it will do with inserting pictures, which will be important when I’m in Michigan, but I’ll try that out later.

Post-vacation wrap

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So I’ve been back in Atlanta for a couple of weeks – the second of which I was the on-call guy for work, which sucked – and I suppose it’s a good time to catch up on all the news that is or isn’t fit to print.

The featured image for this post is one of Lake Huron that I took a couple of weeks ago as a storm was rolling in.  It was mainly bluster – not a great deal of rain – but it was chilly and raw.  I loved it.

I’m currently sitting at Tires Plus, waiting for my oil to get changed and my tires to get rotated and my wheels to get balanced and all of that other fun stuff that I do every few months.  Decided this morning that I’d bring my original Surface Pro with me and do something productive while I sit here.  I’m beginning to really appreciate this machine again.  Bought it several years ago, but it’s so small that I used it basically as a novelty.  Real work got done on one of my other laptops.  But, due in large part to it’s small size, I brought it with me to Michigan and took some notes on what was going on.  Those will be pasted, in their unedited entirety, later in this post.

The vacation was a wonderful respite from life.  I started out (and finished, actually) at the Cheboygan State Park in Cheboygan, MI.  This park – I think it’s around 800 acres – sits on Cheboygan Point on the Straits of Mackinac, and it is a lovely place.  I’m pretty sure that I’ll be going back.  I chose the park mainly because it’s a few hours closer to home than is Pictured Rocks on Lake Superior and – for the same price that I’d pay at Pictured Rocks for a basic campsite – I got a basic campsite plus electricity, showers, flushing toilets…all the good stuff.  My site itself was a fairly secluded area on the southern side of the point, sitting on the shores of Duncan Bay, which is a marsh and not at all what I had in mind for a great lakes vacation, although the breeze coming off of the bay was extremely pleasant.  I set up my car tent and a hiker’s tarp.  Bed in the car, various helpful things (camp drawers, table, stove, firewood, etc) in the tent, picnic table under the tarp.

And I had a great few days there.  Arrived in the early afternoon on Thursday, October 12 and had pretty good weather (until Saturday night).  By then, after walking around all over the park, I’d decided to rent a cabin on the northern edge of the park, right on The Straits.  Gave up the electricity and the running water, and paid triple what I’d been paying for the campsite, but gained a fantastically cozy, warm, dry, spacious domicile with easy access to Lake Huron, trails, various critters, and – of course – the ubiquitous fall houseflies of Michigan (see my writeup from last year).  If you refer back to the featured image, I actually took that between the time that I checked out of my campsite (at around noon) and the time that I entered Poe Reef Cabin (at around 2:30).  I spent the time in between just walking around on the point – on the beach, into the woods, back onto the beach, in the off-beach dunes, out on the point, etc. – and getting very cold and a bit wet and playing my wind game (hiding behind trees, under bushes, near rocks…I love my wind game).  Finally, I decided I’d waited long enough to get into the cabin, which I technically wasn’t supposed to do before 3:00.  Whoever had been in it before me, leaving by 1:00, had left a birch log slowly burning in the wood stove, and walking into that dry, warm, wonderful room was probably in the top 5 greatest experiences in my life.  It.  Felt.  So.  Good.

Stayed until the following Thursday morning, then drove home in one shot, arriving at sometime around 1:00 AM Friday.

Back at work, the first week was fine.  The second week, as I mentioned, I was on call.  Got very little sleep (I do not understand why CPAs feel the need to work – and call the help desk – at all hours of the night and on weekends), but survived until yesterday morning, when my on-call shift ended.

Learned on Thursday that the X-Company has been acquired by Right Networks in Hudson, NH, under an umbrella of a venture firm in Boston.  Not sure what that means at this point, but it doesn’t have the same stress level of the other mergers I’ve gone through.

Still looking for another job, but I’m finally starting to settle in and accept the fact that I might be stuck doing what I’m doing for a while.  With that in mind, I accepted an offer to go on a project in Memphis during the last week of November and first of December.  Sounds like I’ll drove over there on Sunday the 26th, come back on the 30th, then go back on the 3rd and return on the 6th or 7th.  Lots of driving, but at least it’s something different to do.

Mary informed me yesterday that she may be moving out at about that same time.  Not sure why, but it’s all good.  I’ve been redesigning my house in my mind since she told me.  Getting my office back (currently her bedroom) and the second guest room (currently unusable because of the boxes in it) will be nice.  I’ll also be able to drop one or two of the paid streaming services that I’m paying for, since I only picked two of them up so that she wouldn’t complain when I dumped DirecTV.

And that’s about that.  The remainder of this post consists of what I wrote while in Michigan.

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6:27 AM 10/14/2017

Saturday morning, day three (or four, if you count Wednesday) of my 2017 vacation. Cheboygan (MI) State Park, site 27. It is a brisk October morning and the sun hasn’t even though about coming up yet, but I had to pee (did so in my trusty pee jar), and then figured I’d take advantage of the bathroom building before they shut it down – I’m told that that might happen tomorrow – so I got up, got dressed, walked over to the loo, and did my business. Being up and dressed, I figured I’d go ahead and start the day, so just made some coffee and pulled out the old Surface Pro to catch up on things.

My vacation actually started on Monday. The idea when I asked for the time off was to head out for the great unwashed north (probably Pictured Rocks) on last Saturday morning and arrive sometime Sunday afternoon. As so often seems to happen to me these days, life got in the way of those plans. Found out that I had a concert on Sunday, so leaving on the weekend was out. Then the GBB set up a very agressive schedule, giving us a minimum of rehearsals between concerts; I decided that it would piss people off if I missed two rehearsals in a row, so I hung around Atlanta until Tuesday and left on Wednesday morning.

While all that was going on, Dad and Diane went to Myrtle Beach last week with plans to stay for a couple of weeks. Drove over to see them on Saturday, and also reserved a spot at the state park there for this past week in hopes of spending some more time with them. Unfortunately, Dad had some medical issues and cut the trip short. I say, “Unfortunately,” because of course I don’t want him to be sick. It did have an upside, though: Myrtle Beach was (and is) incredibly hot and humid this year, and I’ve got to admit that I was not looking forward to camping there for a week. My recent purchase of a Kelty 20-degree bag was definitely not made with hot weather in mind. So once Dad let me know that he was leaving early, I started looking for places to stay in the Upper Pennisula.

Having prepared for Myrtle Beach in my head, I had pretty much wrapped my head around the idea of having electricity, so my normal spots at Pictured Rockes were out. I looked around at other places near Grand Marais, but all of them looked kind of boring: close, tight, campsites with little direct water access. So I started to just look at other parks under the Michigan DNR umbrella. And I found this one, settled in on the Straits of Mackinac on a little jut of land that provides a marsh on one side, the Straits on the other, and an all-day breeze that is amazing. The website said that the bathroom building (showers,toilets, running water) would be shut off on October 4, but all sites have electricity – and it’s cheaper than my Pictured Rocks places! So far, I’m pleased.

photo of Duncan Bay

Duncan Bay

So what’s happened? Well, I left on Wednesday morning and drove to Lima, OH (imagine that), where I spent the night at the Country Inns and Suites – pretty much my go-to plan when heading north to either Michigan or Canada. Hit the road by about 8 Thursday morning and made it here at around 1:30. Checked in via a dedicated telephone (haven’t seen an actual ranger yet), got to my site, and got everything set up. The rest of the day was spent doing basically nothing. Sat in my chair, drank beer, took a couple of pictures of Duncan Bay (the marshy area that is my backyard), and eating an Arby’s beef sandwich leftover from Wednesday night. Went to bed at probably 8:30 (well after dark) and slept until sometime between 7:00 and 7:30 yesterday. Slept like a brick.

For much of the day yesterday, I explored the trails in the area. I walked a total of about 10 miles all over Cheboygan Point, which is nearly all park land. Discovered a couple of beautiful little cabins on the north shore that I’m going to have to check out online (with an eye toward renting next year) and also bushwhacked to the extreme northern tip of Cheboygan. Took a few pictures of Mackinaw City, Grand Mackinac Island, and “The Mighty Mac” (bridge) – although it’s quite difficult to see it on a cellphone camera (I opted not to bring any real cameras with me).

Between walks, I cooked up a couple of angus steaks and some corn on the cob – both were amazing – back at my site. Lit a fire last night as the weekend crowd started rolling in. I’ve got a couple with a very whiny daughter to my right now. Still no one on my left. I’m guessing that it’ll be just me and few folks in their motor homes if/when the water is turned off. I’ll cool with that. There’s a pit toilet about 200 yards from me and one shed where the water will remain turned on all winter. So it’s the same as Pictured Rocks would be – plus I’ve got electricity.

Camping at Cheboygan

Planning on doing some more walking on the point today, but we’ll see what the day brings.

9:51 AM 10/16/2017

On Saturday, I woke up fairly early – I’d guess around 7 – and, with no real plan in mind, started walking down the approach road away from the campground. After about a mile, I came upon road labeled “Poe Reef Cabin” and decided it looked like a nice walk. Locked gate, so I wouldn’t have to worry about traffic, and it headed off into the north woods, which I wanted to explore some more anyway.

Very shortly, I came upon the afore-mentioned cabin, which appeared to be bereft of humans, so I walked around it to the beach and sat in the wind for a while, looking across the straits to Makinac Island. Then walked back around the cabin, peered in the windows, availed myself of the outhouse, and made a snap decision to try to rent the place. Pulled out the phone (it’s great to have a couple of bars of coverage up here), and found that Poe Reef Cabin was available from Sunday until Thursday. Then checked my bank account and learned that I’d finally been reimbursed for my trip to Maryland from two months ago. That did it. I immediately tried to reserve the cabin and was immediately rejected because I already had a reservation at the campground. I resigned myself to doing it next year.

After walking some more (saw a porcupine), I ambled back to the campground – it was probably around 10:00 by then – and flagged down a passing ranger, there to clean the restrooms. I told him I still needed to pay him for my Michigan DNR passport (a parking pass necessary for all MI parks) and that I was wondering if I’d be able to get the cabin in spite of my campsite reservation. He told me, “Theresa will be in the ranger station at noon – sometime after noon – and she can probably help you.”

So I went back to my campsite, made some coffee, ate some peanuts, and waited for noon. At noon, went back to the office – no Theresa. Back to campsite. 1:00 rolled around, and Theresa still wasn’t at the office, so I tuned in to the Furman/VMI football game on my phone. I remember, back in the mid-90s, when David Willard and I would plan for days in advance trying to find a bar with a satellite dish that might possibly be able to get the Furman game. I even started a website about Furman football as a way to force myself to keep up with it and to help other people who were looking for places to hear and/or see the games. Now, I can just pull up Tune-In radio on my phone and hear the games live from anywhere in the world that has cellular coverage. Amazing.

Furman won, 42-10, by the way. But back to the story.

About halfway through the first quarter, I walked back to the ranger station and found that Theresa had arrived. We took care of my passport, and then I broached the subject of the cabin. She clicked and clattered away on her computer (complaining all the while about how slow it was, while I was still listening to my football game over the phone), and not only reserved the cabin for me for Sunday-Thursday, but also reimbursed me for those days at the campground. I told her that I’d happily eat the cost of those nights – if I have to give my money to any government entity, it would be the Michigan DNR (I mean that sincerely) – but she was adamant and I didn’t argue the point. The she offered to walk the key and combination for the cabin to my campsite later (which she did), and told me about Saturday night’s Halloween festivities.

The cabin was sounding better all the time. Apparently, the campground had set aside Saturday night as a “local kids don costumes and bother campers for candy” night. Later that night, there was the “Haunted Trail” campaign, during which, for $10, children (and, I assume, their folks) could walk along a few of the trails near the campground after dark and be frightened by various things set up on the trails.

I opted to turn my back on the moochers and drink bourbon while staring at Duncan Bay. Lit a fire somewhere around 5:30, as the wind began to pick up, and hit the sack, I’d guess, at around 8:00.

I have yet to spend any camp time in Michigan that doesn’t end with me tearing down in the rain, and Sunday morning was no exception. A squall came in out of the north shortly after I went to bed, and it more or less raged all night. At some point, one of the bungees holding my tarp up gave up the fight. This allowed my tarp to fold in half and completely expose my table – on which I’d left my lantern, stove, jetboil, and pans – and to soak everything. When I got up, somewhere around 8:00, I fixed that issue and then hoped for a break in the weather during which I could tear down while staying as dry as possible.

It never really happened. While I did get about 20 minutes of non-rain, the wind never let up. Every time a gust hit, rain fell out of the trees and covered everything again. In a nutshell, I did get everything sort of packed into the car, but I had no chance to dry out the tent or the tarp. And I was drenched. I took the opportunity, after packing everything, to use the campground’s shower, and felt much better. Headed out at about 12:45, but couldn’t check in to the cabin before 3:00. So I parked at the trail head, and started walking.

The squall had picked back up by now, so I tried to keep to the internal forest as much as possible. Every time I got within a quarter-mile of the lake, the wind and spray was pelting me and it was getting cold. I’d guess that the actual temp was around 45, but add strong winds and wet and I have no idea how cold things really were. Time went fairly slowly, as I walked probably 8 miles of trails waiting for 3:00. At 2:45, I was back at the trail head and thought, “Screw it. I’m going in.”

So I did. And when I opened the cabin door, I learned that the people who’d left earlier had left a nice birch log roasting in the wood stove. The inside of the cabin was between 75 and 80 degrees. It was the most amazing feeling that I’ve had since….it was just the most amazing feeling ever. I’m trying to compare it to sometime during a Shoreham winter when I came into the kitchen after playing outside, but it went beyond that. I was absolutely worn out and freezing when I opened the cabin door, and the sense of being warm and dry was incredible. I moved all of my stuff (except the tent) into the cabin, crawled into my sleeping bag, and slept for close to 4 hours. Then got up, ate a couple of sandwiches, played in the wind for another hour or so, and got back into bed. Slept until 9 this morning, with one interruption at 4:00 to get up and pee and throw some more wood into the stove. The wind was still howling at that hour, and it was very cold. By 9:00, however, the storm had cleared. The sun is now shining and the wind has died out as much as it can on the shore of a great lake. It’s still chilly – there was frost on my picnic table this morning – but the sun feels good and I’m hoping for temps in the upper 60s today. Inside my cabin as I type this, with some oak smoldering in the stove – flu nearly closed – it’s right at 60 degrees and feels wonderful.

I’ll do some more hiking today and, perhaps, drive into Cheboygan for a few supplies. Coffee, batteries, maybe some ice. And I’ll continue this tome as time permits.

Poe Reef Cabin

5:15 PM 10/18/2017
Today and yesterday were both phenomenal, weather-wise. Temperature was in the mid-60s and the sky was perfectly blue on both days. I did jump into the lake briefly yesterday (very cold) and considered it again today, but decided not to – though there’s still another hour or so of daylight left. Got a couple of long walks in on both days, and filled out things by sitting at my cabin, listening to podcasts and drinking. Also built a fire outside the cabin today.

During this morning’s walk, I startled an eagle out of a tree by the beach – first time I’ve ever seen one of those in the wild, and it was pretty cool. Other interesting wildlife that I’ve noticed this week are a flock of swans in the straits and a multitude of jet-black squirrels. Also got a couple of close-ups of a pilliated woodpecker over the course of the week. I assume it was the same bird, but it could be that all of them enjoy showering me with wood chips.

If you look closely, you can see a wild eagle in this picture

Planning on leaving before dawn tomorrow, but that really depends on how I sleep tonight. I woke up briefly at around 4 this morning, but convinced myself to go back to bed, where I happily snored until after 9. When I get home really depends on when I leave here. I’d like to get there before Friday night, so am hoping that I can suck it up and do the trip in one shot. Otherwise, I’ll probably end up stopping in Kentucky somewhere, and I hate to spend money in Kentucky. “Don’t support anyplace that supports Mitch McConnell,” is my motto.

As for the rest of today, I have no plans. Had a couple of sandwiches an hour or so ago, so I don’t think I’ll need to eat again. Already boiled some water and put it into my thermos for my morning sponge bath. I’ll probably have some coffee at some point, and I’m still listening to podcasts. Might watch a movie on the Surface Pro before bed. I brought 5 or 6 or them with me, planning to go through them in the campground – where I had electricity – but since moving to the cabin, I’ve had to be stingy with the amount of time that the computer is running. The phone and my iPod are fine – I’ve got a great portable charger – but once the Surface Pro dies, it’s done until I’m home or at a hotel.

To sum up, it’s been a great week – particularly the last four days – and I’m fairly certain that I’ll rent a cabin here again next year. Might try to get one of the other two that are about a mile farther up the point – they have better beaches – but I’ve got nothing negative to say about this one, and I’d take it again in a heartbeat.

Catching Up

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I’ve spent a great deal of time this morning attempting to get the permissions set correctly on this WordPress site, and – so far – have had very little luck in doing so.  I did manage to get a plug-in installed to tell me what’s WRONG; Unfortunately, it has been unsuccessful at actually fixing those things.  Looks like I’ll be doing manual edits for a while.

I perused my latest entry and discovered that I haven’t written anything since going to Annapolis two weeks ago, so here’s a quick rundown on what’s gone on since then.

As mentioned, I spent the week of August 8th in Annapolis, MD, helping to set up a new client for the X Company.  It was pretty straightforward stuff – adding machines to the domain, setting up printers, installing the correct version of the Citrix receiver and antivirus on machines, and then spending a few days working with the people there and showing them how to navigate the cloud, finding fixes for individual problems, etc.  I would have enjoyed myself a lot more if some actual planning had gone into the project, rather than just a basic, “Here’s a domain controller. Knock yourself out,” approach.  The more I work at this company, the more I realize that they talk a really good game about project management, but they actually do very little of it.  If/when I’m ever able to find another gig – and if I get an exit interview – that will be the #1 thing I have to say.  They’re growing too fast, they don’t plan for more than the simplest changes, and it’s eventually going to bite them in the ass.

Maryland itself was fine, I guess.  I didn’t see much of it.  Contrary to the thoughts of a few of my friends, I was not on a vacation.  I was up by 5:30, in the office by 7:30, worked 11-12 hours a day, and returned to my hotel, where I normally ate microwave macaroni and cheese and either watched television or played “Medal of Honor” for an hour before going to bed.

I did go out to dinner one night with my co-worker, Nate.  We found a sushi place across the street from my hotel and gorged on it.  Blew through my entire per diem for that one meal, but it was worth it.  Besides, by eating Mac & Cheese every other night, I made a few hundred bucks on unspent per diem.

I had planned to drive back from MD on Friday morning, but the more I thought about it, the more attractive it became to leave on Thursday night.  I didn’t want to hit morning traffic in D.C.  I wanted to have an extra day to decompress at home before going back to work at the office.  And – seriously – I missed my cats.  So I left at about 7:30 Thursday night.

Had a fairly uneventful drive, although I discovered U.S. 360 West – got on it somewhere around Richmond and took it over to 29 South.  Very pretty drive, although I got confused at one point and ended up on an “ExpressPay” lane for about a half a mile.  Since I don’t have any type of transponder, I’m wondering when I’m going to get a bill for that, and how much that little goof is going to cost me.

I got home at around 5:30 Friday morning, slept for a good part of the day, mowed some lawns, and had a decent weekend before going back to the phones on Monday.

The GBB kicked off rehearsals on Tuesday, so that was a nice diversion.

While in MD, I requested and received paid time off for August 21 & 22 (which is today).  That being the case, I headed for the NC mountains on Saturday, August 19, with an eye towards catching the solar eclipse in both totality and relative seclusion.

As it turned out, there were about a billion other people who had the same idea, and so it was incredible luck that I got lost on the way to my original destination (Big Fat Gap) and ended up driving down an increasingly horrible road that ended at a lovely hunter’s shelter near Deep River Gap.  My friend Brett, who had planned to meet me at BFG, got concerned on Saturday afternoon because 1}BFG was incredibly crowded, and 2}I hadn’t shown up.  So he started randomly driving around the area and actually ended up finding me on the increasingly horrible road.

This is not the first time that we’ve managed to locate each other, without any type of communication, in 20 square miles or more of wilderness.  We started talking about it on Saturday night and determined that we’ve probably done the same thing – him finding me or vice versa – 5 or 6 times in the last 15 years.  It’s uncanny.

Anyway, the increasingly horrible road was a godsend, because we only saw 2 cars and 1 motorcycle at our shelter between Saturday afternoon and Monday afternoon.  People would see the road and just turn around.

I know this, because I damned near did the same thing.  Now that I know where the shelter is, though….gold.

On Monday morning, Brett said that he wanted to catch the eclipse somewhere along the Cherahola Skyway, but I was in no mood to fight with the crowds and the traffic (I’d heard that Huckleberry Knob – where we’d originally planned to hike up and see the thing – had been outfitted with dumpsters and porta-potties), so I stayed at the shelter and Brett left.  I’d been told that an old, closed, forestry road that continued up the mountain from my shelter eventually ended up at The Hangover, which is a beautiful spot in the Joyce Kilmer forest; so at around 1130, I started hiking up it.

After 3.5 to 4 miles – every motherlovin’ step of it UPHILL – the road-cum-footpath ended up at a clearing in the middle of absolutely nowhere.  By then, it was 1:15, and I decided to head back down and try to make it to my backup plan for the eclipse, which was a nice little hill on one side of the increasingly horrible road that would offer close to a 360-degree view.

While the hike down was much (MUCH) easier than the one going up, it still took a while, and when I found an open spot on the trail at around 2:00, I took out my eclipse glasses just to see if anything was happening.  Good thing I did, because the eclipse was well under way by then.

So I set up my tripod and camera (did I mention that I carried both of those things all the way up that trail?  Auuuuugggghhhh!!), and spend the next 40 minutes trying to get some shots.  I assume that I did.  I haven’t looked at my memory card yet.  I did, however, get a look – with my eyes – during the 2 minutes or so of totality.

Wow!  It really was cool to see the corona.  Very cool.

It was also a fascinating experience in less majestic ways.  Like, for instance, the way that it went from light to dark as if someone had flipped off a switch.  Or the way that the crickets were chirping and birds were singing their twilight songs in the middle of the afternoon.  Or the fact that the temperature dropped about 15 degrees in 60 seconds. Or that I could actually see a few stars.  I’ve seen (that I recall) two other solar eclipses – but never totality.

It was worth the trip, and the increasingly horrible road, and the 3-mile hike uphill to nowhere.

After the meat of it was over, I continued back down the trail to my car at the shelter, packed up, took one last drink of filtered stream water, and headed out.  Within 500 yards, I saw a truck approaching from down the increasingly horrible road, and pulled on to a turn-out to let it by.  It pulled up next to me, and I saw that it was occupied by a family of 5.  The driver, looking very concerned, asked me, “How much longer does this go on?”  I told him he was near the dead-end and that the worst was over, and the kids in the back started celebrating.

So at least one other family no knows the location of my new happy place.  Though, I don’t know if they’ll want to make the trip again.  When I said, “Truck,” earlier, I meant “Minivan-like vehicle.”  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it had bottomed out at least four times to get as far as it got – and that part about “the worst being over” was a complete lie on my part.  The last 500 yards were the worst on the road.

But I’ll go back.  And I might even hike that stupid trail again, although my calves are SCREAMING at me this morning.

The NC mountains never fail to calm me.

PB&J

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No image for this post.  I apologize if you’re a picture kind of person.  Also, no cussing in this post – if you’re the kind of person who checks this blog every day, you got a profanity-laced one last week, which has since been made private.  I would’ve deleted it, but years from now I want to remember how I felt.

Anyway, here’s the deal.  Remember that I mentioned at the beginning of my week at Pictured Rocks that AT&T was going to lay people off?  Yeah, well, I’m one of those people.  In a nutshell, I’ve got until December 27th to find a new job.  If I can find another job at ATT (I’ve applied for 5), then I keep my years in service and it’s not a big deal.  If I can’t find an internal job by then, then I’m on the street, I get 50% of my salary in a lump sum (taxed to hell and back), and ATT wishes me good luck.

Having run the math about 400 times, I think I can live on that severance – if I eat beans and rice – for about a year.  I don’t want to eat beans and rice.  I particularly don’t want for my cats to eat beans and rice.

But that’s where I am at the moment.  I’ve applied, as I said, for multiple internal jobs – best case scenario even though I really hate ATT – and I’ve applied for multiple external jobs, which is almost wasted effort because I’m a jack of all IT trades and external jobs want specificity.  I’m over-qualified for damned near every job I’ve applied for, and damned near every employer will look at my resume and think that I’m not qualified.  So I’ve got that going for me.  If I have to go outside, I’m pretty sure that I’ve got to take an entry level job (and lie about my qualifications to do so) and start over.  I’m cool with that.  Not happy, but cool.  My kitties won’t know the difference.

Have talked to a friend who’s lease expires in February about renting a room from me.  Have talked to a senior director – who also got the axe – about a possible start-up company.  Have gotten through one interview with an outside company to be a systems admin 1 (major step backwards).  At this point, however, I’m still really scared.  I’ve tried being religious in the past.  It didn’t take. But if you’re religious, feel free to pray for me.

In an attempt to start saving money, I bought some peanut butter and jelly last week.  PB gives me incredible heartburn.  Jelly is way too sweet for me – I hate it.  But I made myself a PB&J sandwich tonight.  Two, actually.  I ate them.  They tasted terrible, and my stomach is currently rebelling on me.  It was cheap, though.  I can get through this.  I *will* keep my cats safe.  And they’ll stay together.  I don’t know exactly how I’ll do that if I get to the point where I can’t pay the mortgage….but they will stay together and they’ll be cared for.  I’m not married.  Have no children.  My kitties are my kids, though, and any of you who think that kids are more important need to stop reading this blog.  If not for my cats, I’d take the severance tomorrow and I’d be living in Canada.

So let’s end this one on a happy note.  The Cubs won the world series.  Dad, I’m sorry that it wasn’t the Indians…but come on: It was the Cubbies.  You can’t feel too bad about that. 108 years and all that.  Pretty good news.

A Superior Week – Part II

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Well, it’s been 11 days since I put up the first half of my journal from a trip to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and I should probably go ahead and finish that story.  Before I get to it, however, I might as well catch everyone up on things that have happened in the last 11 days.

For starters, I’m now officially free of credit card debt, having paid off the last one earlier this morning.  Technically, I’ve still got an ongoing one, because I set up a few monthly utilities to be paid automatically by my Discover card, just to see what type of cash-back kicks I get.  If it works out, I’ll leave it that way.  If not, I’ll undo the auto-pay and call that one done, too.

In other news, I’ve been fighting a head cold for the last week, and it’s really getting on my nerves.  Particularly considering that I had a brass band performance yesterday, followed immediately by a wind orchestra rehearsal.  Thought my head was going to explode.

The performance went well, anyway.  And we sold a good number of our brand-new CD.  So there’s that.

On the home front, I switched from U-Verse television to DirecTV a couple weeks ago – mainly because my employee discount is so much steeper for DTV.  I was paying around $25 for U-Verse and I’m getting DTV for $10.  So that’s nice.  I’ve learned, however, that DTV is *worth* about $10/month.  What a piece of crap.  Leave it to ATT to push something that’s terrible while trying to get people off of the one really good product that they have.  Pathetic.  And now they want to buy Time Warner?  Seriously?  Ugh.

Enough of that.  It’s depressing me.  Lessee…what else has been going on in the last couple of weeks?  Oh!  I got a meatloaf from Publix the other day, and DAMN was it good!  I may have to do that more regularly.  Or, you know, learn how to make meatloaf.

But enough.  Moving on to the conclusion of my Superior Week:

10/6/16@11:20 – Hot dogs didn’t happen.  I made some freeze-dried Beef Stroganoff and a couple of cheese sandwiches in the tent and then crawled into bed at around 19:00.  Slept okay for the most part, although I lost my blankets at some point and woke up at around 02:00 due to the cold – and because I had to pee.

Ended up getting up for good at around 05:30, at which point I put on a sweatshirt and a headlamp and set off for the lighthouse in the dark in order to accomplish a number of tasks.  I needed to check my bank balance (today is pay day), shoot the sunrise, download some new podcasts, and book a hotel for Friday night.

Think about that for a second.  I checked my bank account and booked a hotel – in minutes – in, basically, the middle of nowhere.  It wasn’t long ago that, when taking a long trip, I drove until I got tired and then started looking for a hotel, hoping for a vacancy.  Cellphones really are kind of amazing, as intrusive as they are.

I had hoped that the cold last night would be enough to kill of the flies, but they seem to be worse this morning than they were yesterday!  Ugh!  If I do this again next year (assuming I still have a job), I may wait until November.  Stupid global warming.

[Note: The featured image at the top of this entry is one of several that I took of the sunrise that morning, using my phone’s camera.  I didn’t bring a DSLR with me on the trip and wanted to figure out if I could use the phone’s “pro” settings for low-light stuff.  I thought it worked okay.]

10/6/16@16:21 – So after getting back from the lighthouse this morning, I had a breakfast of freeze-dried Mac & Cheese (good stuff!) and then began pre-packing for the trip out tomorrow.  Put all the stuff that was in the tent into the car and then setup my mattress in the tent.  If all goes well, in the morning I can just deflate the mattress while in the tent, put it in the car, strike the tent in a few minutes, and hit the road.  Hopefully, it won’t rain tonight.  It’s been sunny all day and my stuff is dry.  I hate packing out wet stuff.

Going to start a fire in about 30 minutes and try the hot dogs again tonight.

Forgot to mention that I walked over to the Twelvemile campground and back this afternoon.  It’s a nice place, with several campsites very near the lake (almost said ocean!), guaranteed to have a non-stop breeze, though maybe a little sandy.  They look quite nice, though, and the wind would keep the flies away!

10/6/16@20:47– The hot dogs were excellent….but I forgot to use the relish!

10/7/16@18:47 – Lima, OH – And so I’m halfway home, staying the night at the same Carlson In that I stayed in on my way up to the lake.  Same room, in fact.  The ride down was largely uneventful, although I had about 100 stowaways in the car: the flies.

By driving with all of the windows down through most of the upper peninsula, I was able to lose most of them, but still had a few in the car when I hit the only traffic jam of the day – which happened less than 20 miles from this hotel.  Try as I might, I couldn’t get the last hangers-on to flee, so they’re still in the car tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.

Planning to have some noodles in the hotel room tonight and hit the road early tomorrow – after a shower that is going to feel amazing.  One cannot appreciate how awful one can smell until one goes a week without bathing.

And that, friends, Romans and countrymen, is the end of the journal regarding the trip.  I did indeed leave the hotel very early on Saturday the 8th and made it home by around 2 in the afternoon.  Spent some time emptying out the car, watched some football, and hit the sack.

Should you be wondering, there was one final fly left in my car when I went to work on the 10th.  It got out with me in the office parking lot.  So I’ve probably brought an invasive species to Georgia.

These things happen.