Rocky and the Rock, Revisited

 
I'm really tired, and I have no pictures from today. I got some people to pick files on Facebook. So you are getting a flashback to a weekend hike in 1997. Roxanne wanted her girls to experience a backpacking trip, and tie it in with some homeschool projects. So we made the food, and figured out the pack weights and did all those math things. Not to mention learning how to pack the packs and dry and package the foods.

We hiked from 3 Mile Rd to Pierce Rd in Newaygo County on the North Country Trail (of course). This was two five-mile days with one camping overnight between. The girls were 11 and 9.


We were treated that evening to the greatest barred owl hoot-fest I've ever heard, and it was very close by! I was glad I knew what was happening, so I could explain it with confidence, or it might have been a little scary.


Dear Chips was very much alive back then.


Time to hit the trail!


So Rocky is Roxanne's nickname, and the Rock? Here's the first paragraph of Chapter 25 of North Country Cache:

"I found it. I found the rock!" crows Rocky from the edge of the woods. "I'm really good at finding things," she grins shyly, belying her thirty-some years by echoing the prideful glee of a first-grader. But who can blame her? She has indeed found the guilty rock, a smooth two-inch oval with a fine powdering of glass dust concentrated toward one impact point. The County Deputy shakes his head incredulously. How could someone pick out one rock from an area of woods and road shoulder, possibly fifty feet square? Nevertheless, upon examination, he agrees that this is the missile which has caused so much speculation and delay at the end of an otherwise cheerful walk.

Ask me how to get a signed copy of North Country Cache, if you haven't read it!

P.S. It must be spring. I have my first case of poison ivy. Not much, but little itchy dots on both wrists. Who knows what I touched that had some of the oil on it.

	See Music of the Trees for another excerpt
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