j & j moore

Camping Trip: Day 3 Journal Entry

Shadow Pic #3 Hiking the bike trails again at Seney, hiked about 6 miles

We spent today at Seney again. It was nice to not have to pack everything up in the morning. We ate breakfast and headed out to the Pine Nature trail at the refuge. The trail went around one of the pools, across some marshland boardwalk and thru the woods. We saw lots of marshland plants and picked some blackberries to snack on as we walked. We took our own route off the trail following a deer trail but did not see any deer.

After trying to track deer on their own trail for awhile we turned around and found a bench along the original trail to take a rest. The bend was under some large trees looking out at one of the pools. There were a lot of sticks and pine cones down in this area so I decided to make some word art and Josh helped<3 div="div">

We finished our hike of the Pine Nature trail and headed back to our campsite for lunch. We at lunch and then got in a quick game of horseshoes before it started to rain. We ended up in the tent for a little while while a storm rolled in. The pics below is my viewpoint from laying on the air mattress looking up in the tent while the rain was coming down.

After the rain stopped we at an early dinner just in case it rained again and so that we could take an early evening hike of the trails and maybe see more wildlife since it would be closer to sundown. We hiked about 6 miles in the sun and rain and a few times questions if we should turn around because it was thundering and lighting. But the storm looked like it was moving past us or to the south of us so we kept hiking. I'm glad we did because it was a great hike and ended with a beaver, a rainbow and a family of deer!

Josh spotting the family of 4 deer with the binoculars

We returned to our campsite and settled in for an early night after a long day of hiking, horseshoes, keeping rain out of the tent and driving the marshland drive a few times. We'll be headed to Pictured Rocks tomorrow!

Camping Trip: Day 4 Journal Entry

Shadow Pic #4 The boardwalk near Miners Falls

Today we had to spend more time taking down the tent and clearing our campsite because of the rain yesterday. Thankfully the sun was out and Josh rigged up his car straps from a tree to the trunk so it would be wide enough to dry off the tent and the tarps. We had a quick breakfast and enjoyed the last stop at the bathroom with hot water for the trip (we were able to take a couple hot showers while we stayed at this site for two days:)

We headed up to Pictured Rocks for our last two days. Our first stop of the day was at the Miner's Castle overlook on Lake Superior (part of Pictured Rocks). The colors of Lake Superior were phenomenal blues and greens. It was a beautiful day and we got some beautiful pictures at Miner's Castle.

I enjoyed seeing a chocolate lab jump up next to his owner to look out on the beautiful view as well:) Next we took a quick stop at Miner's Falls. Then we drove a few miles down the road to the Munising Falls. We had to take a short hike into the woods to see these falls. The hike had hills both ways and was nice to be under the shade of the trees.

After stopping at the overlook and the falls we drove into Munising to get our tickets for the sunset boat cruise that evening and to check out a good spot to eat dinner after we set up camp. We got our tickets and headed out of town to our campsite at A . We stopped at the boat launch to Grand Island to eat lunch at the picnic tables and see Lake Superior up close.

We also made a stop at the beach on Lake Superior really quick to feel the water. It was a bit brisk.

We made it to our campsite and set up camp pretty quickly (now that we were pros at setting up our new tent:) Now it was time to head back into Munising for dinner and the boat cruise.We ate dinner at a local restaurant and ate on the deck outside. We had live music that was playing at the marina where a farmers market was also taking place. We both ordered the baked lasagna and it was delicious. We were planning on being to the boat dock early to get good seat, however, it was 30 minutes before boarding time and we could see the line growing very fast from our dinner table. So we quickly headed to the dock and you can see from the picture that we had a lot of people in front of us...and we had just as many people lined up behind us. Thankfully they had two boats running for the tour and we were able to get seats on the top of a boat in the back. We had great seats.

The tour lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes and was worth every minute!!! I don't think our pictures do justice for Pictured Rocks. The colors showing up in the rocks were gorgeous. My favorites were the mint green, burgundy and purple colors. The rock formations were incredible as well. When we passed Miner's Castle Josh said, "Wow it is even more cool from this side!" You could really tell why it had the word castle in it when viewing it from the water side. There were caves all in the bottom and the middle like window and doorways on a castle. There were many rock formations that we viewed (see below). The best part was when the boat pulled into Chapel Cove and we were only a few feet away from the sides of the cave. This is where we had our picture taken together! On the way back we were able to watch the sunset. Right after the sun went down the sky was beautiful shades of pink and made for a wonderful ending to a great day.

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