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.

Eagle River Part 2

All right. It's Wednesday, just about the midpoint of this Eagle River vacation. Let's see, the rest of Tuesday I pretty much hung out, finishing up my audiobook and reading more of History of American Political Theory. I've finished up my 60 hours of Summer reading for the Wheaton Public Library which will net me a free taco at Chipotle. There are other rewards for 20 and 40 and I still have a couple gift cards that I've saved. ::Cough cough:: Anyway, part of the reason for this was that it was either raining or threatening rain the entire day and evening. As a matter of fact, that evening, there was a gigantic thunderstorm all that late evening and night. That has actually happened all three times we've been up here. I must say, Eagle River has provided me with a fantastic opportunity to catch up on a lot of college lectures. Right now I'm going through some of Wheaton College's speaking sessions. This one Indian speaker D'Souza Dinesh or something like that. Anyway, he was talking a lot about combating the New Atheism and made some very excellent points that I added to my intellectual arsenal. He brought up some things that I had never heard about from anyone else before, like the fact that every single physical law of the universe (speed of light, gravity, rate of expansion of the universe, etc) has to be absolutely exact or else the universe as we know it would simply not exist. There were other cool facts to. He was saying that his talks are aimed differently for different audiences. He said that for Christians, he wants to encourage them in their faith, to agnostics or seekers he wants to show them that there is evidence and maybe think twice about disbelief in God, and for often arrogant undergraduate atheists, he wants to give them an "intellectual horsewhipping" which I thought was beautifully hilarious. As much as I really liked the guy, he also held a position in strong support of God-directed evolution and how the earth was 5.5 billion and change years old. I guess that shows how sheltered I've been because I thought a belief in a literal 6 day creation was much more ubiquitous among strong" Christians that it actually seems to be. I'll delve into my beliefs on that in more detail at some point in the near future. Maybe I'll type a draft of it on my laptop and post in when I get home...hmm. Now there's an idea...Anyway, today I listened and read more, kayaked a bit more (and got really sunburned on my lower arms and curiously right above my knees too) and...went tubing. This time however, they went too fast and crazy and really ticked me off because I was telling them to slow down. It was less fear of my life and health and more an anger at a blatant disregard of my requests and a feeling of broken trust. So that sort of left me sullen at the world (except my iPod and Palm of course) for a while. Just a few hours ago, we went to a choir concert at a nearby church that was singing old revival songs of the Great Awakening (I believe it was the second). Some of the songs like "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" were familiar and nice, but a lot of the other ones I didn't know and so I sort of felt a disconnect. It was really cool to hear deep men's voices and the ladies sing really high, especially considering the church I've attended all my life doesn't have one. So that brings us up to the present. I'm writing this and will start getting ready for bed soon. Tomorrow will be our last day of water activities as it has been confirmed that we'll be going to Black River Falls in the UP on Friday. So I'm really looking forward to going and getting pictures, especially considering there actually hasn't been much to photograph (maybe I'll explain later in a more all-encompassing post). Well, it's time to scram!