Week 33: 08/09-08/15

Week 33

     08/09 - Ahh Home sweet home. It's good to be back in Illinois. Today I visited some family members and my cousin's cafe/bakery. I got to see my cousin's little son Oliver! He's adorable, as most (yes only most) babies are. It was a good day to chill, but I'm off tomorrow to visit Eureka!

     08/12 - I spent a couple days visiting with Melissa's family in small-town, USA: Eureka! Eureka is a nice little town :) That should be their slogan "A nice little town." I had an amazing time and got to go to the Ronald Reagan museum and touch a piece of the Berlin Wall. There is also an amazing pie shop/diner in the area called Busy Corner. Best pie I've ever had. 

Me and Reagan

Melissa and her new dino friends

     One day Melissa surprised me and took me to Peoria's museum to see.... dinosaurs! Actually, they weren't real dinosaurs, but they were engineering dinos, even better! Somewhere somehow somebody (this body) found a way to combine art, dinosaurs, and engineering into a unique exhibit that let people move giant mechanical dinosaur skeletons with the help of pulleys and cables and such. It was a blast and the Peoria riverfront was a nice little walk too. 

     My favorite part of the visit though was just taking walks and relaxing and napping on the porch, keep it simple :)

     08/13 - After returning from Eureka I'm on to my next adventure, Minocqua! Those of you who have been following my blog (Melissa) may remember Minocqua in my first post. Yes, this is the same place. We like to go there as much as possible, certainly in the winter and summer if we can. It takes us between 4-5 hours to get up there but once we're there, we're totally chill. In the summer my grandparents are up there so it's great to spend some time with them!

(Divergence: I'm no longer going to overly concern myself as to specific dates of events, etc. I'll try to record things in a rough order within a given week, but some/most things can be generalized and summarized in better ways than a day-to-day account. End divergence.)
    08/14 - The first full day of Minocqua, summer edition, brought with it some classic relaxation techniques and activities. One of my favorite things to do up North is to canoe. It's nice just being out on the water, chasing down loons and soaking up the not-too-hot sun. This year, we mastered the art of jumping out of the canoe to swim (previously we only ever jumped out of the flatter paddle-boat).
    Another favorite summer activity is to relax in my hammock under the pines, basking in the woodland aromas and chirps of birds.

Not the most glorious shot, but this gets the point across.
Relaxation.

This one's a little trippy due to the nature of panoramas

         One night we went to Thirsty Whale Restaurant to enjoy some on-the-lake food and catch sight of the world famous Minocquabats (A play on Minocqua and acrobats) -- They are a water-skiing troupe. I'm so happy I got to use the word troupe in context. Anyways, my brother's name is Jonah and so we always find reasons to take goofy pictures of him with whales.

Frat star

     08/15 - The last day of our trip we started off well by going to Wolf Pack Cafe. It has the best non-Swedish pancakes in the world, but for real.