Mike, Lucy and I began our epic journey last Thursday evening at the airport. It was a very smooth travel day, and before we knew it we had landed at the Houghton/Hancock Memorial Airport. We were greeted with hugs from Kyle and John before heading back to John's cabin, then after talking to the point of exhaustion, called it a night.
Friday morning we went out to explore the wonders of Winter Carnival, and were amazed at the detail of the ever-popular ice statues. This year's carnival theme was "Thousands of Pages Unfold in the Bitter Cold," so everything there had something to do with books. These impressive statues ranged from Narnia to the Bible and everything in between. After browsing the statues for a bit we found the dog sled rides--that's right, dog sled rides. They hooked up 4 of the dogs to a sled and took you around a small course that only lasted about 20-30 seconds, but it was still really cool. Plus now I can officially say that I have ridden on a dog sled.
This is the Jurassic Park statue we saw
Later that afternoon we headed out for snow-shoeing. We drove over to this place fondly known as "The Dredge": an old, worn-down dredging machine that's just sitting and rusting near the edge of the lake. We snow-shoed on land for a bit to get to the actual dredge before braving the frozen lake. Everything was covered in snow, so it was a bit tough to tell where the land ended and the lake began, but it didn't take long before we realized we were standing on frozen water. We actually got to walk inside the dredge, which was weird and awesome at the same time...the dredge was tilted at an angle but we were standing on the flat ice. I was slightly concerned about standing on a frozen lake, but John was quick to reassure us that we had at LEAST 6-8 inches of ice beneath our feet and had nothing to worry about.
John and Kyle in front of the dredge
Saturday morning we got up and started getting ready for our hike to Hungarian Falls that day. One of John's friends, Andrew, came with us, and even decided to bring along his frat's dog, a husky named Ace. We stopped by John's Uncle Alfie's house, who was to lead us on our way, then headed for the falls. The falls that we got to see were beautiful, and completely frozen. Little did I know that when we got to the first falls we were actually standing on TOP of the frozen waterfall (I really need to pay more attention when these Yoopers are leading me onto frozen water :P). After our hike we headed back to Alfie's house where his wife Mary kindly served us some delicious homemade hot chocolate and carrot cake. That night we went to the Michigan Tech hockey game (which they sadly lost), watched the fireworks that wrapped up Winter Carnival, ate pasties, and looked up the rules to Shotgun (it was a never-ending challenge throughout the weekend) before turning in for the night.
Looking out from the falls
Sunday morning we went to mass and breakfast with John's aunt and uncle before heading to the airport. When we got to the airport, however, we found out that our flight was overbooked and they were looking for people to give up their seats. We were willing to do just that, but the next flight out of Houghton wasn't until Tuesday, which we just couldn't do. Suddenly, Mike had a brilliant idea and asked about the possibility of giving up our seats and getting a flight out of Green Bay...Kyle was driving back down to the great land of cheese that afternoon, so we would be able to get a ride down with him and fly out the next day. Sure enough, flying out of GB wouldn't have been a problem, so we gave up our seats, got some nice travel vouchers, and hopped in the car with Kyle for a road trip down to Green Bay.
Wisconsin!
Since we were only in the Super Bowl Champ city for about 14 hours, we basically got the speed tour. We had dinner at Curly's Pub in Lambeau Field, explored the stadium atrium a bit, then got to see a few other random parts of the city. We met Mike's friends Emily, Rex and Carissa, then stopped by Kyle's house for one last quick goodbye. Mike's dad drove us to the airport the next morning, and after picking up some Packers gear and cheese curds, we got on a plane and headed for home.
Go Packers!
Basically, this weekend was pretty much awesome. We were blessed with warmer-than-usual weather, had great company all the time, and just had a lot of fun. It turned out to be a kind of mini vacation, one that we didn't want to end. It was a bummer to have to come back to real life, but I will always remember my awesomely random trip to the midwest :)
All of us together with Blizzard the Husky
