THE CICADAS ARE SO LOUD

Our hotel on Lake Superior

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We're back! I thought by adding an exclamation mark on the end of that sentence that it would give me some enthusiasm for getting back to the regular routine. I've spent my morning sorting emails and gathering protocols for clearing tissue samples for imaging and listlessly staring out the window. I'm not really ready to be back. I'm not ready for the things that are coming up on the calendar like a wedding and an unexpected trip to Boston for work and packing up my desk to move into the new space. I'm not ready to be up-to-date on current events. We came home to a police barricade because the man suspected of killing three police officers in Baton Rouge lives or lived in a house one street over. They arrested the man's brother who is now out on bail. Our neighborhood is a crime scene. I haven't had time to get facts or to form coherent thoughts on any of this. All I can say is that the deaths that have occurred in the last few days are horrible and that sounds trite. 

Can I have just three more days of vacation, please? 

Michael and I learned a whole lot of stuff in the last five days. Lake Superior is called Lake Superior for a reason and that reason is because that lake is HUGE. I mean, I knew it was big because in geography, our teacher told us it is the largest lake (by surface area) in the world, but being told this does not prepare you for actually seeing it. We were thinking that we were going to see a bunch of little islands but what we actually saw was maybe four of the islands from way off in the distance surrounded by an ocean. For about fifty bucks a person, you can do a boat ride that takes you around five of the twenty one islands without stops. A hundred dollars will get you to two of the islands with stops and tours. Getting to the islands is not easy. We watched a tour guide pack up a tandem kayak for a couple he was taking out to an island for camping. He told them it would take about three hours to get to their campsite. So, yeah, we didn't make it to any of the islands on this trip but we did kayak around the sea caves and from our kayak, we could see Eagle Island and Sand Island. We also spotted a bald eagle. 

We learned that summer temperatures in Northern Wisconsin are somewhere in the mid to low seventies and that the biggest threat while kayaking is if you fall out of your boat. It takes about ten minutes of being in the water for hypothermia to set in even on a nice warm, sunny day. I wore wool socks while kayaking and should have packed at least one more heavy blanket. We learned that our air mattress leaks air and I'd wake up in the middle of the night with a rock jabbing into my hip. We learned under these circumstances that I didn't mind Michael's snoring or how he took up most of the mattress because I was only warm when he was present in the bed. We learned that we could joke and laugh about all of these things. We learned that even though we could handle a tandem kayak without too much arguing, we both want our own kayak. We learned that we'd rather spend the four thousand dollars we were going to spend on purchasing central air on things like kayaks and trailers. 

The biggest lesson we learned was that it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to get away. Our camp gear was already well packed and organized with only a few minor things that needed replacing. Of course, we have to replace the air mattress now since we left the old leaky one in a bear proof dumpster in our campsite. But for the most part we're good. We did discover that we over pack on food. The amount of food we packed would have worked if we had been completely isolated, but we were not. We ended up in a camp ground just outside of Bayfield WI and had access to local foods like trout and white fish, pulled from Lake Superior the very day we bought them. We decided that we should take advantage of local foods and produce. We learned that this trip was like adding kerosene to a camp fire. We've done nothing but discuss how we are going to cart scooters and kayaks and camp gear. When we're not trying to figure out how transport these things, we're looking at maps, trying to figure out our next destination.  

I think we should put a map on the wall and just throw a dart at it and wherever it hits, that's where we'll go. 

ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE

For the last two nights, I've dreamed about bears and then @heirloomkc I get the bear card.

See this Instagram photo by @elephant_soap * 5 likes

Thursday night/Friday morning, I had a dream we were hiking through the woods. I could see something near the trail up ahead and then I realized it was a bear with her cub. I stopped in my tracks and whispered "we should go that way." I pointed to a path that would take us safely around the mother bear and her cub, but Michael and the Cabbage didn't hear me or see the bears and they just kept on walking. I don't know what happened after that because I woke up, but then Friday night/Saturday morning, I had another dream about a bear. This time I dreamed that I could hear something in the living room. Thinking that the cat had dragged in some helpless half dead thing, I got up to investigate. When I opened my door, Josephine shot out and into the living room barking and growling. There was a medium sized black bear sniffing around the coffee table. The next morning, I got up and went about my usual Saturday morning routine. I went to Heirloom for breakfast and after placing my order, the girl at the counter handed me my coffee mug and my order card, which happened to be the B is for bear card. 

Jen Tucker sent me a link to a Huffington Post article about dreaming about bears. Barbara Condron, B.J, D.D., D.M. says that "a bear figuring prominently in your dream will indicate a compulsive way of thinking, speaking or acting that contributed to a 'bear of a day'." I don't think I'm the compulsive kind of person. Though I will admit that there were most days last week when I felt like compulsive screaming at some people on the internet and I probably had a lot of those compulsive conversations in my head. That could explain why I have been dreaming of bears, but really, I think the bear dreams mean that I am going to see an actual bear. You see, a few hours after I posted Friday's blog entry, Michael sent me a text. He says he doesn't read the blog, but he read the blog Friday and sent me a link for the Apostle Islands. It's a group of Islands on Lake Superior in Wisconsin. In fact, the Apostle Islands are a National Lakeshore. You have to ride a boat to get to any of the campgrounds on the islands. There's an island that has only one camping spot. There's an island called Bear Island. There are no campgrounds on Bear Island and the campsites on the two islands closest to Bear island, come with bear proof boxes. 

When Michael sent me that text, I replied with "Can we leave next Thursday?" An hour later he sent me another text telling me that he'd booked us on a kayaking day trip on Lake Superior for this Friday. So, we are going North! I've never been to Wisconsin. I have plans to see the 143 ft Muskie (a fish) in Hayward and maybe stand inside it's gaping mouth. We're going to get a new National Parks passport and put a bunch of stamps in it from all the islands. It's going be in the low seventies and I'm going to be cold just like all those times we traveled to Colorado during the summer and I won't care because we'll have a fire. The camp gear has been organized and is ready to pack. We have most of our groceries. All that's left is to give the dog a bath before we drop her off with Uncle Terry, load up the car and go. And see a bear. 

I can't wait!  I'm hoping that we'll be so isolated that there won't be any cellphone signal. No internet. No blogging. Just some camera time. That's it. So...I'll see you guys sometime next week.

I'm on vacation!