Author: turndoozie

We did our annual weekend trip to the Sault Ste. Marie area in the Upper Peninsula. Or the Soo as it’s known in the Michigan vernacular. Four of us, Lise, Barb, Ellen and I, came up from the Lansing area.  Joanna came over from Marquette to meet up with us. We were after the usual UP winter targets; snowy owls, winter finches, shrikes, sharp-tailed grouse, maybe some gulls we don’t usually get down in Lansing. With an added bonus this year. Barb found out that we could actually drive inside that hallowed U.P. birding hotspot, the Dafter Dump. More on that little adventure later.

Food usually plays a key role in our little adventures. Our U.P. trip usually ends up dominated by restaurants decorated using animal parts. On the way up Friday we hit the Big Buck Brewery in Gaylord. Pity I didn’t take my camera in because their antler chandelier is something to behold. We also did our now traditional lunch among the dead animals and animal parts at Antlers in Sault Ste. Marie. Apparently Antlers was once called the Bloodbath Saloon and Ice Cream Parlor. Tough kids up there in the Soo.

Antlers restaurant.

The weather was interesting. Whenever we go places with Barb we’ve come to expect frostbite. Even in July. This was probably the warmest trip we have ever had up there.  The temperatures were above freezing, making for some interesting driving on the back roads. Water on top of ice made the roads into a fine luge track. We get to thank the El Nino effect for our lack of frostbite. The snow level was way down. Joanna said Marquette is 48 inches below the normal snowfall for the year.

This birding trip is mostly driving. We spend a lot of time driving around, checking fields for snowy owls and hawks. Or driving through small towns checking bird feeders for winter finches.  Then there’s the Dafter Dump.

The view from the back of the van. Note the optical gear and coffee cups. Both required for birding road trips.

The Dafter Dump is well known in U.P. birding circles. It’s even described in Michigan birding guides. Barb has taken us there every year for the past several years. Always on the weekend when the dump is closed. Or so we thought. We would walk a bit of the perimeter, looking longingly through the methane fumes at the distant birds we could just barely make out.

The beloved Dafter Dump.

Then a post on a birding listserve post revealed you can into into the dump for birding. All you need do is go to the office and show your ID. After clearing the ID check you can drive through the mountains of trash and bird your heart and olfactory system out. Why you have to show your ID I don’t know. Maybe to prove you’re not an Islamic terrorist trying to bring down our way of life by bombing landfills friendly to birders. Maybe so authorities can identify the body of those that died from olfactory overload.

So we showed up at 3:45 PM on Saturday and drove right through the slightly open gate.  Open just wide enough to let in a car, but not a garbage truck. A clue we missed. We drove up to the office, which was closed. Another missed clue. Turns out the dump is only open and available to garbage trucks and birders Monday through Friday. But the gate was open and we were inside. Not wanting to pass up a birding opportunity, as Pooh says, we went on a little explore.  We saw another human on the dump pile and drove past a beat up old van. And saw lots of crows, ravens, ring-billed gulls, probably ten bald eagles, and thanks to Barb’s sharp eyes, several glaucous gulls. A first for the year. 

At 4:03 I thought we better head out. When we drove back down, the
van was gone and the gate was shut with a locked cable wrapped around
it. So the first thought was something like; oh golly, this can’t be
good. Followed quickly by thoughts like; we probably are not supposed to
be in here. Who would you even call to open the gate? Might be nobody
here until Monday. Do we have enough food in the car to last until
Monday? Can we find enough in the dump to eat? Who in our party gets
eaten first?  If we didn’t show IDs, how will they identify the bodies?

Then
a rational thought slowly crept into my brain. Why don’t you go look at
it? As I walked up I saw the lock was a four digit inline bicycle cable
type of lock. Ok, this isn’t too bad. There are only 10,000 possible
combinations, from 0000 to 9999. It will take a couple hours but we
should be able to open it. Then I looked closer and saw that the cable
was just wrapped around the gate and not locked. It was faux locked.
Enough to keep out inquiring terrorists and birders, but not enough that
you actually have to use the combination on Monday morning. So we just
unwrapped the cable, slide the gate open, drove through, slid the gate
back, and wrapped the cable back around it. Never once showing our ID.
So the lesson learned is, always bring a bolt cutter when you go birding
with Barb. Might save you from having to ration food. Or worse.

Back side of the Dafter Dump. just to prove we were there and lived to tell.

All in all, we did OK for the trip. We missed some targets like shrikes and sharp-tailed grouse but got a good mix of other species. Lise and I got 14 new species for the year, including snowy owl, which I think may the most handsome bird there is.  And we did not have to spend the weekend inside the Dafter dump.

Snowy owl. How can you not like these birds?

The Mighty Mac (Mackinaw Bridge) on our way home.

Not too much going on in Schools’ world. Except it is winter and blah. We’ve had a remarkably warm winter compared to the last two years. But still, we whine when the temperature drops a little. We would have been appetizers at Donner Pass.

Probably the most exciting thing in the Schools’ household lately, besides the long awaited detection of gravity waves, is the start of the MSU women’s club water polo season. We now get to live vicariously through our daughter.

Molly on the offense.

Molly on the defense.

This past weekend we went down to Bloomington, IN, for their first tournament.  Refereed mayhem.  I think the refs are just there to prevent manslaughter charges. The girls did OK, winning three of their four matches.

Part of the IU aquatic facility.

The big man. I think if you look close enough Lise may have some lip prints on the picture.

Molly being drowned. She likes this sport.

Drown the opponent while throwing the ball. One of our girls is doing the drowning so it’s OK.

Mayhem.

More mayhem.

No foul, at least just yet.

No foul.

We had a great time, seeing friends and visiting old haunts. It was kind of fun to be able to direct people to the best places to eat. Lise was in her glory. She was showing Molly and a friend some rail trail signs she designed and a passerby said how much he loved them. Said something like, “These signs are great. I must have read these signs 50 times.” Then we were at a restaurant and a lady at the next table told Lise she knew her from somewhere. Turns out the lady was a teacher that would take her classes to McCormick’s Creek State Park for Lise’s programs. That was 25 years ago. She was effusive, telling Lise how great her programs were.  Each compliment was another nail in the coffin holding my dreams of a retirement in Costa Rica.

The venerable Chocolate Moose. Once used in a John Melloncamp music video.

Happy Groundhog’s day. I understand ol’ Phil did not see his shadow so winter is just about over.

We are settling in after our vacation. Lise held her annual Groundhog’s Day party on Sunday, a week after we got back. As usual, this was the Okemos social event of the year.

I can sum up the Costa Rica trip in one word; great.  I really liked Costa Rica. I got more of the local cultural on the Peru trip. Costa Rica didn’t have an indigenous culture with a history or ruins like the Inca in Peru. Definitely a bit more adventure on the Peru trip compared to Costa Rica. But there was just something about Costa Rica that was pleasant. Maybe it’s the Pura Vida mentality. Both countries welcome tourism but Costa Rica is a bit more tourist friendly.  Maybe the road system could use some work and better marking, but you can drink tap water pretty much anywhere in Costa Rica. I drank the water all the time without any problems.  Not bad for a third world country. In Peru you didn’t even brush your teeth with tap water.

Didn’t have the adventure of Peru, but this trip was really nice. On a number of levels. All involved were ready for a well-deserved break from the drudgery of life in general.  We got to experience some great places and a wee bit of the variety Costa Rica offers. Saw some interesting wildlife, sometimes closer than we wanted.  With just 12 days in country we could barely scratch the surface of what Costa Rica has to offer, which does suggest more exploration in the future. Got to try some new dishes and learned to appreciate ceviche, the fast food of coastal Costa Rica.

We all had time to just sit, staring at the ocean and reflecting. Most importantly, we got to spend some good time with each other. It’s really nice to sit at an open air bar, up on a mountainside, with a great ocean view, and just chat. Seeing monkeys and toucans from the bar stool was a nice bonus.

As an afterthought I thought I would look at the trip in terms of numbers.  It’s an engineer thing. Had I thought of this before I would have kept track of things a bit better.

3 – The number of participants
13 days – Length of trip, including travel
3 – Number of times turning the wrong way on a one way street.
Unknown – Road miles

1149 miles – Air distance from Detroit to Miami (2 trips)
1122 miles – Air distance from Miami to San Jose (2 trips)
38 miles – Air distance from Quepos to San Jose
118 Lbs – Sum total of our excess baggage weight between Quepos and San Jose

22 – Number of hours in the return trip
3:00 AM – Arrival time back in Okemos

120 – Bird species seen by Ed
122 – Bird species seen by Lise
129 – Total bird species seen
1 – Number of huge man-eating crocodiles seen
1 – Number of huge man-eating grasshoppers seen

1 –  Number of obnoxious Frenchmen encountered

7,220’ – Savegre elevation above sea level
0’ – Uvita elevation above sea level
11,450’ – Driving excursion elevation above sea level
840’ – Okemos elevation above sea level

1,045 – Photos brought back on my cameras
920 – Photos left after first editing pass

1 liter – Amount of rum consumed
1 liter – Amount of scotch consumed
2 bottles – Amount of gin consumed
2 bottles – Amount of white wine consumed
30 cans – Amount of Imperial beer consumed
Unknown – alcohol consumed in restaurants or bars
8 – The number of days for your body to replace all your liver cells. Which means I’m just about ready to roll again

Waterfall on the Lattice House property.

Stefan and Lise in the waterfall.

Trees on the Lattice House property.

Dawn from the Lattice House deck.

Toucan at dawn from the Lattice House deck.

Costa Rica beach, Pacific Coast,

Sunset on the beach.

A flower in the mountains at Savegre.

Waves and sun.

Ceviche, the fast food of coastal Costa Rica. Raw fish pickled in fresh lime juice. In this case served on fried plantain. (Stefan EIchhorn picture)

The three amigos. Last night dinner. (Stefan EIchhorn picture)

PURA VIDA!

Only one or two more posts about Costa Rica. Unless we retire down there in the next couple weeks. Sigh.

I thought I would do a quick rundown on the wildlife. The animal kind, not the party kind. We really don’t do the party kind any more.

For a relatively small country, Costa Rica has some interesting ecological diversity. We hit two very different ecological systems, the higher elevation cloud forest at Savegre, and the sea level coast and wet jungle at Uvita. At least it’s wet in the rainy season. Everything was pretty dry when we were there.

Elevation makes a big difference. The Savegre Lodge was at an elevation of 7,220 feet. For reference, the highest point on the Appalachian Trail is Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina at 6,684 feet. Nights were quite cool, getting down to the upper 40s Fahrenheit. There were a number of species like the rufous-collared sparrow and the green  violet-ear hummingbird, that are common in the upper elevations, but completely missing at the coastal elevations.

Rufous-collared sparrow.

Green violet-ear hummingbird.

Then there are species like the yellow-throated euphonia, black-crowned tityra, white ibis and the tricolored heron that are only found in the lowlands or tied directly to the coast.

Yellow-throated euphonia.

black-crowned tityra.

White Ibis.

Tricolored heron.

Pelicans.

Then there are the ubiquitous species like the great kiskadee or black vultures that were found just about everywhere.

Vulture tracks in the sand.

Great kiskadee with nesting material.

Great kiskadee with nesting material.

Ma and Pa Kiskadee.

All told, the official bird list for Costa Rica contains 857 species. Compare that to North America with a bit over 700 species. We got somewhere over a hundred species this trip, some of them lifers. Exact numbers will follow in another post.

Blue-gray tanager.

Yellow-headed caracara.

Acorn woodpecker.

Chestnut-sided warbler.

Scintillant hummingbird on nest.

Green-crowned brilliant hummingbird, sticking out his tongue at me. 

Three views of the same white-throated mountain-gem to show what a little light refraction through bird feathers does. And why it can be hard to ID the little devils when the field guides only show the brilliant plumage.

Palm tanager.

Blue dacnis (female).

Molting western tanager.

Molting western tanager.

White-throated mountain-gem.

Either female scintillant or female volcano hummingbird.

Woodcreeper, probably streak-headed.

Resplendent quetzal.

Unknown hummingbird.

Dusky nightjar.

Ruddy pigeon.

Unknown hummingbird, probably magnificent.

Molting western tanager.

Philadelphia vireo.

Yellowish flycatcher

We were mostly birding but some critters of the mammal type were around. At Uvita we had peccary, agouti, howler monkeys, coati, and a few other critters wandering the grounds. When we did the horseback ride we had capuchin monkeys around the lunch stop. Lise and Stefan did a canopy zip line tour and had a very rare close up look at a sloth. I thought that would be a good day to go to the beach instead. Sigh.

Coatis

Capachin monkey.

Sloth. (Stefan Eichhorn pictures)

We had some herpetofauna too, mostly in the form of lizard like animals. Stefan saw one snake on the trail but that was about it for snakes. He found a couple different poison dart frogs too. Most of the herps did not cooperate for pictures. Usually I was set up to take pictures of big things like birds, not small lizards or frogs. By the time I switched over the subject was long gone. We saw some larger iguana type lizards near the beach area but I could never get a good picture of them.

Then I was trying to take some Norther Jacana pictures a crocodile popped up out of the water. Teeth with an attitude. While I was taking pictures of him I saw another set of eyes sticking out of the water and drifting down toward us. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and slowly backed out. This all occurred about 20 feet away from a couple huts with toddlers walking around. Nobody seemed to mind. Pura Vida I guess. Wouldn’t bother me too much to see it knock off a few Frenchmen though. Might make some interesting action shots.

Shedding lizard.

Lizard trying to impress the ladies by showing his dewlap.

Some kind of a whip tail I believe.

Dart frog. (Stefan Eichhorn picture)

Teeth with an attitude.

Finally there’s the invertebrates. There were some stunning butterflies but they just would not cooperate. Dragonflies were pretty sparse too. I only saw two species and they also would not cooperate much. Then there’s the ants. Like Stefan said, “ants rule the jungle.” There are species of birds that specialize in following the army ants to grab the bugs and animals trying to get out of the way.

Butterfly

Honking big caterpillar.

Paper wasp nest. From a safe distance.

Unknown dragonfly species.

Bottom side of an unknown spider. I think there are something like 1,800 spider species in Costa Rica. There was one just like this on the deck.

I don’t know what was in these shells but now they’re bigger and probably hungry.

Ant trail through the yard at the house.

Leaf cutter ants carrying leaves.

Leaf cutter ants carrying leaves. 

Leaf cutter ants carrying leaves. 

Leaf cutter ants carrying blossoms. 

So that covers the out in the wild wildlife. Then there’s the in the house wildlife. In the tropics there’s a lot of energy, in the form of sunshine driving the system. In the tropical lowlands, where you don’t have the mediating effect of cooler temperatures, things can grow large. And kind of creepy. Combine that with having the house wide open for airflow and you get a whole menagerie of wildlife that you learn to live with in or around the house.  There was a spider web by the pool that had seven different spiders of three different species living in it. There was a several pound cane toad that would come up on the deck some nights. We ended up with two different birds we had to shoo out of the house. In the early geckos would scurry around the walls, especially on the deck. Lots of smaller vermin too. Then there was the grasshopper. Not just any grasshopper, THE grasshopper.

Some bug that lived on the faucet.

These millipedes were all over the place. They crunch when you step on them at night.

I don’t know what this is but it was in our bedroom. It was already dead some I was a little concerned about what killed it.

These geckos came out every evening. Mostly on the outside walls, but always.

We called this one stumpy.

THE grasshopper.

We are back in Okemos from our little jaunt to Costa Rica. Too much to write about, plus about a thousand pictures to process, for one installment.  So this will just be a quick trip overview. More will follow.

The general itinerary was leaving dreary Okemos and flying to San Jose, Costa Rica. We met up with Stefan at the Miami airport. In San Jose Stefan rented a car and we took off for the Savegre hotel and nature reserve, about 60 miles south of San Jose. Sixty miles as the crow flies.  More than 60 miles when going by poorly marked roads full of insane drivers.  As Matt Ely once said, Latin American driving is essentially macadam based mayhem. Double yellow centerlines are apparently only a guideline, and not a no-passing rule. But with perseverance, determination, GPS, and no small amount of descriptive language, Stefan got us through.  The Costa Rican road system is probably French designed.

 Our driveway when we left.

Savegre is in the cloud forest area, up in the mountains at an elevation of about 7,200 feet.  Quite cool in temperature but way above freezing and no snow. Cloud forest, open areas, trails, rivers, waterfalls, great birding and a good place for photography. Popular place for guys with really big lenses.  I could only look in envy with my biggish lens. Lots of Asian and European tourists, including some incredibly rude French ones. At least they gave us someone to laugh at the whole trip.

Lise and Stefan on trail at Savegre

Savagre river in color.

Savagre river in black and white.

Green violet-eared Hummingbird.

Resplendent quetzal. Costa Rica’s national bird. Right above our room.

After Savegre we drove down to the coast near Uvita. Elevation somewhere around 10 feet. Very hot and humid system. Nothing quite as intense as near equatorial sun. OK, maybe French arrogance.

We stayed in a very nice vacation rental with a lot of jungle around it and quick access to the Pacific coast. There was a waterfall about a half mile hot and sweaty walk away.  Lots of great birding, much of it right from our deck.

Lattice house, where we stayed.

View over the infinity pool at sunrise.

Waterfall on the property.

Stefan and Lise in waterfall

Green honeycreeper from the deck. 

Great kiskadee from the deck.

Golden-crowned tanager from the deck.

Chesnut-billed toucan from the deck.

The house functioned as a base camp for a fair number of activities in the area.  One activity was a horseback ride to Nauyaca Falls. 

Ed riding a hay burner. (Meredith Strobel picture)

A monkey on along the trail.

Lise and Stefan at the upper falls. (Meredith Strobel picture)

Nuacaya Falls upper falls in color.

Nuacaya Falls upper falls in B&W.

Ed climbing the lower falls. (Meredith Strobel picture)

Ed jumping from the lower falls. (Meredith Strobel picture)

Only down side to that trip was Lise getting kicked by a horse. Actually another horse kicked her horse and caught her leg. I’m sure the other horse was trained by the French to be obnoxious. The horse incident didn’t really lay Lise up too badly and she still managed to get around. She and Stefan did a canopy tour on zip lines. And she could still get in hikes around the property.

Lise recouperating.

Hiking in the jungle. 

Most to my liking was access to the beach. In Costa Rica the coast is pretty much open access. You just pull over where ever you can find a spot. People set up stalls selling drinks and other beach type of stuff. Lots of surfer types.  Lots of ExPats hanging around.  Everything kind of laid back. They call it Pura Vida.  Something I could really get in to.

Lise and Stefan at the beach.

Ed at the beach. (Stefan Eichhorn picture)

Lifeguards hired by the locals for the beach they use. Most beaches are unguarded.

The lady in red managed the house we stayed in. She brought her kids and dog to the beach every day.

Selling refreshments.

Making an offering to the beach gods?

Sunset in color

Sunset in B & W.

Along the beach.

Along the beach.

Getting back home was interesting. Instead of trying to drive back to San Jose we took what amounted to a bush plane from the coast. They weighed you and your luggage. With a ton of camera and birding gear, plus a couple bottles of rum, we were about a hundred pounds overweight. There was an orange stick hanging off the tail of the airplane that I believe told them when the plane was at maximum capacity. As each person got in the stick got closer to the ground. Luckily we didn’t bottom it out and we sat right behind the pilot and copilot. But we made it to San Jose and eventually to Detroit via Miami. We got up about 6:00 AM Michigan time and got home 22 hours later at 3:00 AM Michigan time.

The departure lounge.

The plane out on Concourse C.

Close enough we can reach the controls in an emergency.

The airport and runway from the air.

Landing in San Jose.

Full moon rising over the Miami airport.

What we left.

What we came back to.

Welcome to Costa Rica. 

What we left in Okemos.

Birding Pura Vida. Infinity pool with gin and tonic. 

Oh, and I jumped off a waterfall. That’s not me. More to follow.

We lost another good one. Fido, our pet bearded dragon, passed away this morning after a protracted decline. She supplied us with many amusing moments. Coldblooded but warm hearted. Bye Fido, you will be missed.

Fido 2008

Fido in the castle

Christmas chilling with Molly, West Lafayette, 2014.

Fido on neck pumpkins.

Doing homework 9/17/2010

Practicing violin.

Little Fido.

Happiness is a warm keyboard.

Happiness is a warm back.

Peek-a-boo.

Happiness is a warm heat vent.

Happiness is a warm puddle.

Pool shark.

Easter bunny.

Happiness is a warm shower.

Happiness is a wax worm.

Swimming lizard.

Bye Fido, you will be missed.

This post is a test. I‘m trying to see if I can do a post, including images, using my little tablet. If I can, I don’t need to take a laptop to Costa Rica. So far I am less than impressed. I am using a Google Nexus 7 with an Android operating system. This is painful at best. I would not recommend this unit to a friend.

We did a little chasing this past weekend. Tried for a harlequin duck and a long-eared owl, both in different locations. Might have gotten the harlequin down in Jackson had we remembered to take the scope. Someone saw it 10 minutes before we got there but the reported location was out of reliable binocular range. 

The long-eared owl was a cold lead from a week or so ago, up in the Maple River area. We thought we would give it a try anyway but, no luck. The trips weren‘t wasted. We got new species for the year on both trips. First of the year species or FOY in birder speak. The avian species count for the year is at 27 for me and 28 for Lise. If the weather hadn‘t turned cold we could have gotten some duck species before we head to Costa Rica. Our local lakes have now pretty much iced over and quite frankly we haven‘t been very inclined to stand around in 20 degree weather either.

I‘ve been so busy plotting which wildlife refuge I want to take over that I haven‘t had an opportunity to try out my biggish lens. Also known as a critter lens in some circles. A cardinal rule of photography is never go on a trip with new untested equipment. Which means I only have a couple of days in 20 degree weather to check it out. So when you don’t  have any real wildlife opportunities, might as well pick on the lizard. These are action shots in the lizard world. At least her eyes are open.

Fido from across the room.

First day of a brand new year.

Our New Year’s Eve was pretty low key. Lise made a big pot of gumbo and we had some Yuengling beer to go with it. Kind of a Pennsylvania Cajun thing.  Lindsay’s family came over and we all yucked it up for a bit. I think everyone was in bed by 11:00 so the New Year pretty much came in without us.

Looking back, 2015 was an OK year. Some good things, some not so good things. We didn’t plan too many big trips, kind of restoring the coffers after the travel year of 2014. We got in a few trips but mostly for family stuff and the trips pretty low key. The avian species count for the year was 292 for me and 267 for Lise. The big difference was my work related Arizona trip. A co-worker on the trip was an excellent birder. I easily got 20 species just because of him.

I suspect this next trip around the sun will be a bit more interesting, probably in many ways. We have a couple trips planned, including Costa Rica in about a week. I’ve already started packing.  We plan on doing some paddling with Joanna up in Canada in May. Rich and I should be doing two weeks on the Appalachian Trail the end of June. Who knows what other adventures await us.

Today we wanted to start the year off right so we did a short local hike. The weather was dismally gray, and the breeze a bit raw, but we went anyway.  Things were pretty icy. Our local parks are the places nobody else wants. Mostly floodplain, can’t grow corn or build houses, so you make it a park. When the river is up the trails flood. The fun comes when the flooded trails ice over. You try to cross the ice fast before it breaks through and you get wet. That my friend, is adventure here in Okemos. Things can only get better.

Icy trails in Legg Park.

So one goal for this next year will be getting to some new places in Michigan. We tend to keep going to the places we know and really haven’t done this state justice.  The other is to ramp up my photography. Not just taking more images but taking better images. And getting better at processing those Images.  In particular, I want to get some good photographs in Lansing. I consider Lansing a pretty dreary place with few redeeming qualities. So I’m making it a goal to get some good images out of Lansing. If I can get even a couple good images from Lansing, I should be able to get good images anywhere.

Twas the night before Christmas, in West Lafayette
The lizard’s not stirring, that’s a safe bet
The stockings were loaded, we tore them a sunder
It wasn’t too pretty, think pirates and plunder

The family is nestled, snug in their beds
Visions of scrapple filling their heads
I should be sleeping, I do need the nap
Instead of sleeping, I poured a nightcap

As the whiskey soaked in I started to mellow
Slowly becoming one right happy fellow
Then deep in my brain there arose such a clatter
My conscience was shouting, did this year matter?

What did you do, where did the year go?
You had to do something, what can you show?
Then what to my wondering eyes should appear,
The whole year played out, but still all a smear

All the pieces were there, but things were so hazy
Keep thinking and focus, it’s all just too crazy
My brain started working, so lively and quick
I knew in a moment, some things I could pick

The year started rough, just nasty and cold
Going outside was for only the bold
We went birding anyway, with Barb to the Soo
Snowy owls so stunning, and some frostbite too

Arizona in May, the weather so nice
After last winter, well worth the price
My job sent me there, bats to detect
A better place, I could not select

Chiricahua Mountains, a region quite tough
Home of the Apache, they had the right stuff
The Milky Way stunning, an incredible sight
Major sleep deprivation, the bats fly at night

A visit with Joanna, up in the U.P.
One of the best places to be
The cabin, some birding, Pesheeke for hiking
We stayed on Sand River, much to my liking

Lise went to Eureka, for a little vacation
Mike gave her a tour of legal distillation
He makes his own vodka, the critics all rave
This is good stuff, this is our fave

Two trips to the U.P., these for my work
Getting paid to travel is a really nice perk
Looking for bats, their reputation misleading
The terrain quite rough, our van took a beating

Molly did the Galapagos, college credits for school
Wildlife and fun times, now that’s pretty cool
I’ve never been there, she’s been there twice
I paid for both trips, trust me high is the price

The year had some good times, but some very sad
We lost two good ones, Jack Heisey and Dad
Both of them served, they did their part
Good men both, with plenty of heart

Buried with honors, and a rifle salute
Three volleys fired, a fitting tribute
Their time to go, some things you can’t change
Without their presence it seems kind of strange

Fido got sick, eating worms stuffed with fescue
Lucky for her, Lindsay came to the rescue
Now Lindsay is sick, her kidneys are history
No one knows why, it’s all a big mystery

She’s facing it well, she’s tough and strong,
There’s no reason for this, it’s just so wrong
She now does dialysis, her routine is rough
But like the Apache, she has the right stuff

Looking back at the year, we did what we could
When the occasion warranted, we did what we should
We keep plugging on, and we fight the good fight
So happy Christmas to all and to all a good night