We’ve been on quite the tour lately! 8 flights, 7 states, 4 National Parks, and 2 National Monuments!
I haven’t had a lot of time to catch up and organize all of our media yet, but I’m working on it! (Also, we’ve been a little sick, but more on that later.)
So, keep watching! We have lots to share!
Love, Jenn & Donald
Every year the Stage Nature Center in our city offers a Rent-A-Maple program, where — for a small fee — you can have a maple tree on the property tapped in your name. Last year, we just donated to the program and had our name on a tree, but didn’t sign up in time to do the tapping ourselves. This year, we put it on our calendar and signed up as soon as we were able!
Even though Donald has to work on Saturday afternoons, we figured that we could fit this into our morning. We made sure not to sleep in, had our coffee, and Donald made us eggs and toast for breakfast. Once we were fed and ready, we set out into the sunshine, blue skies, and cold weather (below freezing)!
We were met at the door by some of the Stage Nature Center docents/volunteers and quickly found our guides for the event. I was so surprised to see Sarah there! She was in training as one of the guides and happened to be assigned to Donald and me!
As we went from the main building to the staging area outside, our guide, Danielle, kept reminding us that we needed to get a bucket and a lid. Apparently, it was a common thing to forget, and they didn’t want to have to walk all the way to our tree, just to have to backtrack to pick up the bucket that our tree sap would collect in.
Donald made sure to grab them, and then commented on how he could use them to make himself some Mandalorian armor.
Once we found our tree (which already had a tag on it with our names), Danielle showed us how to use a brace hand crank drill to make a small hole in the tree, angled slightly downward, each of us taking a turn. We then used a nail to get the wood shavings out of the hole and sprayed some water in it. Donald then gently tapped the French cast iron spile into our new hole and I hung our bucket on the spile. Donald put the cover on the bucket and we were good to go!
For a quick outing, it was a lot of fun! We received a little goodie bag with some maple candies, a pint of maple syrup, candles, pancake mix, and a certificate for our “lease” of the maple tree. We grabbed a Starbucks on the way home, my parents stopped by for a visit and a surprise (more on that later!), and then it was time for Donald to start work.
We have another adventure planned for tomorrow, so keep an eye out for another post soon!
Happy Saturday from Jenn and Donald!
These have been some beautiful days in Michigan, and this weekend looks to be more of that: temperatures in the mid to high 70s and sunny. Donald and I have been feeling like getting away, so we looked up flights and various places we could go. We *almost* booked a flight to Orlando or Denver, but eventually decided to wait until we had a 3 day weekend. We thought about going up north to the Traverse City area, but it looks like next weekend may be peak fall color, so we are tentatively earmarking next weekend for that trip.
While he worked his afternoon shift on Friday, I spent my evening dreaming up possibilities. By the end of the night, I didn’t have anything concrete in mind – with one exception. I wanted to have a leisurely early morning with Donald at a local cafe enjoying a latte and some pastries. We are always looking for a local coffee place that reminds us of Lucky Goat or Black Dog (some of our favorite coffee shops from Tallahassee). This morning, we searched and found two candidates, both in Clawson: Sabbath and Kahve.
We initially went to try Sabbath first, but there was a line out the door. Popularity is a great indicator of a place’s appeal, but we didn’t feel up to the wait or the crowd. Luckily, Kahve is less than a block away on the other side of Main St. We were able to find on-street parking quickly.
It was already a gorgeous morning. We took a moment to take in the cute downtown area. Clawson has a lot of charm for a small city.
Walking in, the cafe was really cozy with armchairs and a sofa in addition to the traditional table and chairs. It is decorated in a Mexican/South American theme with art and textiles on the walls and vases of fresh flowers scattered throughout.
Donald and I shared the cheese croissant and pumpkin muffin. I had a raspberry white mocha, and he enjoyed a cinnamon vanilla latte. After finishing our drinks, Donald wanted something cool, so we shared a mango smoothie. All of it was delicious! That mango smoothie… heaven!
Of course, I spent a majority of my time photographing the flowers, but we also looked briefly at what we might want to do today. Donald was excited to get a jump on my mom and be the first one to text “Good morning!” She noted that Clawson was having a fall festival today that she might like to go to. We just know that with the weather so beautiful, we would like to spend some time outdoors today.
I hope you have a fantastic day as well! Please let us know what adventures you find yourself in this weekend!
— Jenn & Donald
In the summer, Troy hosts a small farmers market near the Civic Center on Fridays from 11 am – 3 pm.
Since this was one of Donald’s days off, we stopped by on my lunch break.
We came home with a veggie peeler and grocery bag we won from a spin-the-wheel game, pea micro greens fettuccine, sugar snap peas, fresh garlic, a basil plant, and some cookies.
(The purple cauliflower was just pretty. We didn’t take it home with us.) 🙃📸
After work/school, I wanted to take Donald to a restaurant that I had been meaning to share with him for a while, but it was still a bit early. I decided to drive around UM campus for a bit and show him some of central campus.
We got a parking spot on State St. (summer semesters are always lighter volume, but some luck was involved as well), and first tried the Museum of Art, but it was closed. We walked across the street to the Michigan Union, poked around for a bit, and spent the last few minutes in the Tech Center dreaming of our next computing device purchase.
Outside, I introduced Donald to the Cube.
Next stop, Pizza e Vino in Plymouth!
I had gone to this restaurant about 10-15 years ago with my Alpha small group and remembered that it was delicious! When we came back to Michigan, it has always been my intention to take Donald here, but we hadn’t gotten around to it. Until today.
There was a wait for a table, but it ended up being a shorter wait than originally stated, and we were soon seated near the wood-burning oven. So, our spot was a little warmer than other places in the restaurant, but not uncomfortably so. Definitely the best spot in the house for chilly days!
We ordered the Spiedini, which is fresh mozzarella wrapped in prosciutto. So amazingly good!
I’m going to leave you lots of photos, so you get hungry. You’re welcome!
They come on skewers, so we pushed them off, cut them into bite-sized pieces and ate them with the bread. Yum! I wish all mozzarella sticks were like this.
Here’s where our order modifications started. Donald is a fan of goat cheese, so we added some on to our Mista salad.
There was plenty of salad to share, and everything was fresh and delicious!
What pizza to pick? Ugh, this was SUCH a difficult choice! Everything sounded good!
We went with the Pozzuoli (Italian Fennel Sausage, Old-World Pepperoni, Red Onions, Fresh Basil, Portobello Mushrooms, Fior di Latte Mozzarella), and took off the mushrooms and onions, and added goat cheese and prosciutto.
It was amazing!
The crust is thin and foldable and made the pizza very light. You didn’t feel like you’ve just eaten a ton of bread or get over full. It really let the toppings shine. The best surprise for me was the fresh basil – it was so good!
It’s almost lunch-time as I’m writing this, and I am making myself hungry! I’ll add another photo of the pizza, so you can drool over the screen with me:
We generally enjoy going on a light walk after dinner, and Kellogg Park was just steps away from Pizza e Vino. It was a gorgeous evening: warm with a breeze. Lots of people were also enjoying the park and the fountain.
We really enjoyed our evening in Plymouth! Donald even tried to get me to agree to making Pizza e Vino a weekly event! If you are in the area, we highly recommend it!
Donald is great at always keeping an eye on the weather for us, so we knew that it was going to snow Sunday morning. I thought it would be a lot of fun – especially for my Florida boy! – to go for a walk in the snow at one of our favorite local nature centers.
We had a nice breakfast at the hotel, then stopped by the house to grab our wet weather boots from one of our moving boxes. Next stop: the Stage Nature Center, where we had previously seen a mink playing in the Rouge River!
The snow was so beautiful on the ground and coating the branches of the trees! It was really good packing snow, too!
After living in Florida for the past few months, this was quite a change for us and we thoroughly enjoyed the scenery. There were a surprising number of people who were also out this morning to take a walk in the snow. We decided to take the Blackbird trail today, and it ended up snowing the entire time.
I don’t think it is possible for me to overemphasize how often one of us would exclaim, “It’s SO PRETTY!” or “Wow! Look at this, babe!”
We saw deer, ducks, and birds on our walk, but we’re particularly entranced by the trees. There are a lot of older trees here. (Above, Donald is playing among some of the taller pine trees.)
We love taking photos and recognize the importance of capturing our memories. We are trying to get better at documenting our adventures (and taking more videos!), so we played a bit with slow-mo mode. The clip below shows Donald shaking a branch to have some snow fall on him. This is towards the end of our walk, and you might be able to tell that the branches now have a good couple inches of snow on them – much more than when we began our walk!
Just after seeing some deer in the woods, we came to a hilly section of the nature center. I wanted a photo of Donald in the field, to show the scale of the terrain a bit. I think I ended up making it look like he was tiny and standing on the fence!
There had been a group of kids in a group who were geocaching when we started our walk. We didn’t want to interrupt their program, but decided to catch a few caches on our way out. There are definitely more caches out there, but we just grabbed a quick two. They are not too difficult to find; it is a fun, little “extra” that families can do together while enjoying nature.
There was just enough snow on the ground for Donald to make a snow angel. I think he did a great job!
We were out in it for a good two hours, then returned to our hotel home to warm up. We were so glad to get back to some of the things we love to do: hiking, taking pictures, and seeing the local flora and fauna.
See you next time!
— Jenn & Donald
It has been a little while since we have indulged in one of our favorite lunchtime pastimes: finding a new city park to explore. We tend to do this a little more in Tallahassee, but we have found that there are quite a few local parks in Troy which are beautiful and fun to explore – particularly in summertime. Today, we returned to the Stage Nature Center – where we had seen the mink earlier in the year – to see how it looks when everything has had a chance to green up.
This is the Rouge River, as it is here in Troy, a little more than a creek.
We only had about 30 minutes to spend at the park during my lunch hour, so we made a quick trip around the Sugar Maple loop. It was really neat to see the different colors of green in the leaves and how the sun lit up the trees. The part of the loop that we walked also had a display of the various stages of tree/forest lifecycle, with logs in various stages of decay and decomposition.
The nature center has programs in the winter/early spring where you can rent a tap for a sugar maple tree, then collect the maple syrup produced from the sap.
We spent a few minutes at this crossroads in the paths to watch some chipmunks. They are FAST little ones! One of them ran up a tree and started chittering very loudly for quite some time. At first, I didn’t know what was making that sound and ended up recording it on my Bird ID app. I’m not sure if he was mad or excited, but he certainly wanted everyone in the forest to hear what he had to say!
Just as we were about to move on from the chipmunk area, we spied four deer running parallel to our path. Donald’s phone has much better zoom on the camera and he was able to get this incredible photo.
We just did the short 0.4 mile Sugar Maple Loop today, as I only had an hour for lunch. It was really pretty and we want to come back after work one day to see what animals are active in the early evening, as well as spend more time in the back half to see if we can spot our mink friend again.
I love seeing all the different colors of green!
This was a very BIG bee on this flower. It’s in an area of the nature center which has been planted as a monarch butterfly migration station.
I love when parks make boards like this to help people know what kinds of flowers and plants are indigenous to the area, and to promote planting native plants in gardens. Sometimes, you will see a companion board, where they will inform you of invasive species in the area and ask people visiting the park to help remove the invasive species if they are seen during your walk.
This was just a quick out and back visit, but we had a lot of fun. It was great to take a break and get away from the house for a bit, as well as to enjoy the warm, sunny, non-humid weather while we have it!
You can now listen to our blog via our podcast! It is available from Anchor via Spotify, but we are also working to get it published to other podcast platforms. Don’t worry, we will be working on our audio quality as we go! Enjoy!
In the beginning of our relationship, we talked about playing games together, and Donald wanted to teach me how to play cribbage.
We bought a cribbage set and would play every so often.
A couple of weeks ago, I brought up that I remembered having fun playing Gin Rummy with my Dad as a kid. We looked up how to play on YouTube and played a couple times.
This afternoon, after work, I felt like learning a new card game. I was anticipating researching one online, but Donald had a suggestion ready to go: Golf. He remembers playing it with his Dad.
It is kind of like a game of Memory, as you keep your set of 4 cards face down and have the opportunity to swap one out each turn, but have to remember what you had. The goal is to have less points than your opponent. When you think you are as low as you can go (or lower than your competitors), you can “knock,” which signals the last round. Then, all players turn over their cards and count the points. Number cards are their value, Aces =1, J and Q are 10, and K=0.
Donald is both lucky and a great strategist. It looked while playing that he had a commanding lead over me. But when the round of Golf (9 “holes”) was completed, he had won by the slimmest of margins! 😀
Gameplay is very quick and the game is easy to learn. We will have to teach this to Gabby when we are in town; that little card sharp will love it!
We were just finishing up our (first) stint with COVID-19, and wanted to visit Donald’s dad for Father’s Day. We got our at-home test and took it in a little park (Wakulla Station Trailhead Park in Crawfordville) on our way. Yay! Negative for both of us! We caught some rain on the way over, but arrived to a pretty rainbow around 5 pm.
We had a lovely dinner at CJ Supreme Buffet, then took a little tour of Perry, FL and spent some time at Veterans Memorial Park, where there is a monument that commemorates Grandpa Dave’s military service.
We went to Folsom Park, which has a little spring, and saw some of the buildings around town, before heading back to Jim’s house.
He showed me his old bottle collection (and his tricked out hobby room!). It’s amazing what can be found!
We enjoyed the pretty plants in his backyard, and all of the frogs just hanging out on the shed.
After a nice evening together, we drove back to Tallahassee while enjoying views of the sunset.
We had talked about making nutrition and exercise a priority, and thought that – on an ideal day – we could go for a walk in the morning, hike a bit at a local park during lunchtime, and then get some additional activity after work (maybe another walk, tennis, swimming, etc.).
We were both up early this morning and were still motivated for this, so Donald made us coffee and put it in travel mugs, and we drove over to Lake Ella. It is about 0.6 miles to walk around the lake, so that was our goal for the morning.
All of the Crêpe Myrtle trees were flowering and so pretty! We want to learn more about the flora and fauna we see around us, and become more familiar about what is indigenous and what is invasive to Tallahassee/Northern Florida. I did just a quick search, and it appears that the variety of Myrtle trees which have white flowers are known as Natchez Crêpe Myrtles (sometimes spelled Crape, but I prefer the French spelling 😉).
It was a beautiful sunrise, and many of the ducks and geese had little baby ducklings and goslings following them around. Lake Ella is known for its population of Muscovy ducks, but they also have common Mallards and Canadian geese. According to All About Birds, male Muscovy Ducks frequently mate with other species and often produce sterile hybrid offspring – we think that we have seen some of these hybrids around the lake!
We’ve been to and around Lake Ella dozens of times so far, but this is the first time I was paying attention enough to the signage to see that there was a map of the area! What we did take more notice of was the proliferation of Spin scooters in the area. There was a *lot* more scooters around the park now than before we left for Michigan. It’s as if they knew we are a little hesitant to ride them again (at least not before we get helmets!) after my tumble, and they are trying to entice us to ride them. 😊
This is probably one of my favorite views of Lake Ella. I love all of the Spanish moss in the trees!
After our leisurely stroll around the lake, sipping on our homemade coffees, we headed back home to start the work day. Mornings here tend to be a little cooler and less humid, so they are great for taking walks outside. We both really enjoyed our outing and hope to do it more frequently. Such a great start to the day: caffeine, exercise, fresh air, and beautiful views!
Paroxysm of Giggles / Critical Mass 