Jennifer's 365 Project

Peppy was out and about a chunk this evening, trying once again to entice our lazy cat to play with her. Normally this is what happens. He ignores her and she gives up, bored. Just look at his indifferent expression and her sad, dejected eyes!


But today was different! After we finished eating dinner things livened up. She ran back and forth through her tunnel and a little bit later I pulled out some toys for her to play with, which she quickly got to stashing!

Although...I'm honestly baffled as to why she thought in front of the slider was a good place to stash things. Weird.

This little 6 1/2 year old is still able to race around like a hyper kit (baby ferret) for small bursts at a time, which is all kinds of awesome.

So while my parents were in Grand Rapids yesterday a package was delivered. Delivered early, in fact. And in the box was an iPad they'd ordered for their upcoming annivarsary.

And what do you do with an iOS device when you first get it? Try out all the pre-installed apps, like FaceTime.

I'm excited to hear how things change and adapt in their household over the next few weeks and months as a result of the tablet in lieu of a new laptop.

Hi mom and dad! Welcome to the wonderful world of tablets.

Hope you had a fantastic birthday today! Love you!

What better way to spend the day then wandering around from park to park? Ok, that's not exactly what we did, but close.

We drove over to East Paris Park after we hit Horrocks to pick up a few things. This park is small and pretty open. In fact, there's now a portion the trail that is akin to walking in several people's backyard, now that brush has been cleared away.



That feeling is in pretty stark contrast to the Paris Park Nature Preserve just down the road. Since we were in the area, we drove over to the reserve and walked a bit over there as well. It's my favorite of the two, but it does have a lot more mosquitoes.


Out last stop was Heritage Park. It's a cute little park with a large pond that attracts a lot of ducks and geese. When we arrived it appeared to be their nap time, which meant we could read in peace and not get stalked. These guys get fed a lot and they will stalk you if they suspect you're hiding tasty treats.

We started our trek home early in the morning so we could fit in as many random pit stops as we liked, if we liked. It was foggy in Newberry and along most of the drive through the Sault Ste Marie State Forest area. The fog gave the forest and awesome creepy haunted forest feel.
Among the parks I kept pulling over at was the one at Cut River Bridge. There's a roadside park and trail on either side of the bridge that connect and go down, giving visitors a nice view. We started to hike the west side of the trail but stopped after encountering fallen tree after fallen tree blocking the path. We also encountered early on a discarded guard rail, tossed into the forest.
We continued to randomly stop places, including an awesome and secluded (at least for this time of year) picnic area at Brevoort Lake. Also, I dont know why, but I love this sign. It's so...retro. It makes me think 60's but I'm guessing it's older than that.
I played around up and down the small beach area, poking at these little jelly globules (I though the were glass at first). After poking around on the internet, my best guess is that they're bryzoans. No idea if that's correct though. If you know, let me know!
The picnic and mini-beach area were empty so we hung out for a bit. Chris mostly read his book and I alternated between taking photos and reading short stories I had on my kindle.
By late morning we were crossing the Mackinac Bridge back into the lower peninsula. We were promptly greeted with orange barrels.
We spent awhile parked in Mackinaw City. We wandered over to the fort, decided against paying and going through, then wandered around the only other main road which is packed full of gift shops and fudge stores.

The rest of our drive back was less eventful. We stopped at several stores and Chris did toy checks, but he didn't find anything he was looking for. By the time we got close enough to some forests and parks I wouldn't have minded stopping at, I was just ready to be home and see the cat.

The cat was, as usual, insanely excited we were home. He insisted on someone sitting with him while he ate, he insisted on being in front of everything you touched, and most of all he insisted on touching his two favorite people. He's a little guy. He makes coming home worth it. And the ferret - she held no grudges either. She spent a bit bouncing around with more energy than a 6 year old ferret should have.

A full day of hiking and wandering through Tahquamenon Falls State Park was before us. I had maps printed of the trails and home-made beef jerky stuffed in my camera bag. I was READY.

So we drove clear past the Upper Falls and hit the Lower Falls first, which in hindsight I think was a better decision than hitting the Upper Falls first. The Lower Falls are smaller, and the area was much quieter.
We decided to try and hike the Tahquamenon River Trail, which is 4 miles to the Upper Falls (and then 4 miles back since the shuttle service isn't running anymore). I had beefy jerky. I could do this.
We got about a mile and a half in and I wimped out. It was a lot of going up and down rocks, trees and brush, all the while making a slight, but steady, trek uphill. There was no way I could make it 4 miles there and 4 miles back. Magic of beef jerky be damned.

So we marched back and drove to the Upper Falls.
The Upper Falls, as you can imagine, are larger than the Lower Falls. They also appear to get a ton more visitors. There's a much more elaborate gift shop, restaurant with air conditioning, fact shack, huge bathroom, plus wide, paved walkways. And there were a lot more people milling about.
Where there wen't paved walkways, there were boardwalks. Both ends of the trails had a flight of stairs (116 and 94) that lead down to scenic views of the falls and Tahquemon River.
We spent a good while enjoying the boardwalk down near the river, then we finally headed back to the parking lot via a nature trail.

I can't help but laugh every time I see that sign.

Here's a few of the shots I took while at the park.

So we're both on vacation this week and what better way to enjoy it than take a road trip up north?

We left the Grand Rapids area mid-morning, leisurely driving north and eventually east toward the bridge.

We stopped and had a bite to eat in Kalkaska. We hit a McDonalds, not thinking there was anything else around. We discovered that wasn't exactly the case after we'd had a bite to eat and driven a few more miles down the road. But that's ok. I wouldn't have met the adorable fountain drink mascot if we'd stopped somewhere else (raccoons are just adorable, I can't help it).

We continued onward and made our next pit stop in Mackinaw City. It's been over 10 years since I've been over here and I forgot just how many freaking fudge shops there are. Wow. And we weren't even on the island.

We took a little stroll down one of the main roads and stopped at a very small city park that provided a nice view of the Mackinac Bridge.

Across the bridge is a toll both you need to pass through to enter the Upper Peninsula. If you're traveling with any livestock or anything they do pull you off for inspection. It feels similar to crossing into Canada (at least 10 years ago, I haven't been to Canada recently so maybe it's more of a hassle now) except there's no awesome metric system in use on the other side.

The road to Newberry is nothing if not full of colorful trees and wildlife.

We arrived at our destination a little after 4pm. So not quite dinner time and not quite enough time to hit any of the places I wanted to hike at. So we decided to head out and check out the area. There's a lot industry here built up around tourists (motels, cabins, etc) so I'm guessing the downtown was more quiet than perhaps it is on a weekend or during the peak season. We tried to eat at a local pizza joint that had a good review, but it was closed so to Pizza Hut we went.

Tomorrow should be fun, hiking around Tahquamenon Falls, blowing through the jerky I made a few weeks ago and just enjoying the outdoors.

And ready to go!

I kicked off the morning in the kitchen with some plain (for Chris) and cherry-filled pancakes. I've made blueberry and strawberry pancakes in the past, but I don't usually have cherries on hand. Pancakes are definitely tasty with cherries too!




I took a short break to do some research on a few recipes and then it was back into the kitchen. I was determined to make pierogies, if nothing else today.

The dough recipe yielded far more than I thought. I'm not entirely sure how many equal a "serving size" for pierogies (my guess is three to four), but it certainly isn't one or two, which is what I was I initially thinking. So next time I'm certainly scaling the recipe back (five cups of flour should have been a tip but I wasn't really processing that fact - I was too busy enjoying viewing recipes on the webOS tablet). So i ended up with a fair number of cheese and potato pierogies that are now living in my freezer.




With the pierogies boiling in water and converting the kitchen into a steam room, I decided it would be a fantastic idea to make cookies. I think the heat was affecting my judgement.

These particular cookies I grew up eating on holidays at my Grandmother's house. For some reason I had it in my head that these things were sugar cookies (Hey! They look like them and I swear someone at a family get together called them that once). As a result whenever I have "real" sugar cookies I'm always disappointed and can't eat much. They're too sweet. (Yes, I realize that's the point and it's right there in the name.)

This recipe is apparently from my great-grandmother, and after poking around on the internet the ingredient list looks similar to sour cream cookies. They're pretty light on flavor so my grandmother always topped them with raisins or frosting. The recipe is for Champion White Cookies and goes something like this:

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup lard (I use crisco, you could use butter as well I imagine)
• 1 1/2 cup sour cream
• 3 eggs
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• "flour to handle" - (which my mother figured out is somewhere between 5 and 7 cups of flour)

Directions:

• Set oven to 350 degrees.
• Mix the dry ingredients (sugar, baking soda, powder, nutmeg, flour) together. Add sour cream, eggs, vanilla extract, and lard, mixing well.
• Take dough and roll out on floured surfaced. Use cookie cutters to cut shapes. *note: the less flour added to the cookie dough during the rolling process, the less dry and more soft/chewy the cookie is.
• Bake 7-10 minutes. Allow to cool before decorating. Makes approx 3 dozen.

I didn't have any sour cream (I'd used it all for the pierogi dough) so I used a tip my mom had given in the recipe above and used milk and added two teaspoons of lemon juice.

I did use far too much flour while making these, so they're a little dry. But they taste pretty close to what they should and every bite is a like a bit of my childhood.

I jammed a few dozen into the freezer because there's no way the two of us are going to eat that many cookies anytime soon.

This morning I stumbled across a recipe for home made bruschetta. I'm a fan of the tomato concoction but I've never made it at home (like a lot of things, actually). So I added cherry tomatoes to the grocery list.

The bruschetta turned out well with one tiny exception - I completely forgot to make bread for it (or buy any at the store). Typically it's served on a thick piece of a baguette, but I just used a slice of regular pre-sliced bread from the store. I'll have to make some bread tomorrow.

Also, if I'm feeling ambitious I may try my hand at home-made pierogies.

I have next week off so the end of Friday couldn't come soon enough. Work got out a little early, so that meant I had a chance to hang out at Rosa Park Circle and enjoy my book and the weather.

They had an outdoor concert going on (Soul of the City GR) so fun tunes and tasty smells kept wafting over to me.


Chris picked me up around 4:30 and we headed out for an early dinner. We tried Twisted Rooster, which is over on the Beltline. Not bad. They appear to have a knack for taking whatever and presenting it nicely.

And now begins a holiday weekend and an entire week off of work. Yay!

I live in a decent size apartment complex, with roads sprawling through a network of trees and brush. There are lots of roads. Major thoroughfares from one end of the complex to the other, and lesser ones that lead straight to apartment buildings.

One thing my apartment complex does not have is sidewalks. Sure there are slabs of concrete dumped in a straight shot from parking lot to building door. But that's it. Do you need to walk to the bus stop? The mailbox down the road? Even to the office to drop off your rent check? Well, you have two options. You can stroll down the road where cars zip by at 40mph, or across the uneven ground in your business shoes and hope there's no dog shit hiding in the brush.

I always though the lack of sidewalks was a strange design. That's not to say this is the first complex I've lived in with a stunning lack of them. I guess the assumption is that people drive in and out of apartment complexes, but they certainly don't walk anywhere. I'd like to say that's not true for most people, but I honestly don't know what the statistical breakdown would be and if having more sidewalks would mean more people use them, or no difference in pedestrian traffic at all.

For me, I would have loved for there to have been sidewalks put in while they were building this place. But perhaps it's just as well. The drivers coming down one of the roads have a difficult time staying on the pavement. Over the last year I've witnessed a succession of lampposts and signs mowed down by runaway vehicles (or possibly dinosaurs, you never know).

I'm sure this is mostly fueled by annoyance that I'm constantly dodging near-hits while crossing the street downtown on my lunch break, simply because drivers are unaware of the concept of pedestrians. Or maybe their surroundings in general.

Ok, rant off.