Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

I wrote a couple of short posts about certain days during our two-week stay in Iron River, WI but I feel impelled to reflect on that time. It was exquisitely vacation-like and it will make me happy in the future to remember the things that created this. Let's do this Letterman style: #10: Hayward, WI Sometimes you need something to do. The kids are getting rammy. The house is feeling small. The weather isn't what you hoped. So we hopped in the car and drove about an hour to Hayward to see the Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame and a small-town amusement center. We skipped the latter and instead spent quite a bit of time on main street shopping, eating ice cream, eating dinner and also enjoying a small little city park along the river. Elise, Ali, Cate and Henry in the mouth of the worlds largest Muskie. This gave us the chance to see the banner advertising the lumberjack world championships later that week. This was an unexpected highlight of the trip so far. Hayward...

Whoa. Just whoa. There's just no way that I could have guessed that, in the course of this adventure, we'd be on ESPN3. You heard that right. Not ESPN. Not ESPN 2. Not ESPNU. Not ESPN-Chess. ESPN3. Because on Monday we went to Hayward, about an hour south of us, and noticed banners for the World Lumberjack Championship, to be held August 1-3. And we decided to go back, risking another round of tantrums about spending money at the toy store. Have you ever been to a World Lumberjack Championship? Have you been to a lumberjack competition at all? It was like being at an American Ninja Warrier shoot but without the production. These are serious athletes. Even as I write this, I don't know what pictures I'm going to post. It was that incredible. It was also like a miniature county fair. We ate brats, burgers, chips, kettle corn, caramel corn; the twins had their faces painted; somehow, nobody got wet in and around the under-12 log rolling tank. Oh, and parking ...