Raleigh, NC

After 23 hrs of driving in 48 hrs, Matt and I arrived back in the land of the 60 degree winter. We drove through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and part of North Carolina to get there. and we only got lost once! As a whole, the drive was pretty bleak, but once we got into Kentucky and West Virginia, it was lovely. Despite it being the Christmas traveling season, we saw hardly another car on the road for most of the Kentucky portion. And I-46 East between Huntington and Charleston, W.Va goes through the mountains and is just gorgeous. We drove through at dusk and it made me really want to stop at WinterPlace Resort and go night-skiing. I would have taken pictures but a) I was driving and b) I thought my camera was broken. Luckily, I'm just inept with cameras and it is NOT broken! We got to my parents' house at 10:30 on Thursday night and everyone was waiting up for us, which made for a very nice homecoming. Now I'm just relaxing like a college student on break (miss those days!) and looking forward to Christmas with the family. Thanks again to the awesome Minnesotans who gave up sleeping in on Weds morning to see me and Matt off (especially Hannah)...miss you guys already!

The Apostle Islands, Bayfield, Wisconsin

It's now September, and in Minnesota that means we have, at best, another month before permafrost shows up and the polar bears emerge from hibernation. So we (me, and my former roommates Amy and Sarah) decided to take a road trip to celebrate the end of summer. Amy did a little research and decided on the Apostle Islands, a vacation spot in northern Wisconin on Lake Superior. I was thrilled because I had never been "up nort" (as they say) before and who knew that Wisconsin had islands?

So we packed our bags and headed out for a weekend on the lake. It was a five hour drive from home to Bayfield and after we passed Duluth, MN, we got into some gorgeous rural scenery along Lake Superior. I was driving so I didn't get any photos but trust me. We checked out Bayfield for a few hours before deciding to take a cruise on the lake at sunset. It's a cute resort town, lots of art galleries, coffee shops, and restaurants. I even found one Buddhist themed store that had Vegetarian Times (magazine about veggie issues with recipes even carnivores love)! After that it was on to our cruise. And yes, I will use the word cruise even though our boat was far less swanky than anything that implies. It was three hours of sailing around Lake Superior at sunset, checking out the many small Apostle Islands, sea caves, and light houses. I love anything to do with water and boats so I was in heaven.

Top to bottom: Sarah and Amy, the harbor, sea caves, sunset, and the lighthouse on Raspberry Island. The sea caves were by far the coolest thing we saw. They're carved into the base of the islands by the pounding water and on calm days you can kayak or canoe through them. On windy days it's a little trickier because you run the risk of flipping your kayak in the choppy water. Since we're not expert kayakers, nor did we have the bucks to spend on someone guiding us through the caves, we decided just to see them from the boat.