Vacation

One of the great things about homeschooling (and there are many!) is the ability to take a vacation when we want to be on vacation. For the last several years, we have taken a week in the fall and gone to the North Shore of Lake Superior. If you are from around here, you understand. If not, well, you should go there at least once.

Last week was our week. It was beautiful. And fun. And relaxing. And it went by so fast! Every morning we woke up and looked out at this while we ate breakfast.

This is part of the Sawtooth Mountain range, a gorgeous, if small, mountain range that runs along the shore of Lake Superior. The peaks aren't huge, but they are mountains, and they are beautiful. An added bonus: many of the peaks are small enough to be accessible for little folks. They can actually climb a mountain!

The view changed over the week. One morning we woke up, and the mountains had been "erased."

Kutey assured us it was just fog. Whew! We were worried.

By the time we left, the color had dropped significantly. The wind and rain had taken their toll. It was still beautiful, just less full of color.


We stay in a condo when we go, so we can have a full kitchen. One thing about the North Shore, eating establishments are not as plentiful as one might think. And not all of them are terribly kid friendly. Making most of our own meals makes life a little easier. The condo also means we have more space. There is a nice pool at the resort, which was pleasantly warm this year--it was bitterly cold last year. 15 minutes was all we could bear! This year we were there for an hour each time we went. It was also a salt-water pool this year, which is so much more pleasant than chlorine!

I didn't take any school work with us. The past two years I have taken the bare minimum, making sure we were on track. This year, though, we have been on such a great roll, I decided we needed nothing. Kiddo brought some books, but never read them (he read everything else in sight, just no books). He also planned a couple of crafts to do in the evenings. We made envelopes and wrote notes to each other, complete with stamps that required double-stick tape. The sweetest part of the activity was that when we exchanged, Kiddo noticed that I had not received a note, so he sat down and made another one just for me. Such a great kid!

We visited historic sites, climbed mountains, skipped rocks in the lake, and had an great time. I'll be posting some more highlights as time allows!