Italy day 2, Pompeii (9/15)

We allowed ourselves no time to dwell on time differences or sink into jet lag. Sunday morning, day 2, found us up at 6am and off to catch a train south to Naples. We were Pompeii bound.

First I should mention that taking our train loving son on the high speed train through the countryside of Italy was in itself a monumental event. Plus their rail service is all inclusive, and we were served small coffees with biscotti for our trip down, and Prosecco with cookies on our trip back. The local service from Naples to Pompeii, however, the Circumvensuviana, was a little different.

As cool the travel was, though, Pompeii was of course the highlight of the day. A very long, very warm day with lots and lots of walking.

Here are some things that surprised me about Pompeii:
1. The vastness. It was much bigger than I had expected.
2. The odd stray-like dogs wandering all over the site.
3. The eastern European guy wearing only a t-shirt and underwear.
4. The pomegranates growing on the trees.

We purchased an overlay book on our way in that showed images of the ruins as they are today with vinyl overlays depicting their original shapes and purposes. Without it, or the map we purchased from the ticket booth, we would never have recognized the fast food service or the bakery, although the beautiful bath house, the amphitheaters, and the brothel were obvious by themselves.

Jon loved the streets with their unique stepping stones and grooves cut into them by chariot usage. Calvin loved the lizards that were hiding in the sun and scuttling over the stone surfaces everywhere, a meeting of past and present, a glimpse at how the natural world will reclaim its space when we are gone. I think the bath house was my favorite. It was remarkably well preserved, and truly beautiful.

Mostly, the take away from the day was a true sense of the past that came from walking through the stone streets past the vestiges of a society thousands of years older than ours, but not really all that different. Plus it was really cool that when we first walked into the forum, our view of Vesuvius included cloud formations that gave the impression that the volcano was erupting again.

Pomegranates growing on trees

Vesuvius errupting

"Moldy old ruins" -Dad

"Look! Another lizard!" -Calvin

another lizard

Bath house

Horse butt floor mosaic in the House of the Fawn

Original piping

At the bar?

Flour mills at the bakery

Note the stepping stones in the street

Half amphitheater

Full amphitheater

Heading home

Italy day 1, the Heart of Rome

We left our home in Michigan shortly after breakfast on Friday, and arrived in Rome shortly after breakfast on Saturday. The time between is memorable only in a sort of questionable or tenuous fashion. There were two planes, three airports, a few odd meals here and there, but those places, and the exact number of hours of dark and light, is a little blurry in my memory. What is not at all fuzzy to me is my first day ever on a new continent, riding in the taxi through lands unknown, turning a corner and finding that we were surrounded by ancient ruins, and lugging our stuff into our temporary Roman home with awestruck eagerness.

In Rome, the seven of us stayed in an apartment only three blocks from the Spanish Steps in one direction, Trevi Fountain in another. We were in the heart of the high fashion district, right on the Heart of Rome walking tour, as recommended by Rick Steves, and that's what we did with our first day, although on so little sleep it might have been more like a Heart of Rome stumbling tour. From the Spanish Steps and Bernini's boat fountain we wandered through narrow streets made of pavers and lined with tall, colorful buildings. We found lunch in a small alley restaurant, and were surprised to turn a corner into a small square (piazza) and find the Pantheon in the middle of the modern day hustle.

It was a Saturday, and every piazza, every street, every restaurant was crowded with sight seers. We ducked in a church here and there, we stopped again for snacks and beer, we wandered by Marcus Aurelius' column and looked at the reliefs, we struggled through the crush of people at Trevi Fountain, we saw parliament and the post office, and we got briefly lost before going back to our Roman home to refresh before dinner.

And we made it. I think a couple of us took short naps, some of us just washed our faces, drank water, changed clothes, and dragged ourselves back out again, but regardless of the method, we made it out for dinner and back again before finally collapsing for the night. I found it surprisingly easy—it was the awe of being in a completely new world that kept me going. That amazing feeling, however, didn't keep me from finally dropping into a restful oblivion shortly after dinner.

And that was day 1.

Stretching it further

And following vacation, how about vacation? Harbor Springs. Possibly my favorite place away from home on earth. Although Jon had to go home and get back to work (I felt sorry for him, I really, really did), Calvin and I spent the rest of the week staying with my Godmother, Lonnie, and soaking up sun, love, good food, and fresh air. If camping hadn't been so relaxing, and it was, the rest of this week would have done the trick. We built a sort of routine, spending a little bit of every morning on school stuff, the afternoon at the little local beach in the water and sand, and the evenings at some activity together.

We read some books, we watched some TV, and Calvin's Aunt Lonnie kept him busy with a couple of crafts and playing with her pup, Blue. We played putt putt (who can ever get enough of putt putt?), walked the cemetery looking for Ghoul Gates (you'll know them if you've ever read The Graveyard Book), and drove over some rather forsaken road to middle-of-nowhere lake in search of loons (where we found a tern and a yellow-rumped warbler, but no loons). We had dinner once at Noggin Room and once at Keyhole, two of our favorite places, and twice at home, just the three of us lounging on the deck watching the bay and the birds and listening to the wind in the trees. And we were happy together and having fun.

The hardest part about being there, is the coming home (except that this time, of course, Jon was waiting there for us, and that made coming home pretty okay this time).

17—really 17, they didn't all fit in one picture—turkeys in the yard

Pirate's Cove Golf

arrrrr, he's a pirate

arrrr, he's giving Nonnie golfing lessons

Sand pants

walking to the cemetery

ghost turkeys!

possible ghoul gate

sand, sand, and more sand

Sturgeon Bay

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Shores of the Great Lakes

We are just back from a week long trip that was both delightful and exhausting in its own peculiar way. The trip consisted of a circling of Lake Michigan, taking us to Michigan's Upper Peninsula by way of Chicago, then home again by way of Harbor Springs. It consisted of big city shopping, back country camping, a wedding and photography, national parks, and a handful of tourist hot spots. It started in temperatures upwards of ninety degrees and took us through storms and into nights that dropped to the low forties. Now that we're at home there is more laundry to be done than I usually have to do in a month, and while that is an exaggeration, it isn't one by much.

The seeds for such a trip were planted months ago when my brother asked me to assist him in photographing Julie's brother's wedding, and, since the wedding was to be in Marquette, to turn the visit into a longer stop that included camping. Over time camping became backpacking and the destination became Pictured Rocks National Lake Shore, then Jon and I tagged a few more activities onto our list, and it became a week-long ecology vacation.

What is an ecology vacation? For the couple of weeks before the trip, Calvin and I did a unit study of sorts on the Great Lakes. Living in Michigan we often take them for granted, and while we've spent many a happy afternoon enjoying the lakes, we had spent precious little time understanding them. Our two weeks of study were enjoyable; we covered their geographical history, their prehistory, their pre-European history, and ultimately their place in current events. Of course we also spent some time on the wildlife and environmental makeup of the area. I learned a lot. Calvin became enamoured with the idea of seeing a bear, a sturgeon, and/or the real deal bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald. One of those things happened.

We planned to visit all three National Parks Lake Shore Sites, including Indiana Dunes and Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan and Picture Rocks on Lake Superior, and the trip went off very well, even with a few monkey wrenches thrown in. On our first day we hiked Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 92 degree heat. We saw a lizard, several bird species, and opted not to swim when we saw that the bay was flanked by ominous factories on both sides. 

We joined up with Curtis and Julie in Chicago that night and left together early the next morning for the Upper Peninsula where were to camp for two nights in the back country of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Even that far north it was miserably hot when we reached the trail head and geared up. Our campsite was 3 miles in, and the hiking was beautiful, but buggy, rugged in area, and hot, hot, hot. We pitched tents in the early evening, managed a fire in spite of damp wood, and enjoyed dinner through exhaustion while swatting bugs and listening to thunder. We were in bed by eleven, and the first big storm hit around 3am. I've never heard such long, drawn out peals of thunder, and the rain pounding the tent was deafening, but we were surprisingly snug and dry in our little tent. Three storms later it was still drizzling when we all staggered out of bed around 9am, most of us working on only a couple hours of rest. It's hard to sleep with all that noise.

Wet wood, no sleep, and an increasingly iffy trail in wet weather were all concerns, but it was the debilitating swarms of mosquitos that clinched it, and in the morning we packed up our gear in an unrelenting rain and re-hiked the three miles back to the car. It was not a defeated move, though. Even as we arrived back at the trail head in a steamy, mocking, freshly emerged sun, swatting at mosquitoes while trying to remove and wring out completely soaked clothing, I think we all felt accomplished. Plus, later in Marquette, after a warm welcome at Julie's dad's, we relaxed in his pool with beers (except for Calvin, who had water) and watched the storms continue to roll in and felt vindicated in our decision. Life was good.

We spent our time in Marquette at a charming hotel downtown (another change in plans, since the continuing strong storms and dropping temperatures talked us out of our previous plan to camp there as well), exploring the area's beautiful parks and enjoying family and friends. We swam more, I tried out target shooting, we hiked Presque Isle, we witnessed a stunning rainbow. Weddings are always joyful and this one was no exception. When we left at the end of the weekend, we did so feeling more rested and with a pile of good memories.

After Marquette, Jon, Calvin, and I headed back to the lower peninsula by way of Whitefish Point, where we saw the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, and the Soo Locks, where we took a boat tour of the locks and the Canadian steel plant. This turned out to be doubly fascinating because, while at Whitefish Point, we studied a real-time radar display of ships passing through the area, then met up with two of those enormous ore boats in the locks as we went through. After the Locks came the Mackinac Bridge, and a night at our favorite place with our favorite person in Harbor Springs.

Our final day took us to the final of the three National Parks. After a restful night and relaxing breakfast with Aunt Lonnie, we headed through Petoskey to lunch in Traverse City and an afternoon at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. So very different than the rocky outcroppings on the shores of Lake Superior, and so much more vast than the dunes in Indiana, Sleeping Bear is the pride of the lower peninsula, or it should be. We swam it, we hiked it, we took the scenic drive. And then, because none of our trips are truly complete until there's one last day of cramming in every event imaginable, on our way south we drove through the tiny town that my grandparents called home when I was growing up and sought out the house and land I so loved to visit and had not seen since they left it twenty years ago. It was a nostalgic cherry on top that got us a bit off schedule, so after a late dinner at Maggie's Tavern in Cadillac, we headed home under a gigantic rose colored moon. Calvin dropped off to sleep while Jon and I played trivia all the rest of the way home.

And now we need a vacation from our vacation, but those piles of laundry keep reminding me that there is no rest for the weary.

Oz in Chicago

When Calvin was younger it was actually easier to write this blog because he was always so full of childhood wittiscisms and hilarious malapropisms that there was always a catchy tag to write around or a funny story to tell. As he becomes older, life has become a little more predictable and a little less hilarious...at least most of the time. Which isn't to say that all the fun and games are over, just that they are all a little more run-of-the-mill now.

So I have nothing to add here but an account of the rest of our Chicago trip. It included hours spent at the camping store prepping for our first backpacking/rustic camping adventure (coming soon!), an afternoon traipsing through Oz Park meeting the Scarecrow and his friends, fajitas grilled and eaten on the rooftop, a beer garden, a BBQ shack, and a Dairy Queen, plus the best part: lots of great family time.