a Michi-gander

October is the perfect time for a fall road trip!  So I headed a few hours north and met my friend Heather for a Lake Michigan adventure.

The dunes are steeper than I expected!  You can see tiny specks (people) making the climb in the second photo.  

So many gulls!

Lake Michigan is so pretty.

Lighthouses!!

We got some good weather and quite a bit of (nicely atmospheric) rain.

Even with the damp and the chill, we were able to orchard-hop...

...and totally dominate the area's largest corn maze!

The breaks in the storm...

...gave us time to leaf-peep...

...and check out some of the things that Michigan is famous for.

Well, I've never seen a black squirrel before, anyway!

We even got to sleep in a castle one night!

I had my own balcony in the Queen's Turret...

...that was perfect for a little late-night knitting!  

We came, we saw...and I got home juuuuust in time to celebrate Todd's half birthday with a burnt, sloppily-decorated cookie cake that pretty much accurately reflected my out-of-it state of mind after much driving and not quite enough sleep.

We still went for our walk this morning...

...and I love that it's sweater weather (this week), and that it's just enough cold for our leaves here to finally start changing.

Hooray for fall at last!

Have a great week!

a blur of missour(i)

 Welcome to Missouri!   

And other states.  :)  Todd and I took a multi-state road trip last week to visit my brother in central Missouri.  We had so much fun and saw some amazing things.  We took a day trip to Johnny Morris's Wonders of Wildlife Aquarium...nearly 2 miles of exhibits!  A lot to see.

I got to feed a ray!

Too much fun...

...and so pretty.

Another day, we rented bicycles at Dogwood Canyon.

Lots of nice paths for those of us who haven't ridden in a while!

Missouri has some beautiful rock formations...

...and so many waterfalls!

We saw a lot of wildlife, even though it's late in the season.  

muskrat

groundhog

Todd nearly stepped on this cottonmouth snake...Missouri's only venomous water snake. Thankfully, it slithered off into the rocks instead of defending its territory.

We saw a ton of rainbow trout.

The water is so blue because the stream is fed by an underwater aquifer.  

We saw golden trout too, a type of rainbow trout.

The trip was a great success, in part, because there were no "medical" complications!  Not only is it really difficult for me to sleep away from home, the medicine that I'm on for my outsized perimenopause symptoms gives me strange headaches...stabbing pain behind the eye.  They're not migraines (I actually haven't had a migraine since starting the medicine, which is great), but they're  unpredictable and can last for days, which completely saps my strength.  No issues on this trip...hooray!

That means we can try another trip soon.

Have a great week!