Wisconsin Vacation Complete

We had a busy, and rather long, day on Friday.  We had a lot of time to get to our ferry in the evening so we took our time and added a few extra activities.  The day started with some shopping in Sturgeon Bay then we walked out by the bay to view the water.  This is a resort town with a nice 4 block long restored downtown area filled with shops and restaurants.

Next, since we were going past Green Bay, Lambeau field called to us.  

As we drove to the stadium, the street we were on had some cute "No parking on Packer Game Day" signs. While Mary was taking this picture of the stadium, some players crossed the street in front of us, walking from the practice facility to the main stadium!  Very cool!

Next we headed toward Milwaukee, but decided to check out the Concordia Wisconsin (Mequon) campus.  It is a very pretty campus, sitting right on Lake Michigan.  The one striking feature is the cliff overlooking the lake.  This picture hardly does it justice, as it looks down the cliff toward the lake.  

After taking a driving tour of some very pretty Milwaukee and suburban streets, we arrived at the Lake Express Ferry dock. We were originally booked on the Badger, but two weeks before our trip it suffered a major failure that has knocked it our for the season.  Even though we arrived in plenty of time, I ended up being the second last car loaded onto the ship, as you can see from this picture.

We arrived in Muskegon at 10:30 p.m. but did not arrive at our hotel until nearly 11:30, to wrap up our long day.  

Now we are home, unpacking and getting back to our regular schedule. 

Convention is over, Now it's Vacation time!

 It's been a rather long week, attending a very intense convention from 8-6 Monday - Wednesday and 8-11:30 today. So that is why there have not been any blog posts for the past few days.  The delegates accomplished quite a bit of work during this week, electing 62 positions and passing 87 resolutions including several fairly controversial ones.  As you can see in this picture, I had a front row seat, right in front of the podium.  But Mary and I are now on a short 2 day vacation so I'm back to blogging.  

After the convention we headed north to Door County, Wisconsin.  This county sits northeast of Green Bay on a peninsula into Lake Michigan.  It's quite the tourist area, comparable to Mackinaw City, MI and Blowing Rock, NC 

My sister had visited here before and highly recommended eating at Al Johnson's a Swedish restaurant with a grass roof.  They have goats to keep the roof "mowed", but none were out while we were there.   We enjoyed our Swedish dinners.

After that we drove to the top of the peninsula and Mary took these pictures of Lake Michigan and Sturgeon Bay.  This truly is a beautiful area! 

Tomorrow we will do some more sightseeing before taking a car-ferry back to Michigan, then driving home on Saturday.

Visiting Milwaukee for a convention

 I'm not sure how often I'll post since most days will be attending to the business of the LCMS Convention to which I'm a delegate. 

On Saturday we drove to Findlay, OH for Katie's graduation with her Doctor of Ministry degree from Winebrenner Seminary.  It was quite the accomplishment for her, the culmination of 3 years of hard work, with the last 2 doing the research and writing her doctoral thesis. Since her goal is to be a professor, now she just needs to be assigned few Greek or Hebrew courses to teach!

After her party we headed for Milwaukee  to attend the convention.  We had a stopover in Warsaw IN.  I was pleasantly surprised how easily we passed through Chicago.   There was no traffic congestion, and cars were zipping around like crazy.  

I got to the convention and registered before the major business starting Sunday afternoon.  What a blessing it was to conduct the church business in this forum!  

The next three days are all convention.  Thursday noon we head north to visit Door County Wisconsin which sits on a peninsula into Lake Michigan before heading home.  

Day 7 - Train to Denver Part II

After a good night's' sleep, it's time to post about the rest of our train trip. Here's a picture of the train waiting at Glenwood Springs station.  After the town of Dotsero, the train headed north to follow the Colorado River as opposed to I-70 which heads east to Vail and the Eisenhower tunnel.  So this was all new scenery to us.

We passed through three interesting canyons, Burns, Gore and Byers, with the most impressive one being Gore Canyon.  Here are several pictures showing the canyons.   We saw a number of rafters on the river as we went past, but many of the rapids in the upper stretches of the river were too severe for rafting, like the bottom left picture.

You can see some of the whitewater in these pictures.  I especially like the one on the bottom right which shows three tunnels that we are about to transit. (The first tunnel can be hard to see since train engine is just entering it.)

This is just a small sample of the beautiful scenery we experienced.  

We did see some wildlife on this day.  Mary got this picture of a dad eagle and and eaglet in the nest.  She also got this one of a mom and baby elk.

So now we are waiting to head to the airport for our flight home.  I'm planning one more post as an overview of the entire trip.  It's been an interesting 8 days!

Day 7 - Train to Denver Part I

Today we enjoyed day two of our train trip  as we traveled from Glenwood Springs to Denver.  Overall, this trip exceeded our expectations in scenery, service, and food!  Being on the train, we often were in areas that had no roads, so we were seeing scenery that was brand new to us.  This was especially true today as the train did not follow I-70 once we got past Dotsero, CO.

The 12 mile stretch through Glenwood Canyon is the main reason we booked this trip.  After driving through the canyon for 15 years and saying "I wonder what it looks like from the train", thankfully Rocky Mountaineer starting servicing this route a few years ago on their Red Rocks to Rockies route.

Upon leaving Glenwood Springs, we immediately entered Glenwood Canyon.  

Here are four pictures that  show the river, cliffs, and I-70 roadway that was especially engineered to blend in with the canyon and provided minimal disruption to the esthetics.

For those of you who want to see more, check out my album Glenwood Canyon by Train which has about 50 pictures I took as the train passed through the canyon.  

More to come tomorrow as I post about the rest of our day in Part II.  It's been  long day and I want to do justice to what I post about this wonderful trip.

Tomorrow is our travel day back home with a direct afternoon flight back to Detroit.

Day 6 - Train to Glenwood Springs

 

We had a nice, relaxing morning since we did not need to get to the Rocky Mountaineer Guest Center until 1pm, just had to check out of the hotel and turn in the rental car.  Then we were notified of a delay until 2:15 pm.  But we kept with our original schedule and just had more time in the guest center.  We boarded the bus for a 15 minute ride to the train, where we got on board and set out on our train ride.

As expected there was lots of amazing scenery.  We even saw a small group of antelope (click to enlarge, photo on left).  They were on the move, but paused just so I could get this picture!  We both took lots of photos but this one will have to suffice. 

One area that took us by surprise was going through Ruby Canyon.  While much wider than Glenwood Canyon, it had a lot of different geological features including some very high cliffs and different colors of rocks.  No roads go through it so it is only accessible by train or the river.   We were both enjoyed watching the scenery so much, that we only took a few pictures, so these will have to suffice. You can click the Ruby Canyon link to see more courtesy of Wikipedia.

After clearing Ruby Canyon, we saw a lot of smoke in the distance.  It turns out we were passing very close to an active wildfire!   Reportedly it had grown from 20 acres to over 600 acres today.  There were lots of firefighting planes flying around it and we even got to see a large C-130 drop fire retardant.  It was rather exciting to watch.  The cloud of smoke from the fire was drifting east so we passed underneath it as we headed into Glenwood Springs.

Due to our late start we did not arrive in Glenwood Springs until 9 pm.  That was a bit late to stop by my favorite brewpub for a Hanging Lake Honey Ale, but that's how it goes sometimes.  We walked to the Hotel Colorado where our luggage was waiting for us.

Tomorrow we only need to be back to the train station by 10:40 am, so we'll have some time in the morning to spend in the town before heading on to Denver. 

Day 5 Moab Jeep Trail

 Today was our jeep tour through some canyons north of Moab, to see the Gemini Bridges. Here we are standing in the bridge.  Click on the picture to make it larger so you can actually see us!

It is actually a double bridge with about 20' between the two spans. I tried to take a picture between the two, but it did not show much.

The trail itself is rated as an easy 4-wheel-drive trail but it sure seemed pretty rough to us (and the other passengers)! We were fortunate to be in the back seat of the jeep as opposed to riding on the seats in the truck bed of the jeep.  At the first stop, we received offers to trade seats, but we respectfully declined.  It was a rough ride, but I guess that's what you should expect on a 4 wheel drive trail.

Here are some pictures showing the desolate beauty of this area.  I could have taken a hundred pictures and still not captured everything. 

Top left is a general scene taken at one of our stops.

Top right is a view showing the rugged terrain.

Bottom left is looking away from the Gemini Bridges

Bottom Right is a rock formation they call the Dodo Bird.

This ends our scenic visit to Moab.  Tomorrow we pack up and catch the Rocky Mountaineer train to Denver, stopping overnight in Glenwood Springs.