An Autumn Visit

Usually during this time of year we take a week long road-trip vacation to celebrate our anniversary. This year, due to our amazing girl Flora, we felt best foregoing the week long trip. Too hard to travel for that amount of time with a 1-mo old, 2 dogs, ourselves and luggage. Instead, we went out for a nice dinner on our anniversary, and then this past weekend, we took our last trip for the season up to White Sky Woods. We did just one night. We left the dogs at home with my Mom who watched them, and we headed out early Saturday morning, all packed up and with baby in the back seat. Since the heat in our camper is somewhat unreliable when it comes to providing a constant temperature, we felt it safest to stay at a hotel, and then spend the days at our property. On the way up, there was snow! The night before had left about 4 inches of snow in central U.P., but once we got closer to the Keweenaw, there was no snow and lots of fall color! Since the climate zone on the peninsula is the same as where we live here in WI, it was prime color viewing for those fall leaves. We headed directly to White Sky Woods. Wow! It looked so different from our last visit over Labor Day weekend. It's always wonderful, but the colors on the trees were just amazing. The color was from the ground up. Lots of leaves on the ground, colorful grasses, and brilliantly colored trees. The most impressive were the tamaracks, which were a bright sunny yellow color. On saturday we hiked our cleared (okay - semi-cleared) trails and spent a little time in the camper for Flora's feeding since it started to drizzle outside. When it got dark, we checked into our hotel. We ordered pizza from a local place - it was delicious...maybe some of the best delivery pizza I ever had. Later, Tim went swimming while Flora and I watched.

The next day we went back to our property and decided to do some off trail exploring. Tim carried Flora in the front pack both days, which worked out great. She loved it, the motion lulls her to sleep. We found some areas of our property that have older hardwoods, along with Cedar and different types of conifers. Tim's eye caught one of our forest creatures. A blue-spotted salamander! Cool looking little salamander. We found a dilapidated hunting shack that a tree fell on. It appeared the shack was built around the tree. Hmm. We then headed back to the camper. While I fed Flora, Tim picked lots of apples! We have tons of apple trees with a variety of apples. The best looking apples were Golden Delicious apples. He also picked a lot of apples that will be better suited for baking. So, this week, I have a project on my hands! I will be dehydrating a portion of the apples for healthy snacking, not sure about the rest yet. Before we left, we also talked to the neighbors for an hour of so. They told us about 2 wolf encounters they had this summer. Overall, it was another great trip to White Sky Woods! Can't wait to go back...

Back pasture.

In the forest.

All bundled up!

Snow! On the way up, but no snow at the property :)

Spotted blue salamander.

Pumpkin Project

On Saturday we went to out local grocer who annually has Pumpkin Blowout. Local pumpkins for $2 each! We purchased three pumpkins and then planned to carve them. I can't remember the last time I carved a pumpkin. I painted a pumpkin in college with a little girl I mentored, but that's my most recent memory, and that was almost 10 years ago. We had a carving kit that we purchased a few years ago and got underway with our Pumpkin Project. Tim carved one pumpkin and I carved another, so we each had our own unique design. The third pumpkin became Flora's. She slept through the whole project, but since she's less than a month old, I don't suspect she could have done much with her pumpkin :) The pumpkins turned out awesome! Also, we saved the seeds and roasted them. Yum! Here's some shots from the Pumpkin Project. The final night picture with them light up shows mine on the left, Tim's in the middle, and Flora's on the right :)

Fall Splendor

Fall is here! The average temperature during the day has been in the high 50's and there have even been 2 frosts overnight. We covered the garden as best we could and seemed to save it. When it hasn't been raining, I've been taking walks with Flora in the afternoon. I love fall! The changing colors and the crispness in the air. When the sun is out, you can almost feel your body soaking it up, regardless of the slight chill in the air. Hands down, this is my favorite season. I was up for the early sunrise last week and captured this picture of our backyard. There is steam rising off the river and the colors on the trees are slightly changed. Beautiful!

Drying Clothes, Saving Money

Since we live in a village, we have sewer and water. We get a bill quarterly for our usage and it's typically only within dollars of the month prior. We had a bit of a surprise this past bill as it was almost $20 more than usual. Since in the past three months we had baby on the way, we were doing a lot of laundry. All the clothes we received used or new were washed, all bedding, etc. Lots of wash! And, now that Flora is here, I'm still doing just as much laundry. It's amazing how many clothing changes this little gal will have in one day! The bummer about being hooked up to the village sewer and water is that you pay for the water that comes in AND the water that goes out. At this point, I don't see any decline in our water bill.

The good news is that we have a process that helps offset this new cost! This past summer, we purchased an outdoor clothes hanging dryer for under $40. We successfully hung about every load of laundry on it to dry in the warm sun and fresh breeze. Now that the weather has quickly turned from summer to fall, the opportunity to dry laundry outside has pretty much disappeared. Time to move clothes drying inside...without using the dryer. For our baby shower, we registered for a drying rack for drying Flora's cloth diapers. Air drying is supposed to help them last longer. We actually received two racks and were happy to keep both. We can hang more than just diapers! Then, we received another, larger drying rack for Flora - so we have three. I am so happy we do! We have a perfect space for these drying racks right by the patio door where they can get sunlight to help dry. We have enough drying racks to hang 2 loads of laundry. Although you need some patience for the drying process, it saves the cost of 2 - 60+ minutes drying cycles in the electric dryer.

It feels good to offset costs, and be good to the environment. In the process, we are also putting some free humidity into our home now that the heat is on and drying things out. Here's a shot of our drying set up.