MN Thompson's

We spent the last several days tooling around the area. Had a nice picnic on Artist’s Point, swam a few times at a nearby pool, played monopoly, watched Harry Potter, and looked at some art galleries when it drizzled just one morning of our trip. Climbed up the mostly dry river bed of the Devil Track River. Spent even longer (2+ hours?) chasing and unlodging our “boats” as they made their way downstream. The kids loved following their boats down this windy river but I didn’t realize how much work it would be to unlodge them from so many low points and crevices and tricky traps the river set for us. And of course we’ve continued to have a lot of great, fresh food…Angry Trout again (and again), My Sister’s Place, Crooked Spoon (with some friends who are up this week too), Coho Cafe, more World’s Best Donuts – yummy yummy yummy!!!

Brrrrrrr!!!

Here are our “boats” preparing to launch…Colleen’s long stick is the only one out of about 10 sticks and leafs that made it the entire way down.

We hiked the Tettegouche trails for the first time this year. It was a bit different from most of the other trails we’ve done in that you are hiking throught the woods and not directly next to a gorge or river that you can tell for most of it. 1.2 miles in you end up at two-step falls which isn’t so impressive. Christopher and I continued on another .4 miles to get the High Falls which was a pretty cool waterfall.

After 3+ miles of hiking the kids got to suck down some well-deserved oreo smoothies 🙂

We also hiked along the Temperance River again this year. This (along with Judge C. R. Magney) is one of our favorite spots to hike and take photos. The water was lower this year than past years so we were able to easily cross the river as a family. Well…let me qualify “easily cross the river” by saying that the two oldest kids crossed the river fairly easily. I was holding Megan’s hands so she would try to step from rock to rock – this sounds easier than it actually is because often you can’t tell which rocks are wobbly and her legs really had to stretch…so by the time I would get her extended onto her own rock in the middle of the water then there wouldn’t be enough room for my feet on that same rock…but we were managing ok. I won’t mention any names (yet…heh heh heh)…but from behind me all of a sudden I hear this huge commotion…sounded like bombs dropping combined with an avalanche and tumbling rocks. I turn around and almost all of the contents of the backpack which had been on Beth’s back were spread out in 5′ radius around Beth and she’s frantically trying to grab everything out of the water before it got swept away (the water was moving pretty good and there is a big waterfall 20′ away). Our good camera was in a bright yellow bag and we both see that as the farthest object from her heading downstream. I quickly jumped with Megan back to shore but Beth was quicker and completely jumped in the water with both feet to grab the yellow plastic bag with the camera. I’ll spare you the details of the camera (so far there isn’t a happy ending – unless you’re looking for a camera that clicks like it’s taking pictures when in the “off” position as soon as you put the battery in) but no one was hurt and we are still giggling every time Beth tries to explain this by saying “I don’t know what happened…the backpack just exploded!!!“. So, can anyone answer this one – why make cameras float if they aren’t going to be waterproof??? Although the camera did the fake “clicks” non-stop I was able to rescue pictures from it, such as this one (look familiar?)…

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 10:52 am and is filed under Children, Vacation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.