Home again, home again...

I'm still somewhat exhausted from our most recent marathon trip to Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin (the picture above was carved into a rock along a trail I had hiked in Indiana). We had a great time, though, and the kids traveled well, so it was well worth it! The last blog posting I made put us in Michigan after our initial long drive. That Sunday we drove a little more to a Pruden family reunion, where we got to visit with family that we don't see that often.

Rick Pruden is standing furthest on the left (I don't remember the name of the gentleman in the white shirt standing next to him), then holding Stephen is Mary Ann Pruden (wife of Hope's uncle Dave Pruden), Hope's grandmother Kay Pruden, and I think that's my elbow...

The next day (Monday), we sort of lounged around the house most of the day, then went into Ann Arbor that evening for supper and visit with some close friends, Terry Sharik and Karen Macfarland. Terry was the forest ecology professor at Michigan Tech when Hope and I were undergraduates there, and I worked for Terry for a couple summers and helped him teach some classes at Tech. He then took a job as department head of the College of Natural Resources at Utah State, and recruited me to go their for my PhD. After Hope joined me in Logan, Utah, she then helped teach classes for Terry, so we got to be very close friends with him and his wife Karen (Karen, by the way, is an ordained Unitarian minister and has also taught music--I believe she specializes in the cello).

Terry and Karen are in the Ann Arbor area while Terry is on a sabbatical leave from Utah State. Terry is working at the University of Michigan, while Karen is working at least part-time at a Unitarian church near where Hope grew up. They have twin sons who live in the lower Michigan area, so they get a chance to visit their boys a lot more often now. We had a wonderful dinner (they're always such gracious hosts) and we had an enjoyable few hours with them before the kids started getting tired.

Tuesday morning I left Hope and the kids at her parents' house and traveled to Cleveland, Ohio to participate in the Natural Areas Conference. The picture below was of part of the Cleveland skyline taken from my room on the 18th floor of the Marriott hotel the meeting was held at.

This meeting gathered together researchers and land managers from across the country who are interested in natural area preserves like the one I visited in Indiana on our way to Michigan. It was filled with good information, and I made some good contacts with both people I already knew, and others I was meeting for the first time. I actually met one of Dad's former co-workers at the Wisconsin DNR (but for the life of me I can't remember her name now!).

We also took a wonderful field trip to the Holden Arboretum located about a half-hour from downtown Cleveland. This area was set aside decades ago to work with plants, and over the years they have accumulated more land, including some small patches of old-growth timber.

We hiked to a couple of their natural areas--one that traveled up the stream that carved a small gorge in the sedimentary rocks of the area (pictured above) that had a lot of pretty little waterfalls and some interesting plant species and specimens, like this burl on an oak tree:

We ended this trip in an old-growth hemlock-white pine stand that was preserved largely because the wealthy industrialists that bought up much of the area wanted to preserve it for their summer vacations. This area was neat in that it was located on top of a rock outcrop that had a lot of long, narrow cracks across the top:

It may not look like it, but this crack was only a few feet wide, and about 30 to 40 feet deep! It reminded me of the slot canyons we had out west (although from different origins, of course).

On Friday, I left my meeting and traveled to Toledo, Ohio to meet up with Hope and the kids and her folks. I had borrowed their car to drive to Cleveland, so we met up to exchange vehicles. Hope's parents had also graciously given us their old boat, trailer, and motor (so we can now tour Arkansas area lakes). We said our goodbyes, and then headed west towards Wisconsin. Unfortunately, that meant we had to go through the Chicago area during rush hour (yuck!!), but we finally got to Morels Restaurant in Madison to me up with the bulk of the Bragg clan. Here's brother Bob and sister Lisa deep in conversation...

Morels is the restaurant owned by Mark Valasky, our sister and his wife Laurie Bragg-Valasky, and Mark's parents. It is a fantastic place to eat, if you ever get the chance (here's their website: http://www.morelsrestaurant.com/index.html). They gave us a private side-room, which was good, because Kenny, Beth, Michael, and Emma were going a little bonkers.

After a delicious meal and a few drinks (plus some sharing of Stephen, here pictured with his Uncle Jojo), we returned to the hotel we were staying at (Lisa, her husband Jon, and their kids were staying in the room next to us). We then went swimming for a while in the hotel's cold pool before turning in for the night.

The next morning we went over to Laurie and Mark's house for a little more visiting. Mark and Laurie are also very gracious hosts, and Laurie can't but help ham it up for the camera:

It appears that Mom and Dad also had a good time:

and the kids got to help their Uncle Mark harvest a large edible mushroom from their yard (called "hen of the woods", I believe).

We left about mid-day, and stopped at a cheese factory in Monroe, Wisconsin, before heading south for the long drive across Illinois. We drove hard, and the kids watched movies as we pushed on towards Arkansas. We got to Charleston, Missouri, before stopping for the night, and then got up early the next morning to finish the trip. We arrived in Monticello about a half-hour before the Packer game, tired and glad to be home.

This weekend we've got some shopping plans, and we're having a birthday party for Beth on Monday (she'll be three!). Big fun, but the action never ends!