Wheezer

The last few nights Erin and i have heard a wheezing sound outside our house.  At first Erin thought it was me, but we were able to narrow it down to a sound coming from the woods by our house.  Erin thought there was something big and dangerous in the woods that would devour me whole and wouldn’t let me go investigate.  So last night when we heard the sound again I armed myself with some bug spray, a headlamp with spotlight mode, a camera, and a tripod.  This is the resulting image of the scary animal.

iPad

I’ve been lucky enough to play with an iPad over the last few days. It was one of 6 purchased by the school. I think it could really be an amazing tool in an educational setting. I’m actually posting from one right now. I am using Apple’s keyboard dock to type this and really prefer using the keyboard dock compared to typing with the virtual keyboard provided within the os. One interesting note using wordpress as a blogging platform is that the iPad wouldn’t type into the post area. I could type in the title of the post, but not the body. I found a work around to this problem by just typing into the html mode instead of the visual mode.

I’ve really enjoyed using the iPad finding it great for consuming information. I didn’t have it long enough to truly enjoy books on the device, but I can imagine it’d be great on trips.

Back Home

Its nice to be home after a week in Fairbanks.  I had a nice time working for the Alaska State Wide Mentor Project.  They are a great staff and fun to work with.  Even though the work was fun, its nice to be home hanging out with Erin again.  We got the “big boat” in on Sunday after I broke myself out of a 15 hour slumber.  Jesse, April, and Sawyer came out and we all (Jim included) went for a little boat ride.  It sure is nice to have the boat in this early in the year.  I hear we should be seeing temps in the 70s in the next couple of days.  Sounds like we should take a boat ride after school.

Huck

Huck Fin and the story of the runaway dock.

Hiking on the North Shore

Erin and I took a great little get-a-way trip to the North Shore (Lake Superior) over our Easter break.  We took off right after school and headed to our favorite hotel perched on a ledge overlooking Lake Superior.  The hotel is aptly named “The Cliff Dweller”.  We stayed there last winter when we took a trip up to Canada which you may remember from a previous blog post.  On this trip we stopped in Duluth to eat at the Olive Garden.  Erin had some delicious seafood pasta with clams, scallops, shrimp, and her favorite mushrooms.  I personally feel the mushrooms ruined the dish.  Anyway we made it to the hotel in time for bed.  We awoke to a beautiful sunny day with the great blue body of water just outside our balcony.  We debated weather we should go back up to Canada to check out the falls in the spring time, or spend the day hiking on the various trials along Lake Superior.  We chose the latter of the two and had a great day.  We ended up doing about 4 hikes with a stop for lunch in Grand Marais.  Here are a few photos from our excursion.

Curling Stone POV

Curling Stone POV from Bill Bryson III on Vimeo.

Flares

Chimney Heat

Winter Camping

Thinking about packing….