Summer 2022 comes to an end...sort of!
The image above is of an A-10 ground support jet, suspended on a post in England Air Force Base Memorial Park (https://www.alexandria-louisiana.com/england-air-force-base.htm) in Alexandria, Louisiana. I was in this city in central Louisiana in early August visiting with a number of my research unit staffers, and this display of military aircraft (there were others at this memorial) was impressive to see...
The picture below of Beth is following her giving some of our outdoor cat Pusseidon some attention...
We just got back from a visit with family "up north". I spent the better part of two weeks visiting my parents in northern Wisconsin, for which I hit upon my tried and true activities...including photographing the woods, wetlands, and trees of our property, including a favorite view of Shepard Lake Creek and my favorite pine on our land:
I also got a chance to visit with some of my siblings, including my brother Bob, who came up and helped me with a project:
It may not be particularly clear what Bob is doing, but he is using a long fiberglass pole to help steer an old basketball hoop away from me as I cut the wooden post holding the hoop with my chainsaw. This was the first step in our effort to move the mailbox from where it had been for years to a better spot in the driveway that will hopefully be safer and easier for my parents to use in the winter. Below is how the moved mailbox looks as I was adding some "mom bling" to it for a little character...as shown by my mom:
My visits to my parents usually involve a number of projects to help them around the house...but it isn't all work, as you can see of my modest largemouth bass following another excellent fishing adventure with my buddy Kevin:
I also had a chance to briefly visit with my cousin Father Ron Meier, a retired Catholic priest who came through our neck of the woods during a whirlwind trip for him. In addition to visiting with various family members, I also found time to visit some of the forests of the county I grew up in, including these lovely images of the pines and swampy woods so common up there:
The eastern white pine pictured above was nearly 40" in diameter and over 110 feet tall! And those cedar and spruce swamps were really that green color!! A little later in my visit, my younger sister Laurie came up for a visit and brought her new puppy "Indi" (short for Indigo) for a visit:
Indi is a Llewelyn setter and she is full of energy. Because of their schedules and a short visit with her father in southern Michigan, Hope and the kids could not join me until the very end of my Rhinelander visit...and most of that time was spent helping to get our oldest, Kenny, ready to start his third year at Michigan Tech. Kenny has moved to an off-campus apartment in an older brick building near downtown Houghton, MI:
No, that is not a weird camera angle...the building is really on that steep of a hill! Kenny will be rooming in Apartment 3 with a couple fellow students:
Below, Kenny "supervises" while Hope and his younger brother Stephen helped to assemble his bed:
After we moved his stuff into his apartment, we took advantage of the nice weather to drive further up the Keweenaw Peninsula, stopping at several places including this pretty rock-covered beach on the Lake Superior coastline:
We did some rockhounding and the boys dipped themselves in the cold Lake Superior water. But we couldn't stay long, and returned that same day to Rhinelander to prepare for our return to Monticello. We left the next day (Thursday) to head for Monticello, stopping near Madison, WI (Mt. Horeb, actually) to dine at our brother-in-law Mark Valaskey's restaurant (Bistro 101) for a brief visit with Mark and my sister Laurie (who works as a server and hostess there at times). We also LOVE the food, which you can see below:
(No, that isn't Stephen's martini--it was put in front of Hope, who is not visible on the right side of the photo!). We had to return quickly so Stephen could get to a friend's bar mitzvah on Saturday...and then they needed to be ready for starting their school on Monday! Hard to believe this marks the unofficial end of summer--didn't we just start 2022?????
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