{"id":152,"date":"2008-08-14T17:32:24","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T00:32:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/?p=152"},"modified":"2013-12-14T12:15:57","modified_gmt":"2013-12-14T17:15:57","slug":"summer-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/summer-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m back from my summer vacation: a week in Kenora<\/a> with my family: lots of swimming and time to visit relatives and old friends. <\/p>\n

No trip home would be complete without a trip to the local Dairy Queen<\/a>: we arrived before they opened so we took a walk down to a nearby beach. It was covered in geese: which looked nice from afar… but a closer look revealed it was also covered in goose crap. So we’ll stick to the “from afar” photo:<\/p>\n

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I was in town with my sister and her friend Vicki: who were trying to hide behind trees while I was taking photos at the beach, but I managed to get them:<\/p>\n

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My grandparents had 7 guests at their camp… all family+relations from their long-time friends in Manitoba. Here we all are piled onto the picnic table for a group photo:<\/p>\n

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My cousin Randi, her husband Tyler, and their daughter Madison also made it. Here they are coming back in from a cruise around the lake:<\/p>\n

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Really good friends of my grandparents let me take their quad for a ride again (thanks Fred!) and a took a few trips into the bush and back. Once was to maintain my geocache, because it had disappeared. The cache is called “Deer Tracks”<\/a> because… well… it’s in a mud hole full of deer tracks:<\/p>\n

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I also got to take my mom for a ride: we explored back to my cache and other trails in the area. Here we are turned around at a dead-end at a beaver dam, and pictures of what most of the trail was like:<\/p>\n

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We also made it back to a lake called Greenwater<\/a> where there’s always boats stored by fishermen, and snowmobile trails in the winter. Here’s the boat launch area, a picture of the beaver dam, and a view back down the creek to another lake called Rosina<\/a> (I once stepped off a snowmobile driving on that creek and went right through the ice):<\/p>\n

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We also stopped at a semi-maintained-but-back-in-the-bush campsite on a lake called Little Pickerel<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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On the way back my mom mentioned that there was usually a snowmobile trail from a local road onto Little Pickerel in the winter. It was easy to find, and I decided to try to drive out to the lake (against my mothers protests: “Let me off!”). It looked like the first few feet of the trail was covered in a couple inches of mud. Actually it was a couple inches of dirt, twigs, and weeds floating over deep ruts filled with water. We sank in immediately. Oops!<\/p>\n

It took a bit of maneuvering to get out:<\/p>\n

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In the end we made it home safe: no worse for wear other than soggy shoes and pants soaked in mud up to the knees. I also saw a few deer while driving around: but only one stood still to have his picture taken:<\/p>\n

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My good friend James came out to visit with his wife Tonya and children Matthew and Madison. We ended up taking a quad ride together near midnight… and at one point came to a stop at the edge of Trout Lake<\/a> where the trail ended. My eyes were adjusted to the headlights of my quad, and I could only see the lights of his quad beside me. I heard him rustling around over the rumble of the machines and decided to snap a photo of him sitting there. Well… when the flash went off I didn’t get the picture I was expecting. <\/p>\n

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Why risk stumbling into the bush in total darkness when nature calls… when the racks of the quad give a stable surface from which to leave your mark? I learn something new every time I go back to Kenora!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m back from my summer vacation: a week in Kenora with my family: lots of swimming and time to visit relatives and old friends. No trip home would be complete without a trip to the local Dairy Queen: we arrived Continue reading Summer Holidays<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ptY4v-2s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1021,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/1021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikekirk.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}