Sleeping Bear movie

this is the official movie trailer for a movie coming out titled “Sleeping Bear” – looks pretty interesting!

HT: @AwesomeMitten

my 1st sunfish (a new picture)

well, technically this wasn’t ever actually my Sunfish – but it is the 1st one I’ve ever sailed on.  the photo is of Ryan, the younger brother of my roommate Sean, from when I worked as a staff member at Camp Arcadia.  Sean was the 1st person to introduce me to the Sunfish (15 years ago!).

lake Michigan in a dugout [video]

here is a short teaser trailer about a summer adventure two women took on Lake Michigan.  the two of them paddled and sailed over 1200 miles on Lake Michigan over 93 days in the summer.  they added a Sunfish sail to their hand-made dugout canoe.

This summer my friend, Amy, and I circumnavigated Lake Michigan… Everyone dreams of an adventurous life. We took off out the back door running; exploring on our own terms, by our own means. This is a short teaser of our journey.

they also have a blog about it: Lake Michigan in a Dugout

I found their blog from one of the weekly “Rhumbline” emails from Laser Performance United.

wreck of the minnehaha exposed

I’ve posted several pictures of the Minnehaha shipwreck along the shores of Lake Michigan, but this one is amazing!  I’ve never seen this much of the shipwreck exposed.  Camp Arcadia posted the picture on their Facebook page.  water levels in the Great Lakes are down quite a bit this year – we could really use some snowfall this year, as last year was very light.

photo by Camp Arcadia

et ego in Arcadia – picture slideshow

I’ve been a bit of a slacker in posting about the remaining days from our vacation trip to Camp Arcadia.  but here is a picture slideshow video that was created by the Camp.  it will give a bit of a glimpse around camp of things I don’t think to photograph.

 

pier jumping with the boys

during our family vacation to Camp Arcadia this summer, my brother-in-law and I took our boys down to the south pier for the traditional jumping off the pier into the waters of Lake Michigan.  a few of the boys had jumped before, but this was the first time for some of the younger ones.

it was later in the evening, and the water temperature this year in Lake Michigan was just a tad on the cold side.  I wore my shorty wetsuit, and was the 1st to jump in.  I had them throw me a life jacket, and then I just floated the rest of the time down there with my GoPro Hero video camera to capture the action as each boy took turns jumping off the pier.

I thought it’d be a quick process, but it turned out that I had to help each boy get up and onto the ladder, as the water level in the lake is low enough that the 1st ladder run is probably 12 to 18 inches above the water level, and none of the boys had the upper body strength to pull themselves out of the water and start climbing the ladder.  I would swim away from the pier, one of the boys would jump into the water, and then I’d swim back in with them and help them climb out of the water, and then repeat as required!  I’m glad I put the wetsuit on, though, as I ended up floating down there in the cold water for maybe 15 minutes.

if you recall, this is the same pier that Dave and I jumped off a few weeks later, but with disastrous results – as the waves were way too big for us to have jumped, and the current was way too strong to swim against.  Dave wrote his thoughts about that near-death experience he and I both faced in this blog post: underestimating the power of the waves.