Great times

We had a very fulfilling weekend and were able to make it to Tahquamenon Falls. We left Escanaba early Sunday morning and drove, and drove, and drove. It was alot farther than we thought- about a two and a half hour drive. With a toddler who is the houdini king in a car seat, the ride took longer cause we kept having to stop and put him back in his seat! We got up there- Paradise, MI- and it was packed jammed full of tourists. We actually had to wait in line to get into the park for about ten minutes and then were directed to go to parking lot number 3. I couldn't believe how much it has changed. It was absolutely nothing like what I remembered.

I had researched the trolley and ferry before we left and found out that it was quite pricey- about $90 for our family. So I was bummed cause I had thought you had to take the ferry to get to the falls. I did some more digging without much luck and then my dad and mom both thought they remembered that you could walk around. As it turned out, that was the only way to go. We saw both the upper and lower falls and walked up tons of stairs and after about three hours, Tayton had had enough. There was at least one 8 mile trail that we saw that we hadn't been on, but there were tons of others too. I don't know how much walking you would want to do in a day, but tackling it over a weekend would be ideal. The whole trail for the lower falls were handicapped accessible and there weren't really any stairs to do on that part, but the upper falls had two sets that were 94 and 116 each- we were tired!

We stopped in Newberry on our way home at the "Pizza place". There was this cute stone penguin outside holding a pizza that Tayton went crazy about. The restaurant was a beautiful log cabin that appeared to be recently built. The service was awesome and the pizza was pretty good. Not Mueller's, but it was gigantic!

Monday morning, we pulled our group together and made it to Norway fair for the go-cart races in the morning. We got there early so we could go though the animal barns before the races started. It was so cool. They had one barn that was round and each hall or stable was a different animal area. One barn! The Dickinson fair was much smaller than ours, had alot less people, but they had alot to offer. They had an area that people had submitted their cookies, cakes, pies, and canning jars for judging. I loved its quaintness- if that's a word for it. It was just downhome friendly.

Today was the first day of school. The kids should be home soon and I'm anxious to hear about their day. We'll go visit Dad and Joy tonight and chill out now for the fall!