June Travels Part II - Say yah to da UP, eh?

So I stole my title from a bumper sticker on Troy Braley's truck.  Many of you probably have no idea what it says but the folks from the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan are a different sort of people and very proud of it.  And they talk a little funny too!  I had heard a lot about the UP so I was excited to finally get a chance to visit and see all the places that Matt used to hang out when he went to college there.

As soon as we arrived he was excited to go jump in Lake Superior.  I don't know what the water temp was but I only stuck my toes in and went running the other way!  Logan got to stick his toes in too, then Matt jumped in for a full swim!

 

We spent a couple hours touring around Michigan Tech the next day.  We stopped in the bookstore and discovered some pretty sweet hats.  Looks like they want to make sure their students have no excuse for not coming to class...

We figured full camo was best for these parts... it was a lot colder there than I expected and you never know about these Yoopers up here...

After Michigan Tech we headed up the Keweenaw Peninsula.  Amazingly the weather warmed up and we went on a fantastic hike to a waterfall.

The river along the trail was incredibly warm so we let Logan play in the water.  He couldn't get enough of it!

 We were also able to see a couple of lighthouses along our drive.

 Then we decided to take a tour of an underground copper mine.  It was early for tourist season so we were the only ones there wandering around in the dark.  Lots of fun but I was ready to come out after we spied a raccoon down there!

We finally succeeded at finding a nice beach spot on Lake Superior to watch the sunset one evening.  There are some very beautiful beaches and Logan loves sand and water so we visited plenty of them.

Catch me if you can!

Your guess is as good as mine!  I think since it is so cold up there they think they live at the North Pole and just celebrate Christmas year round?

So many waterfalls up here.  These were fun to walk underneath. 

We also enjoyed the Pictured Rocks boat tour.

 Tahquahmenon Falls State Park.

Here they had little boats that we could row out to an island to walk around and play in the little waterfalls.

We were so tired of driving by the end of our UP tour we decided to trade responsibilities...

And here's the Mackinac Bridge.  It's 5 miles long and spans from the UP to the rest of the known world :)
We had such a great time up here and I'm looking forward to making another trip again.

June Travels Part I - Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin

We covered a lot of miles and saw a lot of faces last month and really enjoyed our summer family vacation.  We started out by driving through Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin.  The first stop was to visit my Grandma Swick in Nebraska.

We spent the night in Lincoln then headed on through Iowa the next day.  Loved that we could take along our little high chair to keep Logan still for eating time!

Saturday we made it through Iowa with a couple of rest stops.  A KOA somewhere in Iowa that let us hang out in the shade for a couple hours.  I should probably also mention that we spent most of the first 10 days of our trip traveling and sleeping in the newly renovated van.  It was fantastic and made the trip so much easier on everyone.

 Saturday night we stayed at Blue Mounds State Park in Wisconsin.  After church the next day we headed for the zoo in Madison.  It was the perfect size zoo with plenty of cool animals to see but not so big that you didn't want to see everything.  Oh, and it's free!

Later on we stopped by the lake for a rest and play time.

That night we stayed with Matt's college friends Steve, Missy and Lineah.