Grand Island Adventures

Traditionally Memorial Day Weekend is a weekend that my family camps. Half of them canoe down the Escanaba River and settle in Rock, MI and the other half settle in on Anderson Lake for the weekend. Last year Joe and I joined the crew at Anderson Lake and were planning on heading out to Rock this year, but it seems no one followed "tradition." For a number of reasons the Rock trip was canceled completely and the Anderson Lake faction changed locations to Little Lake, across the lake from our camp. This made Joe and I scratch our head a bit.

Because no one was going to be in Rock and neither of us wanted to go camping across the lake from camp, we decided to head out to Grand Island with Dad and Teri for the weekend. Grand Island is located just off of Munising in the UP (www.grandislandmi.com). It's approximately 23 square miles and it part of the Hiawatha National Forest. Most of the island is owned by the US Forest Service but there are a few chunks of privately owned land. Teri has a cabin on a piece of land that is on a 99 year lease from the USFS right on Echo Creek and also owns a small parcel on the "Thumb" of the island.

We were a bit rushed to get out the Munising to catch the hopper, but Joe did a wonderful job of getting us packed and ready to go while I was at work. Dad met us at Williams Landing and loaded our stuff into the "Ghost," which is an old utility truck they keep on the island for quick transport. It's about 4 miles from the landing to camp, so it's nice to not have to haul all of our stuff.

Once we got settled we decided to go fishing on Echo Lake, which is one of the largest beaver-made lakes in the world. Teri's Dad keeps a boat at the Echo Lake landing for fishing with a little 4 HP motor on it and my Dad told us to take their poles down and hop on in. When we were about 20 feet off the shore Joe informed me that he'd never actually operated an outboard motor, but soon got it started anyway. We motored about 3/4 of the way across the 1 mile long lake trolling the whole way. Joe asked if I wanted to keep trolling or if we should "risk turning off the motor." I told him to turn it off, as my Dad had assured us it would start up with some effort.

About 15 minutes later it started to rain and the wind had pushed us almost all the way to the north shore, so we decided to head back to camp. Joe began to work on getting the motor started and soon we realized that it wasn't going to start! So I said well, if we're going to be stuck out here, we might as well fish. Suddenly, I got a bite! Moments later we hauled the biggest fish I've ever caught into the boat - a northern pike! I was pumped, but Joe didn't seem that impressed. But it should be noted that it was raining, he hadn't had the chance to do much fishing, and I began singing a little song that went like this:

"I caught a great big fish, a great big fish, a great big fish! I caught a great big fish and you didn't catch anything!"

Hey, I was excited.

At this point we realized we might as well row the boat to the other side of the lake. The problem was we only had one oar. After about 10 minutes of me paddling and getting us nowhere, Joe took over and paddled us all the way back to shore stopping only when I said "Honey, get the net!" as I hauled in 2 more pike. (Note - I thought these fish were HUGE, but it turns out they were just over legal.). By the time we made it back to camp my Dad was super worried (He'd come down to the landing but couldn't see us, and while he knows I'm a strong swimmer he was concerned) and we'd missed dinner but we'd had a blast. We got something to eat and settled in to play some cards.

The highlight of the next day (other than the awesome breakfast we had) was digging for wild leeks. Leeks are a cousin of onions and they grow like crazy on the island. So we went off the find them, and boy did we ever! We went through the woods and found hundreds and hundreds of leek clumps like these:
So what you do it take a spade and dig up around the clump because if you try to pull them up they snap right off. The root system on these things is crazy. After filling two huge garbage bags with leek clumps we went back to camp to clean them up. When they've been cleaned they look like this:

Joe and I ended up with two big ziplock bags full of leeks - that's a TON! So far I've made about 1/3 of them into stock that I put in the freeze and made Tortellini Leek soup with another 1/3. The soup I made equates to about three meals for Joe and I, so I froze a bunch. Here's how I made the soup:

I sauteed the leeks and a little bit of onion in some butter. When they were caramelized I de-glazed the pan with some chicken brother and added some pepper. Then I added some baby spinach until it was well wilted as well as some crumbled bacon. I added more chicken brother and some water before adding fully cooked three cheese tortellini. To serve I topped it with asiago, Parmesan, and Romano cheese. It was awesome. I got the idea from Teri, who's an excellent cook.

Today I'm probably going to make Potato Leek soup in a similar way, but this will be a cream based soup. I also found a recipe for leek and wild mushroom wine sauce that's to be paired with Salmon. Yum!

Sunday night we played some card and sung songs by the campfire while Dad and Teri played the guitar and on Monday Joe and I took the four wheeler over the Trout Bay, which is were we camped last year after reading "The Face In The Rock" by Loren Grahm. It's the story of a famous Grand Island Chippewea and I highly recommend the book. Here are some pictures of Trout Bay from last year:
All in all we had a great weekend. We're hoping to make it back out there a couple more times this summer - once to camp on Trout Bay and once to hang out with Dad and Teri at the cabin. We're both in love with the island.

Bringing it up to speed

I haven't posted in a while and while I'd love to claim being busy is the reason, I think it's been more along the lines of laziness. I don't like posting unless I've got something good to write....and then when I do have something good to write about I never think I have time to give the event/topic justice. As if my life is that interesting.

Mostly things around here are pretty routine. I work around 30-35 hours a week at the Plasma Center and have recently been seeing quite a few applicants through my paramedical job. It's been nice to be back in the swing of a regular job. I really missed my friends at the center and its nice to have people to grab a beer with after work again. Mostly I go to the Vierling with Derek, a co-worker that shares my love of vier-beers. Actually, I think he was the one that got me hooked. So we go once a week or so and unwind after a night of slangin' plasma.

I feel very appreciated at work because I can tell that my supervisors, managers, and even old co-workers are glad to have me back. I completed my "training" in about two weeks (its usually a 6 month process) and should begin cross training sometime this week. I was cross trained when I left so retraining should be a breeze. My supervisor, Michelle, has already approached me about possible promotions. She didn't offer me a position or anything, but encouraged me to apply for the three spots that they'll be hiring for soon. Near the end of the summer they should be hiring for the Training Coordinator/Operational Manager position thats vacant right now and I'll definitely apply for it. It would be a big raise, full time, and I think I'd really enjoy it. One of the nice things about working for Biolife again is knowing I can move up. At Munson there really wasn't much room to advance - when I left I was making more than some of the people that "trained" me (because of my previous experience) and wasn't far from topping out the pay scale for my position.

In the last couple weeks I finally got angry at Joe for not letting me get another dog. I tried really hard not to resent him for saying no but it finally caught up to me. We talked about it and out of the blue Joe agreed we could look for a new pup. He had even tried to go to humane society and look! (They were closed). So we're keeping our eyes open for a small dog that likes people, dogs, and cats and can be trained. Oh, and it can't sleep at the head of the bed like Molli used to - partially because it makes Joe all stuffy and partially because thats where HayZeus sleeps. On my head (see below).
We're also toying with the idea of buying a house. For what we're paying in rent we should be able to find a decent house near Marquette. Now is actually a great time to buy in this area because the real estate market is just starting to pick up after being down for a couple years. Thus, we should be able to find a house that will see a pretty good increase in value by the time we're ready to move. Joe has noted that Enterprise won't let him stay in Marquette forever, but I highly doubt Joe will stay with Enterprise forever either, so we'll see. We might as well invest our money in a house instead of paying rent though...we might even end up saving money.

I've been chipping away at wedding planning. We have our invitations designed and I'm going to go pick up the paper for them today. We're making them instead of buying them because I couldn't find anything I liked and was willing to pay for - they are so expensive!! We also scaled down our guest list a lot, although I'm still wrestling with how to inform my Mom that her friends that I don't know aren't invited. She really wants to invite a few of her and Steve's friends...which I would be fine with if a) money grew on trees b) I hadn't removed some of my own friends from the list and c) I knew these people. Plus there's the fact that Steve is at the top of my "list" (that's what my grandma always said) of people I don't even want at the wedding but must invite. I've never been shy about the fact that I'm not his #1 fan, but recent events have officially moved him to my "people I dislike greatly" list. And I don't see him moving off of it anytime soon.

Joe has been thinking about joining the National Guard. Last winter he informed me that he's always wanted to serve in the military and I basically told him if he enlisted he'd be doing so single. Perhaps I overreacted back then, but I'm still very, very, very against the idea. However, if its something he wants to do as badly as he says, I told him I'd be ok with him joining the Guard or the Navy and nothing else. Truthfully I'm not OK with it, but its not like I can just tell him he's not allowed to do something he's always thought about doing. I just wish he'd wait at least until Bush is out of office or we have some clue at when we'll be leaving Iraq. He hasn't spoken with a National Guard recruiter yet (but did see the Marine recruiter-which I flipped out about) so we'll see. The whole idea makes me want to throw up.

I'm still thinking about getting my masters in public health, but I'm hesitant to drop another 20K on school when I'm not certain its what I want to do. I thought college was supposed to help you figure that out, but I came out more confused than when I went in. So for now I'll be a plasma goddess.

I guess that's about all I have to update on. Our cat is still psycho and is constantly trying to escape for a stroll in the parking lot. We grilled with Joe's Boss, Lori, and her husband this weekend and had a great time. We're excited to have friends that are our age and in a similar spot in life. All of our college friends keep graduating and leaving. :(