New places to discover...

Monday, November 30, 2015

I am thankful for so many things, but right now as I write this, it is the lack of snow that tops the list.  Visiting with my nephew Nathan who works for Interlake Shipping and just returned from 102 days on the Great Lakes, the discussion of weather in the UP and on Lake Superior around Duluth, Minnesota naturally occurred.  “A year ago, Buffalo had seven feet of snow from one storm and we were socked in on Superior,” he reminded me.  I had the plow on the truck and was moving 19” of snow at the farm.  Now, it’s fifty and if it never dropped below that, I’d be completely okay.

“You have got to get to the UP, Uncle John.  It’s a 10-hour drive to some of the best hiking, biking, camping and kayaking you’ll ever see so close to home,” Nathan said.

I’d been reading about the area and although it didn’t have any peaks and was a little farther than the Adirondacks, it was certainly on my radar.

“I want to do that 400-mile trail in Minnesota along the lake and Boundary Waters,” I said.  “I figure it will take at least 30 days to do and be a good lesson on what and how I’ll handle the Continental Divide,” I said.

“Well, if you’re walking that trail, you have to grab the ferry and go to the Isle Royale National Park.  It is amazing!” he said as he pulled it up on the laptop for me to see. 

And he was right.  There is so, so much I want to explore and I’m finding so much of it within a day’s drive of Cleveland.  Retirement can’t come soon enough and I can see how important it will be for me to remain in peak shape if I hope to enjoy the things I truly want to do.

I ate turkey, sweet potatoes, bananas, apples and a little of my rice concoction throughout the day.  No milk.  No dairy.  No gluten.  No ice cream and pie.  Life became slightly more painful, but I’ll survive.  I climbed aboard the trainer for a 50-minute ride and finished ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.  One long movie and now I need to find a book about the man and get the rest of the story.  A man with passion and dedicated to a mission.  The things one can accomplish…

Bike duration: 50 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 135 bpm.
Calories Burned: 700