Rain Dance

There are two silver linings in this 10 day fog monsoon that has been rolling through the Northern U.P. One is that the mosquitos have been kept at bay. I swear I'm not naive to think moving back to the U.P. would not present some bug problems. I was fully prepared - it goes with the territory. Expected, but numerous and annoying none-the-less. Kind of like the fleet of Subarus in and around Marquette proper.

The other is that the creek is now flowing at spring snow melt levels. The bug damper and 18 inch rise in water flow gave me enough incentive to go on my first exploratory river hike last night and it did not disappoint.

Nelson Creek: 4

Dave: 1

As a resident of East Lansing, spontaneous fishing excursions consisted of a 1.5 hour drive to the nearest decent trout water to try my luck at hatchery trout along with the 5,000 other guys from the Lansing and Grand Rapids areas. Certainly better than not fishing at all, but wild brookies in your backyard is a welcome change indeed - just the right medicine after a day at the library.

Like most Yoopers right now I'm ready for God to turn off the water works, but in a few weeks I'll welcome instructions on performing a good rain dance.

Rain rain go away

With all this rain and cool weather, the only things happy are our garden and our evergrowing lawn as we wait for the lawnmower to be fixed. Today is supposed to be the first day of summer but sure doesn't feel like it.
I guess one good thing coming out of this cool weather is we have been able to get the house pretty much in order. Curtains have been hung, ugly carpet has been ripped up and tiles mopped, pictures are on the walls, and storage boxes are all put away. Take a look below at how the place has come along. I'm sure from the last post you could tell just how much Dave is loving the porch.

Breakfast Nook

Dining Room

Living room shot with picture window

"Extra" Room

Woodstove the merganser was caught in

Kitchen

Porch Shot 1

Porch Shot with apple press and old clothes ringer

Porch with old bookshelf and Michigan Brewer's Guild Sign

Love the stained glass on the stairwell!

A little bit of Lansing art courtesy of Riverview

Office/Runover room upstairs

Our Bedroom

Guest Room

On a lighter note we were able to enjoy this last weekend spending Father's Day in Gladstone, having new parents Craig and Michele LeClaire and little Cale visit our place, and taking Thule for his first trip to Lake Superior along with second trip to the city market. We even found some downstate Michigan wines at Farmer Q's downtown Marquette and enjoyed a Babycakes muffin and Huron Earth Deli sandwich.

Thule & Superior

Little baby Cale

Our weekend was bound to be exciting though after it started off Friday night with a house visitor. Walking through the living room after coming home from work, Dave heard a strange raspy noise coming from the woodstove. After investigating (and Thule barking a lot) we were confident something alive was in there. Using a fishing net to block the door and a camera's flash to better visualize we found a duck in the woodstove! No idea how she fell all the way down the chimney but with a pair of leather gloves Tracy was able to scoop this  merganser out of the stove, clean up a little, and free down by the creek where she flew away. Pretty exciting introduction to U.P. wildlife.

Front Porch Sittin'

It took awhile gather the motive to rise up from my perch on our recently dusted-off front porch this evening. There just seems to be something about farmhouses and porches. A good sampling of the visitors we've already had have echoed my exact thoughts about this phenomenon: "There's going to be a lot of front porch sittin' here, eh?"

I won't even pretend to take credit for readying what I'm adopting as a makeshift man cave. With her bountiful energy and armed with some convenient vacuum attachments, Tracy single handedly eliminated the graveyard of insects from windowsills, cleaned out the Nyberg moving debris and topped off the decor with a slice of authentic Americana she dug out of the barn. After completing yet another day of picking through ridiculous Criminal Law hypos, I decided against giving the mosquitos another blood buffet on Nelson Creek in favor of enjoying my last Brewery Vivant IPA (affectionately given my brother Erik) on the newly (somewhat) habitable front porch with Thule. 

Perhaps we'd see our targeted harvest for this fall trot through the orchard. Maybe the resident black bear would finally make his presence known. Feeling eerily similar to deer camp, I fought back the reality of wildlife watching (or lack of it) at Camp NOLA with optimism and sipped on my hoppy bitterness. Evening birdsong and a chorus of crickets filled the transition silence between tunes on the recently installed jambox - my one contribution to the porch. Ahh the (pretend) farm life.

After another draught I gathered the courage to get mutilated again on Nelson Creek in pursuit of my first yet-to-be landed wild brookie of the season. Thule in tow, I lasted about 5 minutes. "Tomorrow," I thought. "After some front porch sittin'."

One Week Down in Da U.P.!

So we've officially been Yoopers for one week now!


(Well... Dave reclaimed his Yooper status after a 10+ year hiatus in East Lansing)

Let's start near the beginning - After five years together of being students and working in the Lansing area, we recently uprooted and moved to Marquette County to "officially" begin our lives together. It's been a whirlind of a year - We got married last September and both finished up graduate school this spring. Being alumni of Michigan State University, the name for this blog stemmed from the nickname of our alma mater we love so much - "Moo U" (Deriving from MSU's beginnings in 1855 as our country's first land grant college when it was named "Michigan Agricultural College"). 

Ever since we started dating, we wanted to move up north to begin our careers. We're very excited that an opportunity here presented itself. Tracy started as an associate vet at Bayshore Animal Hospital this last week while Dave is busy studying for the upcoming bar exam and therefore becoming quite familiar with the Peter White Public Library in Marquette.

After a week of packing up our place in Lansing (thanks to a lot of help from our family and friends - Bonnie, Wayne, and Mike) we made the drive to our new home - a farmhouse in Skandia, Mich. Compared to the small Cape Cod style home we were renting in Lansing with a backyard just big enough for our border collie mix, Thule (A.K.A. "Tool-man"), this new, albeit old place is gargantuan! With the exception of Dave making a few casts for native brook trout in Nelson Creek (really just creating a feast for the mosquitos), we still haven't even touched the 150 acres available for us to play on. 

All of last weekend consisted of unloading the van and moving truck (thanks to another set of family and friends: Patti, Dave, and Brett), but thankfully we were able to relax and take in Marquette a bit with a few draughts of blueberry wheat beer made locally at The Vierling, followed by a bonfire at the home of our friends (and soon-t0-be newlyweds), Brett and Kelly. 

Work went great for Tracy in her first week as a vet - she's meeting lots of new people and animals, performing some surgeries and getting comfortable at Bayshore with Dr. Tim Hunt and the awesome staff. We both enjoy a new morning routine - our commute together on U.S. 41 to Marquette as Dave drops Tracy off at bayshore on his way to "work" (studying) at the Peter White Public Library. It's an abrupt change for Dave to switch from working at the State Capitol for MUCC to burying himself in bar prep books all day, but the new view overlooking Lake Superior from his favorite 2nd floor study spot softens the adjustment.

The goal was to get this blog up and running during the move, but needless to say we had (and still have) our hands quite full with getting acclimated! After a week living out of boxes while slowly unpacking and hanging pictures after work and studying, our farmhouse is finally starting to feel more like a home. 

Just as it is for anybody else, moving has been a bear - we've been quite busy working hard to adjust to our new work and home environment and getting everything settled. But we've managed to have some fun mixed in-between. An attempt to see Dave's old American Legion baseball team (Gladstone Indians) play Marquette unfortunately was rained out by a torrential downpour. Later in the week we witnessed another Lake Superior induced weather change with a 40 degree temperature swing in the matter of an hour as fog engulfed Marquette Bay, but it couldn't damper a fun midweek night out with old and new friends. We were also able to make it to the weekly Saturday farmer's market in Marquette as Tracy was pleasantly surprised to encounter a treat from "home" - Southwest Michigan (Eau Claire!) strawberries. We picked up plenty of plants for our garden, which was completed this last weekend. We'll have to see what kind of green thumbs we have attempting a variety of peppers, tomatoes, beans, peas, herbs, strawberries, pumpkins, zucchinis, and squash. 

We experienced farm life also with our first trip to the self-haul town dump and driving a riding lawnmower, which decided to quit on us halfway through the giant yard.  We were also able to eat well with good ribs at Up North Lodge (thanks for the gift certificate Erik!) and breakfast at a locally famous hole-in-the-wall with our brother and sister-in-law, Brad and Erika. We also participated in their couples' baby shower. Not too bad along with still setting up the house just as we want it! (Well, almost...)

We're sure the adventures will only continue to mount as our time in God's Country moves on. We're missing all of our family and friends "downstate," but cannot wait for everyone to visit. We have lots of wildlife friends living near us with multiple deer in our apple orchard, but the resident black bear on the property continues to be elusive - probably scared of big bad Thule!


Thanks for reading our "blog" - The idea of a blog is a bit narcissistic, but we think it will be a fun way to keep in touch and record our new "journey" along the way!