Gotta Travel On

Well, it's been four and half years, and it's time to leave this beautiful and warm (except for the weather) little pocket that has been my college experience. Not quite graduated yet, but graduating the location, if that's a thing that can happen.

This is pretty much how I feel about leaving, minus the part about missing all the wonderful people of COA:

Done laid around, done stayed around
This old town too long
Summer's almost gone, winter's coming on
Done laid around, done stayed around
This old town too long
And it seems like I've got to travel on
And it seems like I've got to travel on.


This song always seems to fit the occasion of leaving and moving on, and I've been humming it all week. This is just to say that I have no idea what I'll be up to next, all I know is that I've got the travel bug, as always, and I've got to travel on. Coming up next: probably some nostalgia posts about the good ol' days, as I sift through a lot of old pictures.

Post Office Obsession

I heard the worst commercial recently. It advertised a website called stamps.com. 

Avoid a time-consuming trip to the post office by purchasing and printing stamps online!

It even kind of rhymes. Barf.

I can see how some people would benefit from this-- post office hours are not conducive to folks who work from 8 am to 4 pm, and sometimes there are lines.

But...

What about the JOYS of walking into a bright post office?? You go up to the counter, and peek behind the scenes at the buckets of mail ready for sorting and delivery. You get to choose what unique varieties of stamps to buy. Sometimes there is candy. You get those wax paper bags with the USPS logo, full of stamps... ahhhhh, what could be better?

I have recently started a project of post offices, where I will attempt to visit and send mail from as many post offices as possible. This idea came to me when I laid eyes upon Wisconsin's Northernmost Post Office in Cornucopia. How cool is that?? So I took a picture and sent a postcard, and now I am hooked. Who knows what other unique post offices are out there? I must find them! I must send more mail! I am on a mission!
A very important one, duh.

This post is dedicated to Addie, because I sent her a postcard from Cornucopia.

Stinky GiggleChunks

I think most children went through a Captain Underpants phase, but my childhood was perhaps an extreme case. The obsession with these cartoon books and the related hilarity in everything having to do with toilets probably is why I am the way I am today (Queen of Poop, that is). My family even put a tiny toilet on every birthday cake for years.

For Christmas every year, my brother and I get presents from Captain Underpants. But Captain Underpants' greatest gift by far was the  Professor Poopypants' Name Generator.

All you need to do is take the first letter of a first name, and then the first and last letter of a last name. So for me, the key letters are A, C, and N. You look at the name generator, and then match the letters to  find your new name! Mine is Stinky GiggleChunks. My brother is Crusty BarfBuns. My mother is Stinky BarfBuns. My father is Stinky GiggleChunks (the one flaw with this generator is that you can end up with many people with the same name).

Sometimes when I'm bored I think of random people I know and come up with their Captain Underpants name.
Stop judging me.

So here's a list of some of my friends:

Buttercup BananaBuns
Fluffy HampsterButt
Snotty RhinoSniffer
Poopsie BubbleFanny
Lumpy WaffleChunks
Lumpy ToiletSquirt
Zippy LizardBuns

Now you try!
https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~introcs/F2K/lectures/PoopyPants/index.html

Dear Diary

I have kept a journal for years, usually full of mundane day-to-day things, but if I don't write it down or take a picture then I don't remember it.

Today I was typing out my journal entries from my summer course, and thought that I might as well share them, since they're all nice and typed out. And also, dear readers, this is your one chance to read pieces of my diary, because I am usually too ashamed to let anyone know about all the boring things that I write about.

Here are some clips and corresponding pics from August in the Apostle Islands!


8/17/2013
Camping on Stockton Island tonight, after a day of paddling and sailing. We woke up at 5 am as per usual and dragged out stuff to the beach and had breakfast and paddled to from 8 to 9:30 ish when we started to sail, which was way better for my seasickness. Paddled the last stretch and had a relaxing camp set up and lunch and swim and rest before hiking to the quarry. The only problem is the mosquitos, and also that there is not much time to do the immense loads of reading.

Here we are, sailing!

On the beach at Stockton

8/18/2013

So very buggy. It’s fun to have a home campsite- no lugging huge food bags. Today we had a sleepy morning- slept until 5:40 then ate breakfast then slept again instead of reading. We went to Presque Isle VC and talked with Ranger Dan, then got lunch on Julian Bay and had two hours of free wander time. I had a lovely stroll along Anderson Point Trail, stopping along the shore to take selfies and enjoy the rocks and sun.

Ranger Dan!

Yup, selfies. Lots.

8/20/2013

Heat Advisory Day! Up early as usual, but with a purpose- a 7.5 mile paddle to Manitou Island. I wasn’t feeling so great on the ride over, but was good as soon as we got there. Stared at a tadpole pool for a super long time, then got a tour of the fishing camp from Denise, and I became a Junior Ranger. Then we hiked to some old growth Hemlock and back, lunched at the boats and pushed off for a choppy but enjoyable paddle back to Stockton, where I sprawled on the beach for a while.

My beloved tadpole pond.

Ranger Denise telling us about the fishing nets.

8/25/3013

Paddled from Basswood to Oak, on choppy water but with a tailwind. We stopped by a shipwreck, but only Travis and Elizabeth scoped it out. I was creeped out enough by just floating on top of it. Now we are set up in a beautiful campsite, and have to come up with our full presentation and do a rough run-through.

A calm, innocent, Lake Superior.

View from the campsite on Oak Island.

 8/28/2013

Haven’t written in a while, but we’re leaving the camping life today, heading to the city life... Ashland. I’m excited to get back, get my phone, really sit down and figure out my program. I just showered so I don’t really have to worry about that. We packed up at Wilderness Inquiry, listened to Travis’s talk, played frisbee, took a group pic. Yesterday was our last day of paddling, and we left Oak and I sterned to Raspberry. We hiked to the lighthouse, and listening to an amazing interpretive tour by Ranger Jim, that basically exemplified all of the good things that we’ve been learning about interpretation-- he even sang us a lighthouse song. Then the fog was rolling in so we just paddled to Sand Bay, had a nice time in our boat-- good convo, scenery, got to jump in and plank the boat, good stuff. We unloaded at the beach and lugged it to the campsite, the set up camp and started hauling gravel for our service project.

The paddle to Raspberry

Ranger Jim after singing his lighthouse song

The last stretch of our trip-- canoe lyfe.

Us!