Marblehead Lighthouse and Birding

Hello world! It's been far too long since I've updated this blog. Without really doing much, it seems as if life has been really busy the past few months. It's hard to believe February is almost over. 

Life is good, Andrew moved clinics at work and I think he is pretty happy. He has more responsibility and that makes him happy. I love my job working two days a week at the nature center. And next week I start a part-time internship! 

I love making progress in my field, and every bit of experience I can add to my resume before I graduate is a benefit to me. It does mean that time will be even more precious. I will work Monday-Saturday. That is short term though, it is only three months and then life will be back to normal. 

Anyway, just a few weekends ago Andrew had some leave to use and we decided to head up to Marblehead Lighthouse on Lake Erie. It's somewhere Andrew and I have been talking about seeing for a long time, and never had the chance to go there. 

We picked a perfect day to do it. The sun was shining and the temperature reached at least 45. Of course, there was no one else there. Except a Border Patrol SUV in the parking lot. 

 I'm glad we saw it during this time of year, it was beautiful. 

After spending a little while walking around the property (museum was closed for the season). We stopped at a little cafe down the road called Avery's Cafe...highly suggest it. It was delicious. 

After that we headed south to stop by Killdeer Plains preserve to look for some birds. I had gone a few weeks earlier with work and hoped Andrew would get to see some good birds.

 We stopped at the owl wintering area and tried spotting roosting owls, but no luck. We did however find several owl pellets which I took home and dissected. More on that later.

After leaving the wintering area, we hit the jackpot and saw several short-eared owls. And got pretty close to a couple of them!

As we were leaving there were about seven perched in a tree, it was awesome! 

Anyway, there's more the story and I'll have to talk about that later : )

Christmas Tree Adventures

Long time no post! It's been a busy couple months. Since camping in Shenandoah we also spent some time in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Which is several other posts by itself. Andrew's parents and grandparents came out for a couple days to see our house. Sadly, I had to work, but I got to spend the evenings visiting and hanging out. We've also done a lot of work outside, fixing up our yard for next spring and what seems like endless cleaning of our house.

Then, don't forget, Thanksgiving was already last week! It seems impossible that Andrew was gone for six months out of this year, and 2012 is almost over.

 

I am so thankful that my husband is home with me. And in our home, the holidays are in full swing. The day after Thanksgiving we did some shopping and went to get our Christmas tree.

We wound up at Carl and Dorothy Young's Christmas Tree Farm. I've talked about Young's before because they have awesome ice cream and Jersey Cows (so cute!).

 

 The set up was super simple, you park and head up to the front. Where a nice old gentleman explained the different types of trees and prices. We told him what we were looking for...Douglas Fir. He explained that they don't actually grow in Ohio and we'd have to explore Canaan Fir if we wanted to cut our own. They are almost identical. They gave us a sled and saw and a map of the farm.

For a 8 1/2 to 9 foot tree we had to go over the bridge and past grandma's house to the back 40. : )

Those were the baby firs, way too small for what we wanted. But adorable.

 

 It was a windy and chilly day, but beautiful. Walking through rows and rows of trees was wonderful...snow would have made it magical, but Andrew said snow would just make it difficult.

What a Grinch! : )

 After finding a few maybes...we found the one! Andrew actually found it, he's pretty good at tree picking.

 

 I made Andrew do all the work...because I had to take pictures. This is the first time we've ever cut our very own Christmas tree. It had to be documented!

 

 Manly Andrew after cutting the tree! See how tall the tree is. It almost dwarfs my 6'2" husband!

 

We got home and set the tree up right away, ate lunch and got to decorating. I'm going to show you all the little details first and the tree last! To build up anticipation...

 The lamp is from Target! Not exactly Christmas-y but we love it.

 

 We put greenery around in random places to make everything smell and look pretty.

 

Our table decor is pretty simple, we do have a pretty small table. 

 

We got some really cute ornaments from our camping trips several weeks ago. And I think we started a new family tradition. Ornaments from our travels...we might need a second tree.

And drumroll.....

Yes, Andrew is vaccuuming, and yes the Princess Diaries is on television. That's what we watched while decorating the tree, don't judge!

 

The tree is beautiful and smells wonderful! The only thing we need here in Ohio is snow, snow snow!



More Shenandoah

Now for more Shenandoah National Park. We woke up early Wednesday morning, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, after a better nights sleep. There was no loud rain drops to keep us awake throughout the night.

 We made a quick breakfast and went on our way south to the other end of the park for our first hike of the day. It was such a beautiful day, I am so glad Andrew convinced me to stay another day. The weather was perfect, and we could now see more than two miles out from the overlooks!

 We decided to do a section of Riprap trail, according to our Falcon guide: one of the prettiest hikes in the park...

 Really, the coolest part of this hike was the ~.4 miles you walked along the Appalacian Trail, I took some pictures next to the white blazes, but I looked like a dork.

 The best thing about this hike was the views, you'd hike for a bit, come to a clearing with some rocks, and could see all the mountains in the distance.

 Here is the end of the first leg, to Chimney Rocks. Not exactly what we expected, but once again, the views were great. We hiked just a bit further but decided to turn back.

I'm not sure about this being a "pretty" hike, the views are great, but you walk through the woods for most of it.

 

After that we went back north to check out the #1 falls in the park, Dark Hallow...which, from my post yesterday..is not the same thing. The first day was White Oak trail, I got confuzzeled, so eventually I'll go back and change the other post.

 Can you see me being silly behind that tree? Andrew was taking a picture of something and said I was in the way so I took a step to the side to hide behind the tree but stuck my head out : )

 

 

 Dark Hallow Falls! Very pretty, and a much busier trail than the others. It's relatively short, but it's almost straight down...and what goes down, has to come back up.

 

That was it for hikes...but I have to talk about our amazing campground.

 Those are my new boots! I love them. We stayed at Lewis Mountain campground the whole time, all sites are first come first served, so we were a little worried. But we drove the loop and campsite 18 was perfect.

 Across the road the first night, there were two small campers, but they were gone by the time we got back from our hike on Tuesday, and so was everyone else on our side of the campground. The loop is split in half by a hill and in the middle are the restrooms, we were the only people on our side. It was so wonderful.

18 is definitely the best in the campground, it's the largest and has the most trees. We turned our tent away from the road so we had even more privacy.

 

We weren't able to have a real fire until Wednesday night, and fire we had! Andrew chopped a bunch of wood, while I sat there.

That night I made foiled potatoes. Potatoes, sausage, carrots (mushrooms for me), olive oil and spices all put into a foil packet and cooked over the fire. It was really good!

 It never fails, cold and fire make me look like a jolly Santa Claus. But, I gotta say, I was pretty jolly while drinking up our hot cocoa before bedtime. : )

The sky finally cleared too and the stars were ah-mazing!

 

The next morning, we had to leave : ( But, the bear signs finally came true and on our way out of the park we saw a bear! He was super cute, too! It looked like he just woke up because his hair was sticking up funny, like bed-hair, or bear-hair (har, har...I know).

 

This is actually when we were leaving, we never got a picture of the sign on the way in.

 

Shenandoah is beautiful. Andrew and me both like how most of the features involve several miles of hiking, which for when we were there meant small crowds. It would be interesting to go during a busier time to see how many people hike the trails.

 

Busy or not, this place was beautiful and we cannot wait to go back. But next, we're going camping in Great Smoky Mountains National Park!