Eagle River Part 3

All right. As of now, I'm on my way home, somewhere in Wisconsin. Just tried out McDonalds' new berry smoothies with coupons we had and they were pretty good. Anyway, Wednesday we went to town and window shopped through all the tourist stores. It was quite boring, especially considering the fact that I didn't bring any money. Basically I read most of the rest of the time, still resentfully wary of any tubing trips. I did go out with an inflatable raft/boat/kayak and suntanned in the middle of the lake while listening to Wheaton College speakers on my iPod. Earlier I had actually kayaked around the lake with it to, and I fell out into the water when I first tried to get in. Thankfully, my Shuffle was clipped to my shirt collar and so was spared from the watery assault. Thursday was more of the same considering reading and iPod listening except that instead of hanging out inside or on the dock, I went out walking. I had a semi-ulterior motive for this as I also wanted to find and photograph deer, nonexistent in the suburbs of my residence but ubiquitous here (that was an awesome sentence...) Because it was midday, I saw only a few deer, including a doe with two fawns. If the deer were alone, they tended to let you get pretty close, keeping still and their eyes locked on you until you got too close. Then they'd lope a short distance away. Once you started stalking them, they would act a bit more skittish.
Friday, we went to Porcupine National Forest in the Michigan UP. In short, it was stunningly gorgeous and as a photographer and explorer, I had a field day. "In long" we went and saw some waterfalls right on a river feeding into Lake Superior, which was about half a mile from our starting point. After going to one waterfall, we went up to another parking lot, then went down the path to the beach. I went up the beach, taking pictures and collecting cool rocks (they were amazing). I then decided to go back upriver on the other side from where we had come, one that had no path. At first, the pseudo-path was okay, as one only had to navigate over numerous dead trees that had fallen over down the hill right near the edge. I was easily able to switch between the upper pat and the rock layers jutting into the river that gave me spectacular views of the river and waterfalls. (Side note, I'll run a slideshow of the trip pictures after I get home, edit them, and upload them to Picasa Web Albums). Later, the trail became non-existent and to get down to the river's edge and back up took some major rock climbing/gymnastics skills. Not exactly but it was really tough and perilous too. Well, I ended up getting to the waterfall I wanted to get shots of and then the trail began to get really  tough and I began to realize that I was taking a lot of time. So I made my way back to the beach, saw no one I knew there and quickly (relatively speaking, because I was exhausted and had done the whole exploration with a full backpack that happened to have rocks from the beach) made my way back to the car. Upon my arrival, I was angrily  informed that I had been waited/searched for for about a half hour. Oops. Anyway, we then went to Lake-In-The-Clouds. Wow. It's basically an overlook with this lake and valley hundreds of feet below. Again, stunning. We then made our way back "home" and some of the younger guys were shooting off fireworks. I later went out looking for deer before dinner. I found a few, but the flash caused their eyes to flash, sort of ruining the picture and it was sort of dark so to not have the flash increased the shutter speed too much. Later after dinner, I worked on making paper airplane carriers for bottle rockets, but the planes had to be released right before they went off; otherwise, the plane would tip down and the rocket would go off, sending the little contraption right into the lake. Well, one later kind of worked, and with another one, I forgot to count and it went off in my hand. No damage to me whatsoever thankfully.
Today, we all got up and cleaned the cabin and got packed. Then we left. Now we're in the car. The end.

Dupage County Demolition Derby

Today (Sunday) I went to my first-ever demolition derby. After I got home from church I rode my bike to the fairground and for about an hour I was…not overwhelmed. Now mind you, to see old cars with straight-pipe exhausts straight from the engines scream their engines wildly while spinning their tires in mud and smash into each other is fun. The only problem was, the track, or pit really, was really small. I was expecting something with more speed, but then again, if it was faster, people would have a much greater risk of injury. But anyway, aside from that, the derby was pretty cool. I took mostly video after the first heat (Which by the way was a qualifier as the finals are tonight, but I knew it’d be way better for pictures in bright daylight) and my goodness, I’m glad my camera captured even a smidgeon of the noise those “cars” made. Wow. There’s nothing that gets my blood pumping like hearing that melodious roar of a floored accelerator. It’s just…awesome. Anyway, here are some pictures. And yes, some of the cars seem to be standing still, but sometimes it’s just fast daylight shutter speed. And to mix things up and to get some better action shots, I’m throwing in some video screenshots.