Hollander Baseball Games...

The baseball playoffs started this week...Lukie and Lex haven't been to as many games as a typical summer (shortened season due to COVID and some other reasons), but we went tonight...

Lukie was happy that he got five foul balls ($1.25 total), Lex liked the cheese curds and the Hollanders won the series to move on to the Region 7C tournment next week...a couple of more wins and they're back at the state tournament...

Glacial Lakes State Park...

Last week we went camping at Glacial Lakes State Park near Starbuck.  It was a new park for them, so we got to do all the usual activities (passport stamp, hiking club trail, geocaching)...starting with our usual pictures...

This park makes #31 in the stamp passport...

After getting camp set up, we took off for the hiking club trail (which was really close to our campsite)...

The park is largely  prairie, with some oak savanna in areas...

Its the typical kame and kettle topography.  Kames are conical hills formed from glacial deposits.  Kettles are low areas, that may have water in them, generally they're wetland or lakes (kettle lakes)...

Somewhere along the hike we take this picture...

Found the password...

And we generally take a break once or twice during our hikes too...

Back at camp, it was time to get dinner going, Lukie did the hot dogs again...

Lex took the time to read in the hammock (she started and finished the Harry Potter series this summer)...

And it turned out to be a quiet evening...after Lukie and Lex went to bed, I got a good view of comet Neowise in the NW sky...

Day two started with quite a bit of fishing...

A lot of sunnies, a few crappies, a bass and a perch...Lukie almost had a northern but it got away right before it got out of the water (a second northern almost got to the dock when it had bitten a sunfish that Lukie was bringing in)...

Another bit of excitement was when Lex said "that's the biggest turtle I've ever seen."  Neither Luke or I saw it, but when Lex described it, it was definitely a snapping turtle...moments later, Lukie was bringing in a smaller sunfish and that turtle went straight for the fish...the turtle got the fish, not Lukie...

Since the turtle was lurking, we went geocaching...they found this at the second stop and thought they were done...nope, it was just more coordinates...

A couple of stops later, they found their prize...

Late in day, we took in another overlook that we hadn't visited yet...

Then it was time for bed...during the night we had one of the loudest and brightest thunderstorms I've ever experienced while camping...tons of rain...Lukie and Lex slept right through it...oh well...good times...

Split Rock Lighthouse State Park...

While camping at Gooseberry in late June, we spent a day at Split Rock Lighthouse State Park.  The historical site (the lighthouse itself) was closed due to COVID, but the park was open.  We had been to the park, but had never down the hiking club trail or geocache...

The first stop had to be to get a glimpse of the lighthouse...

Then it was time to hike...the trail was a little over six miles...

And we got some good overlooks we had never seen before...

Including this fireplace (in the middle of nowhere) that was built in the early 1900's before the the housing project was abandoned...

Almost two miles of the hike was on the paved Gitchi Gummi State Trail...boring walk, but easy...

If you've ever seen the location where the Split Rock River enters the lake, that's where we left the paved trail...

And we got a chance to read up on the history of the area...

The second half of the trail was quite a bit different, pretty wet in some areas...

But we found the password...

And took a side trail off to an old mine site of 3M's...early on in the history of 3M, the company mined several areas on the north shore for corundum (a really hard mineral), it turned out that the mineral that they were actually mining was plagioclase feldspar, a hard mineral, but not as hard as corundum...whoops...

It gave us another good look...and rest area...

At the mine site...

5 miles in, we found stairs...lots of stairs...and this picture was taken after walking up the said stairs...

Halfway up...they needed a break...I said I was never going to walk those stairs again...

Eventually, we got back to the starting point and the lake itself...

And oh yes...it was chilly, but awesome too...

After lunch, it was time to find the geocache...

And back down the same trail we went...

Lukie and Lex found the waypoints pretty easily...

But we came back to the stairs...those evil stairs that just don't end...they're nice going down, but when you go down stairs, you have to come back up them...

And we finally found the geocache...(and had to go up those stairs again to get back)...

Back to the starting point, it was time for a few quick pictures with the lighthouse...

And then time to head back to Gooseberry, but we had to get the usual picture with the passport stamp and state park sign first (not the best picture...traffic was coming)...

One more post is coming to wrap up that camping trip...

Lex's Birthday...

Lex's 10th birthday is today.  She is one who generally can sleep until 8:00 am easy...today, she was awake by 6:00 am...it was like Christmas, apparently she was excited...

After breakfast, it was time for birthday donuts (and of course we through a candle in one)...

'Hey Lukie, jump in the picture...'  But he kept his distance...

And yes, Lukie and I sang Happy Birthday (probably not very well, but we sang) and Lex blew the candle out...

But she was more excited for the presents than us singing...

After receiving some boring shorts (according to Lukie), she got a new swimsuit (which she really needed) and another pair of goggles (the ones she currently has apparently isn't working very well)...

But Lukie really wanted her to open the last one, he was quite annoyed she waited to open it last.  When I asked Lukie what we should get for her, he only said one thing:  Legos.

This is a Lego set of a series that she has many sets of, best of all for her, it's basically an outdoor zoo with many animals (her favorite)...

Happy Birthday to the baby girl...