Craig and Cindys 2024 Pacific Northwest Adventure

Our first stop is near Park Falls, WI, to stay with our friends Kurt and Brenda Koenig at their beautiful lake house on Round Lake.     We stopped in Minocqua, WI for dinner, and ate our dinner watching the local summer ski team (the Min-Aqua-Bats - get it?) practice.  After dinner we went for a beautiful boat ride on the area interconnected lakes, including Round Lake, Pike Lake, Turner Lake and Amik Lake.   On Saturday, we headed out to Copper Falls State Park , which was truly spectacular!   A few pictures below: After a gorgeous afternoon in the hot tub, Kurt and Brenda prepared a delicious dinner of halibut (that they had caught in Alaska!) and then played some Yahtzee, which was a blast, haven't played for years. On Sunday morning we went to church at Christ Servant Lutheran Church in Park Falls and then, after saying goodbye to the Koenig's,  headed out to our next stop, Fargo.      About 45 minutes in to the trip, a deer appeared out of nowhere, Cindy slammed on the b

Monday, June 17th On our night in Fargo we had some great Indian food at the  Passage to India  restaurant, but otherwise Fargo was kind of boring.  It also gave us some bad vibes - random people screaming at us out of cars as we walked along the city streets didn’t leave a great impression.    No problem, we ate breakfast at our hotel and got on the road, albeit a little later than planned.  Since we were departing later than planned, we changed up our itinerary so we would go straight to the South Unit of Teddy Roosevelt National Park today. We arrived there at 12:45 (we switched to Mountain Time, which helped!).  The weather was cloudy and rain was forecasted, but we were hoping we would avoid the rain. After talking with the rangers, we decided to do the Big Plateau and Elkblom trail , a 5.3 mile hike that is supposed to give the best examples of geology, vegetation and wildlife related to the South Unit.   We set off around 2:15.  The trail starts and ends with wading across the

  This ain't lemonade! One truth about outdoor adventures - the weather has a lot to do with the experience.   After we finished our hike in the South Unit on Monday, it started raining.  When we woke up on Tuesday it was still raining, and it would be still raining when we went to bed on Tuesday evening. Despite the rain, we set out on Tuesday morning for the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP).  We planned on hiking the  Caprock Coulee Trail in the North Unit, but the rangers told us that the trails were too muddy and treacherous.    So we opted for the scenic drive and got out at a number of the lookout points.   We were able to hike the Lil Mo Nature Trail , the only paved trail in the park, but even that was flooded in areas.   Despite the rain, the North Unit was beautiful, and we can see why people say it is even more spectacular than the South Unit, see our pictures below: Since our trail time ended early, we headed back to the hotel to do some laundry an

June 20, 2024 Hello, friends and fam, took me a while to get this next episode out covering Thursday, June 20th.  Cindy and I arose early to leave Havre by 7am and make sure we were at the river rafting trailhead by 12:30pm.   The outfitter told us multiple times to not be late or they would leave without us.  We hit some crazy construction on the way, with traffic stopped for long periods, but we persevered and made it to the outfitter on time (at one point when Cindy was driving I saw she was going 95 mph! - I suggested we switch drivers...).  We had no idea what to expect of this river rafting trip - we booked this online, had no recommendations and were hoping for the best.  We pulled into the outfitter lot and met Owen, the guide for our trip, and learned that by circumstance we would be the only ones on this trip.  So a couple of the other raft guides joined us to help paddle.   We didn't know this at the time, but this would be a lifetime highlight experience. With Owen, our