My Mothers Day Trip

Since one of our contracts was cancelled due to federal budget cuts, our spring work schedule suddenly became less busy, and I decided to go to Wisconsin to help Mom and Dad move into their summer digs.  Ted was amenable to making the trip.  Eric got to PE several days before us and helped the parents move up to the lake.  We had planned to fly out on Thursday May 5th and return Thursday May 12, but our flight was cancelled due to a mechanical problem.  After getting up at 4.15AM and spending most of the day in the airport this translated into a truly miserable time, but we were able to get the same flight the next day and move our return back a day, so we ended up leaving on the 6th and returning on the 13th.  Luckily on the flight out and back we somehow lucked into an exit row, so Ted was not miserable the way he otherwise would have been.

The weather had been very cool in April this year, and everything was further behind than it had been in May 2010.  Photo on the drive along Hwy 29. The first night we were there we went out to look at stars.  Good thing too, because the sky was cloudy every other night.  Ted had his bike, and biked every day (even saw a bear one day).  I did not rent a bike.

Eric had gotten a lot of the chores done already, but there was still plenty that we could do.  We turned over most of the garden, dug up the compost from the compost heaps and added that to the garden, planted his tomatoes and set up the wall of waters, raked the walkways Eric hadn’t gotten to, and set up the bird bath, among other things.
We had one great lightening storm during the night on Tuesday.  We took a neat walk in the Van Vliet Hemlocks with Eric, and came across all sorts of interesting things.  We identified a common plant which none of us was familiar with, leatherwood (Dirca palustris).  The first full day was really calm and I took a paddle in the canoe around Miller island while Ted was on his bike ride.
Also spent a lot of time helping granddad to get his computer network up and running. 
We played hearts with Eric and Granddad.  Couldn’t get Mom to play.  Also taught Eric and Granddad how to play pinochle.  Hockey playoffs were underway, so I couldn’t always get them to play cards with me.
Although the weather was mostly gray, it really didn’t rain much, and we were able to be outside a lot. In fact, today (Friday) was the least nice day, mostly because the temperature had dropped 10 degrees from the previous days.  On our drive back to Msp things had obviously greened up compared to the week before.  The trilliums were in full bloom in the woods along hwy 29, and we saw many nice woods where the forest floor was carpeted with trilliums.  The trilliums at Loon Lookout hadn’t started blooming yet.  I’m writing this in the MSP airport, and hope that we get home on time. (We did.)