I caught you a delicious bass

So we had to do a 15 mile paddle down a overflowing river with no current for Brad to catch a fish. Brad says it was all worth it. We decided last night that we wanted to check out one of the rivers around here and put our canoe to good use. We called up a place that rents canoes on the Illinois Fox river and they shuttled us up the river, well when the guy was giving us the option of how far we wanted to go, 7,11, or 15 miles, of course we didn't want to wuss out so we said 15 of course. About 5 and 1/2 hours later we made it back to where we started. And it was about 100 yards from our pull out that Brad started catching fish. He kept the large mouth bass. Even I got a bite, but after some time of fighting mine got away. It was nice to be able to get out and see some of Wisconsin's back country though.

It's not Wisconsin without the cows

Brad's keeper

Large Mouth Bass

This is when I was fighting my fish

This was the view most of the way down the river

Good Old Nauvoo

Last weekend we took a trip down to Nauvoo. It was the perfect meeting spot for family and friends, almost in the middle of Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Minneapolis. It was sure a fun weekend trip. We had some good camping, good temple visit, good chats with the nauvoo missionaries, good dancing (well that was from the BYU dancers not us), and even good food. What more could you ask for, even the heat wasn't all that bad. Well most of all I would have to say we had good company. I would have to say I sure appreciated the Nauvoo experience and what the Saints went through now that I am older and understand more of the trials and tribulations. They sure are right when they say there is a 'spirit' in Nauvoo. You can't help but appreciate, and sometimes even get a little teary eyed, when talking about what suffering, but also what joy the Saints had there with their Prophet Joseph. I would highly recommend the visit for anyone who hasn't been.

Brad is sporting the hollywood look here

The Merryweather general store

The 'gun' show

Brody having fun the the tour

The 1800' style is coming back in

A beautiful painting in the Chapel

Classic Brad serving size

The temple was beautiful at night

Lapham Peak

Last weekend Brad and I decided to go out for an evening hike, we had been told about this state park (Lapham Peak) about 40 minutes from us and so we wanted to check it out. For those non-hikers they have set up the lookout tower just yards away from the parking lot, but for us we still took a hike on the trails before ascending the tower. Surprisingly the hiking was beautiful, of course green forest, but we saw lots of wild flowers and stopped at a pond to listen to the frogs bellow. We also had a close encounter with a wild turkey. He was on the trail and we tried to get close to take a picture, but as we got close he started trotting up the trail, we continued to follow and the turkey also continues to run up the trail. We probably followed the turkey for five minutes on the trail before he finally turned off, it was pretty funny to watch him waddle down the path. We ended our hike by climbing the tower to watch the sun set (which was absolutely beautiful). We wanted to post some pic to give incentive for others to get out there.

Here is the turkey(he is a little blury)

Beautiful field of wild daisies

The pond

The Sunset

Camping and Hiking in Wisconsin

We had a wonderful camping trip this weekend, we spent some time in the Kettle Morain Forest that is about an hour an a half away from here. We had a good time haging out with friends, and got to do some hiking and fishing too. But I wanted to share some of the differences that we noticed from camping out west.

1. The elevation of home and where your camping is always going to be the same.

2. Your scenic drive to the State Forest includes farmland and cows.

3. Wild animals spotted: deer, birds, and wild turkey.

4. You don't have to worry about sleeping on any sharp rocks or hard ground, grass is a plentiful.

5. Never before have I been invited to play beer pong while camping.

6. While hiking you also don't change elevation.

7. The state forest used to be a logging area.

a. We hiked a bit on the old logging road.

b. We also noticed that the trail had been mowed

c. And most distubing was that the trees were planted by man, in rows...

I did find some flowers there though

And of course we went fishing at this cute little pond (Brad's favorite acitvity)