July (Part 2 of 2)

Following the week in Irwin, Colleen, Katie and I surprised our high school youth by showing up as camp staff for their mission trip to the Walpole Island First Nation Reservation in Ontario, Canada. Along the way, we hit a Waffle House in Ohio, the Toledo Botanical Gardens, a new state for me (Michigan), and a ferry across the St. Clair River onto Walpole Island. Upon arrival, we checked in with the summer staff for the camp and then soon after set out to retrieve the fourth member of our Red Shirt team from PCTR, John Forsythe. Aside from the fact that a two hour drive back to the island took more like four because “just go straight” isn’t a very good direction when a road ends and you HAVE to go left or right, it was a pretty incredible experience to serve with John, who had been one of our leaders ten years prior when we were high school youth. I feel very blessed to have had the chance to serve alongside him and have gotten to know him more.

While Colleen was being utterly spectacular as Worship Leader, playing her guitar and leading the camp in music for the week, Katie and I were teamed up as site coaches, going around to different work sites and making sure things were progressing the way they should. It was, to say the least, frustrating. It felt more like a week of reprimanding adults who didn’t want to listen to advice and sound technical judgment than actually helping crews complete tasks like building porches. Some highlights: One crew whose adult insisted they had enough lumber to complete not the 6x8 porch they were assigned but a 10x10 and then didn’t finish building anything, really; The crew that framed a porch with 2x4’s and then panicked when they were told that was wrong; and, from one of John’s sites, the crew that hung 2x4’s in joist hangars meant for 2x8 and then swore that she needed longer nails to nail the decking onto the porch. It boggles the mind.

The positive upshot of the frustration? Hanging out with Katie, which was awesome, and getting to watch Colleen with the music every morning and night. Truly the best part of the week and many times all that made the week tolerable.

Coming home from Walpole found us in Niagara Falls, Canada. Not my first time at the Falls, but very cool, and very enjoyable to spend time there with Colleen and Katie, and run into our high school youth on their time at the Falls. After crossing back into the USA to head for a hotel near Rochester, NY, we got onto an interstate that led us right back to Canada. This bummed me out. Quite a bit. I do love me some America and I just didn’t want to end up back in Canada, but we spent the night in Niagara Falls, Canada and headed for Utica, New York the next morning. The next two days we spent driving around Adirondack Park looking for moose (which don’t exist) and jumping into Seventh Lake in the Finger Lakes. We ate at a place called The Moose Tooth Grill, where Katie had eaten before (which she didn’t tell us, no matter how vociferously she claims she did) in the town of Lake George, and headed home on Tuesday, July 10^th.

The fifteenth found us heading south down Rt 13, over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, across the Wright Brothers Memorial Bridge and to the Outer Banks for the family vacation. It was great to be able to spend a week with Eric, both of my nephews, and Colleen, as well as my parents and grandmother. Swimming with the little guy was great, as was the Colleen induced nerd fest on Thursday: a tour of the Army Corps of Engineers Field Research Facility, a trip to the Wright Brothers’ Memorial, lunch at Pigman’s BBQ, a short hike in Nags Head Woods, a stop at Kitty Hawk Kites for Fudge, and then, for me, a nap.

My adventure culminated with a truly fantastic dinner at Paul and Laura’s with Colleen and Morgen, and then a solid night’s sleep in my house and a nap the next day.  A change of scenery truly does help sometimes.