Christmas 2012, part two
After an interesting day in the wilds of Missouri, we got an early start headed towards my sister's house in Madison. Our route took us past St. Louis, which meant we got to drive by one of the most significant archeological sites in the United States--Cahokia:
As you can tell from the picture above, Cahokia is a mound site (actually, across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in Illinois), with many large earthworks constructed many hundreds of years ago. The biggest mound in this picture, Monk's Mound (background) is huge--almost 100 feet tall and covering multiple acres. The wooden posts you see in the foreground are part of what is called "Woodhedge", and judging from the archeology done there was a ring of wooden posts similar in some aspects to the Stonehedge site in England. Obviously, these wooden posts are a recreation, and nobody really knows what the structure really looked like, or what its purpose was. I bet most everyone can guess the purpose of these more recent structures in Illinois:
This windfarm is near Bloomington, Illinois. We have been amazed in the nearly 13 years we've been driving between Wisconsin and Arkansas how many windfarms and windmills have appeared in the cotton and soybean fields along our route...what had once been one modest windfarm is now a whole series of them that can be seen from the interstate, and more appear ever trip we make! In fact, it wasn't that many years ago that our kids used this original windfarm as a land mark to tell them we were about 2 hours from my sister's house in Madison...now we see them much earlier. Speaking of my sister, here she is snuggling with Stephen:
We had a nice if brief visit with my sister Laurie and her husband Mark. It was a bit of a struggle to get to their house, as they had just gotten 18 inches of new snow over the prior two days! We were able to reach their house a little after dark. Below, Beth is showing fading with their two beautiful Llewellyn setters, Mingo and Lily (Lily is resting her head on Beth's lap):
Beth had a nasty sound cough earlier in the day, but didn't seem to phased by it at the time...Little did we know what we were in store for! By the middle of the night, Beth was feverish and fitful, and Hope did her best to get her comfortable. Before 6 a.m. that morning I was out with my sister looking for a 24-hour pharmacy to purchase some cough and fever medicine. Beth responded well to this, and pretty much got better quickly, but this was just the start of the illness ordeal... Kenny was still feeling fine at this point, so the next morning before we left, he got to play in the snow a bit:
We then spent the next few hours visiting my brother and his girlfriend, and watched the Packers beat the Tennessee Titans. We then hit the road and drove to western Wisconsin to visit my other sister, Lisa, and her family. We were to spend the next few days at their house, to celebrate Christmas and visit with family. As you can see, Lisa had a full house:
My sister is a strong believer of decorating her house to fit whatever holiday or season it is, and she certainly had everything decked out for Christmas! Below is a picture of my father, Don L. Bragg, and Stephen:
Of course, it being winter meant that my southern-fried children had to go out and play in the snow with their cousins (my sister Lisa is on the far right wearing the black coat):
Kenny walks in the foreground of the picture below, with his cousin Michael (snowball in hand), Stephen (red coat and Packer hat), Beth (blue coat, standing at the back), cousin Emma (sitting, with monkey hat), and cousin Leila (purple snowpants on right)
We were really happy to see as many family as we did, including my brother John's partner, Jim Houzner:
The NJCU fleece he's wearing is from where my brother John works as an assistant professor at New Jersey City University. Of course, the kids were all pestering their uncle Jon Hurlburt for snowmobile rides, which they all got--Beth is the one with the helmet clinging to her uncle's back:
Hope's parent, Rich and Ann Pruden, drove up from lower Michigan to join the Bragg and Hurlburt clans for an overwhelming day of gift opening and kid mayhem:
Here's a great picture of two of my brothers, Dr. John Bragg (left) and Bill Bragg (with glasses):
To me, the above picture of Bill really reminds me of our now deceased Uncle Chuck Bayer... Unfortunately, we were not able to enjoy Christmas as much as we would have liked, because both Kenny and I came down with the same chest cold crud that Beth had on the way up--except worse, if that was possible! Several miserable days followed, and we (unfortunately) shared this "joy" with numerous other friends and family... We left my sister's house the day after Christmas, and spent the rest of the vacation at my parents' house in Rhinelander. Below, my nearly 83-year-old father spent time working in the cold and snow with his chainsaw to cut some paper birch trees into firewood:
Below is an interesting antique my father recently added to his collection--a potato picker that would have been hauled behind animals or perhaps a small tractor:
Here's another one of my father's projects, done earlier in the year before the snow--a wall of rocks he dug up from their property to stabilize a steep, sandy slope near the back yard:
Don't worry--he didn't move these by hand! My father has a small Kubota tractor with a bucket that he used to dig them up and move them to the site. We spent much of our time in Rhinelander recuperating, visiting friends (and getting some of them sick, I'm sure), and enjoying the Northwoods. The day before we left to return to Arkansas, we made a family trip to Houghton, Michigan, to visit the area that Hope and I had spent years going to forestry school at. Below, the Quincy Mine Hoist is one of the premier features of the fairly new Keweenaw National Historic Park, which features the copper mining history of this area:
Across the street from the hoist is a favorite stop--Peterson's Fish Market, where you can get spectacular smoked (and fresh) salmon and other fish caught from nearby Lake Superior:
We also stopped by an visited some of our friends at the Michigan Technological University's forestry school. Below is a picture of the back of the forestry building. The large wood structure on the right was built after we had graduated:
Below is a picture of the top of one of the stairwells, with maple wood paneling that has scenes from UP history carved into them (these were here when we were students there):
It was fun to see the school, and remember days gone by (even though I'm sure our kids were quickly bored by our stories). We left Houghton and drove about an hours south to Alberta, Michigan, home of MTU's Ford Forestry Center. The building pictured below is an old sawmill, recently spruced up as a museum, that once cut wood for Ford Motor Company's wood-sided vehicles. When wood panels and wood trim fell out of favor with the buying public, Ford donated the town, mill, and property to Michigan Tech, and it has served many years as the field training location for MTU foresters, including Hope and myself. Many a student as cursed the challenge of mapping out this sawmill as one of the assignments:
The Ford Forestry Center also has a large parcel of forest associated with it, and this area has long been used for research and demonstration purposes, as well as education. A fine place to learn how to be a forester, for sure! The northern hardwood stands that dominate this area provide large volumes of high quality sugar maple, yellow birch, and other hardwood and conifer for the timber markets. My master's degree was based on studying one of the more specialized types of maple wood, called "birdseye". It may not show up particularly well in the picture below, but most of these maple objects are crafted from this figured grain (birdseye maple has many small circular patterns in the wood grain that look like the eye of a bird, hence the label "birdseye"). These beautiful pieces are crafted by a MTU employee, Dave Stimac:
Dave's woodworking skills are superb, and you can see a lot more of what he does on his website (http://www.birdseye-connection.com).
We drove back to Monticello from Rhinelander in a single day (about 16 hours)--quite an effort, but it was good to be back in our own beds. Since returning, we have had lots of warm, muggy weather, and now a whole bunch of rain and some cooler temps. Though our Packers are no longer in the playoffs, we look forward to a productive winter and spring here in Arkansas, and look forward to our next Northwoods visit this summer! Happy holidays from Bragg Family South! May 2013 be a great year for y'all!!
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