Merry Christmas!

Check out my silly husband! :) That's a plunger stuck to his head...

I'm back...

I'm slow, I know it. We finally have an unscheduled weekend, so I can tell you all about the past few weekends.
Labor Day weekend was the Midwest Tandem Rally in Appleton. I thought the most fun part about that was seeing some of the unique bikes - especially the "family bikes". I snapped this at one of the rest stops.
The next rally that we will probably attend will be in Rochester in 2009.

Superior National Forest

This past weekend we spent 4 and a half days tenting and mountain biking in the Superior National Forest. It was a really nice time, the weather was perfect for tenting, and the bugs weren't too thick. We had a full or nearly full moon that glowed above the lake most of the nights. I tried to capture the moonglow with my camera, but it was too dark, it just confused the camera. The water was still as glass. At left is a picture of Lake Harriet, we heard there were great blueberry patches in the camping area there, so we went looking. We only found raspberries and lots of great scenery!
I love the simplicity of being in the woods with only the stuff you need for survival during that time. We had some great campfires in the evenings.
The mountain biking was pretty bad. The Superior National Forest is not exactly a mountain biking destination. We got out for a ride every day, but the trails usually left us wishing we had gone to Wisconsin. The 2 biking shots are an example of what good riding is in the SNF and another of the worst trail we'd been on. The trails there have a tendency to hold water, so there are mud hazards regularly. They don't have any established single trail riding, it's all just minimally maintained roads that are open to ATVs, bikes, Jeeps, etc. These pictures are from the Pancore Lake loop, one of the recommended routes.