a camping we will go...

This past weekend, Jenna and I went camping at Holland State Park with our friends, Chris and Erika Vonk.

Jenna has slept in a tent before for various mission trips, but this was her first time officially camping.

After work on Friday, we loaded up the Tracker and headed for Holland.

We arrived at about 9:15, so it was already dark. Chris and Erika were already there and had their tent set up. Despite the darkness we got our tent set up without a problem.

We got a fire started, even though Chris burned through an entire Friday edition of the Kalamazoo Gazette, and our camping experience was officially underway.

We enjoyed some s'mores with mega size marshmallows, sat around the fire for a couple hours, and then headed to bed.

The morning brought coffee and oatmeal for breakfast and a nice lazy morning. We hit up the beach for awhile in the later morning/early afternoon. The water temp was 70 degrees, which I thought was rather pleasant. I guess everyone else disagreed as I was the only one to make it in past my knees.

Due to fast approaching hunger we drove into town and had lunch at Subs-n-More. After getting back, we sat around some more before heading out on our bike ride to Captain Sundae.

We stopped for a pic at the Holland State Park sign, just in case we forget where we went :)

We enjoyed a nice calorie bomb in the form of a sundae, and then rode back to camp. Next up was hot dogs and corn on the cob for dinner, both cooked over the fire.

We caught a beautiful sunset that night.

Here's a little video from the sunset experience as well. I tried my hand at comedy in replicating the Double Rainbow Guy  with the sunset. It started out OK, but I lost it about halfway through...



The night ended with some delicious hobo pies around a fire.

The morning involved more coffee and oatmeal before packing up and heading home.

We had amazing weather for the weekend.  No rain, mid 80s during the day, and mid 50s over night.

We witnessed a lot of parents yelling at unruly kids.  One dad yelled at his kids so frequently, we even learned their names (Jed and Rocky).  It was kinda funny.  He did settle down though when the rest of his group arrived late Saturday, and the yelling ceased.

Overall, we had a great time, and we will definitely be going again.  Maybe a little winter camping is up next. :)

The King of Pop

A couple weekends ago we took a little trip down to the Indianapolis area to visit Jenna's family. We left Friday night after I got out of work and were able to spend a few days there as Jenna had Monday off as well that weekend.

The main event of the weekend was an outdoor concert at Connor Prarie.  Every weekend throughout the summer the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra puts on concerts of other Artists' music. They also typically will get a musical impersonator to sing all the songs.

Last year we attended their rendition of music by Queen. This year we went to see a tribute to Michael Jackson, the King of Pop. The vocalist did an excellent job of both singing and dancing.  Granted nothing is as good as the real thing, but I was still impressed.

We met Jenna's cousins Jason and Chrissy, and their daughter Gigi at Connor Prarie.  We had more delicious food than anyone could possibly eat, and despite the mid 90's temperatures, and high humidity it was a good time had by all.

Here's a short clip of "Bad",  you can't really see much of anything but you can at least hear part of the concert.



A few pics from the evening...

3rd Annual Kal-Haven Trail Ride

Two years ago, my Dad and I decided to ride the Kal-Haven trail, from Kalamazoo to South Haven.  For those of you that don't know, the trail is 34 miles long (36 miles if you start at my parents house), and is a crushed limestone surface.  It takes the route of the old railway between the above mentioned cities.

As my Dad will attest, the first year was a bit rough, as he was plenty tired by the end of the ride.  Last year we decided to ride again, only we had a few other participants.  My brother Danny and sister Abby came along, as well as my girlfriend (prior to engagement and wedding), Jenna.  That ride went much smoother, except for Abby who said she would never ride the whole trail again.

Here are some of Abby's thoughts from last year....


The 3rd annual ride had record attendance.  Everyone from the 2009 ride was there, and this year my brother Nick and sister Theresa joined in the fun, as well as Danny's girlfriend, Meaghan.  Against all odds, Abby decided to go again, even after wanting to 'die' last year.

The weather was perfect this year.  We all made it in once piece, and even completed the trail quicker than the previous year.

A big thanks to my Mom for volunteering to be a driver, and help coordinate getting us all back to Kalamazoo!

Just for comparison sake, I took another video of Abby to capture her thoughts on this year's ride.



The riders after 36 miles...

Summer Groovin'

Adventure racing has sort of become a passion of mine in the past 2 years or so.  This past Saturday, Mike Wilson and I completed the 15 hour Summer Groove race, put on by Apex Outdoor Gear.

I met Mike at church and we found out that we both had some adventure racing in our past, so we decided to do a race together.  It just happened to be the longest one either of us had ever attempted.

The race was held at Yankee Springs Recreation Area, which is kind of our "home field".  We did a couple practice rides and a little practice orienteering prior to the race. 

The race started at 3 AM (and yes, that is supposed to say AM), so we knew we were going to have to do something in the dark.  We were given our maps and then set free.  The start and finish was located just west of Hall Lake.  Here's a map to get a rough idea of the area.  We first had to trek a couple miles over to the bike staging area (east of Deep Lake) without being able to use the paved roads.

We made it, but were the third to last team to arrive to get our bikes.  Next up was mountain biking the first 9 miles of the single track mountain bike trail at Yankee Springs.  In the dark.  Things got off to a rough start.  Mike got on his bike only to find a flat rear tire before we even got started!  We got it changed out and proceeded out on the course.

Single track riding at night is tough, as I found out the hard way.  With it being tough to see, I got a little close to the edge of the trail and the earth just gave way under my tires.  My bike stopped and skidded down the slope, while I continued moving forward and flew over the handle bars.  Relatively unscathed, I got up, got my bike and we kept going.

We made it to the next transition area, still in third to last place.  It was light out now, which was helpful as we had to start the first orienteering leg.  We got the first three points very quickly and had made up a lot of ground, but got a little lax looking for the last point in the area and spent a lot of time walking in circles, which set us behind even more.

We finally found it and got back to our bikes to head to the paddling section on Crooked Lake in Delton.  It was about a 20 mile ride on the roads to get to our canoe, and hit one optional point on the way as well.  There are not any big climbs on the route, just rolling hill after rolling hill. 

The paddling section consisted of four check points, two mandatory, two optional.  We got the first two mandatory points, which still involved about 4 miles of paddling.  We decided to skip the optional points, get back with plenty of time, and focus on the final orienteering portion, as it would have been another good 2-3 hours in the canoe.

We biked  the 15 or so miles back up to Yankee and prepared to set out on the orienteering course.  There were several mandatory check points and a bunch of optional ones.  One of the mandatory points required swimming to an island in Hall Lake.  The water actually felt great, and was a nice way to cool down a bit.

After the swim we started picking off check points like it was our job.  Things were starting to work in our favor.  We were making great time and finding all our check points quite accurately.  We definitely owe some thanks to another team, who we worked with to find a few points, as well as an older guy living on Gun Lake, as he let us use his hose to fill our packs because we both ran out of water with about 2 hours to go.

We were routinely up to our knees in swampy muck, and in Mike's case up to mid chest level on occasion.  It's tough to be certain how many miles we actually covered on foot in the orienteering course, but I would estimate somewhere between 12-15 miles.
We ended up nailing all but one of the orienteering course points, to give us 22 of 25 check points.  

This was enough to give us 2nd place in the 2-person male division! 

It was definitely a day of perseverance physically, but mentally as well,  after having such a rough start to the race, we kept a level head and kept pushing. 

It was an absolutely awesome day.  Mike was a great partner to have out there and we worked quite well as a team.  Unfortunately, I had to leave out a lot of details to keep this somewhat readable, but if you want more details, either or us would be more than happy to share.

Here's a short post race video...