Back in the water!

So as you may or may not know I love scuba diving. I was originally certified in 1988. I was a member of the local county dive team for a number of years until it disbanded. As life happens, I stepped away from diving to focus on raising my family and work. Now that my kids are grown and getting ready to leave the nest, one has already flown, I'm going to get back to something that I have always loved. In doing this I've gotten my kids certified, and my daughter is going to do her checkout dives this weekend. I dove with my son when he got his certification and being “fair” I want to dive with my daughter as she finishes her certification.

The Great Smokey Mountain Jeep Invasion

Once again, Nicole and I made the trek to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for the Great Smokey Mountain Jeep Invasion. This is our third year attending. The attendance this year was over 50,000 people and over 20,000 Jeeps. There was nearly 300 vendors and parties by local businesses and trail rides including Invade the Cove. We chose to stay at a nice little Air b-n-b cabin in the mountains this year. Last year I camped in the roof top tent, this year I wanted to sleep in comfort of air conditioning. The first day we went to the the show and had to wait forever to get inside. The weather was hot and humid. By the time we got to the door I was drenched in sweat.

Once inside the building we made our way down the isles. The LeConte Center was packed. The vendors had quite the displays and products. I saw some familiar faces from different YouTube channels, or from being at the Invasion from prior years.

I have been looking for repalcement seats for my Jeep, so I was paying particular attention to those booths. I found the PRP booth and tried most of their seats they had. After sitting in them for a period of time I found the set I wanted. They actually had them in stock. I made the purchase along with some 4 pt harnesses and we trucked them out the door to my JKU.

Once we got them shoe horned into the jeep, it isn’t easy when your jeep has drawers and a fridge mounted inside we headed back to the cabin. Once I got there it took me about 45mins per seat but I had them swapped out fairly quick.

The following day we headed to Cades Cove. We stopped at the Cades Cove Jeep Outpost. It is a nice little touristy store with shirts and hats and of course some Jeep parts. We then headed to Cades Cove in the Smokey Mountain National Park. There is a 11 mile loop road the proceeds through the valley. We turned off the loop road and followed a trail. The trail had many stream crossings and some steep hills and some washouts. There was actually a minivan that tried to make it down the trail, then had to retreat because the minivan didn’t have the required clearance. This trail eventually dumped us on to the famous “Tail of the Dragon” at Deals Gap. The dragon has 318 curves in 11 miles of road and is a motorcycle and sports car destination. The Jeep, not so much, although the scenery is beautiful.

The following day, Sunday, we packed up or belongings and headed for home. With a stop at Buc-ees of course.

Video Block

Double-click here to add a video by URL or embed code. Learn more

4th of July Weekend Trip

So with the workload soon to be increasing at my real business my wife, Nicole and I decided to get away for a few days. Nicole wanted to go to Missouri Star Quilt Shops again in Hamilton, MO. I voted against taking the Jeep and the roof top since the weather was predicted to be in the mid to upper 90’s. As much as I love camping, I don’t want to spend my night sweating in canvas while trying to sleep.

So with the holiday weekend we scheduled what shops would be open and closed. With this trip it would be to states that I’ve never been to and I found it to be a great oppretunity to get some geocaches in states that I’ve yet to visit.

We departed on Thursday night. We were ultimately headed to Liberty, MO. We stopped for the night outside of St. Louis. Friday morning, after finding a geocache and getting the sourvnier for Illinois, we headed towards Liberty to visit Quilting is My Therapy. It is quaint little quilt shop in the downtown of Liberty. I love the simple brick buildings, wood floors and exposed ducting. While there, I mentioned to Nicole that, Pawhuska, OK, the home of Pioneer Woman is only 4 hours away. We decided to head that direction. I reserved us a hotel for Saturday night in Pawhuska.

View fullsize

Inside Quilting is My Therapy

As we were driving south we entered into Kanas. We over nighted at a hotel on Coffey, KS. Saturday morning we woke, ate the hotel continental breakfast and hit the road. We found a quick PNG, (Park and Grab) for you “muggles” to get the Kansas souvniour. As we drove on through southern Kansas into Northern Oklahoma the landscape was amazing. To see wide open grassland, and big blue sky was mesmerizing. We arrived in Pawhuska mid day. We went to Pioneer Woman's Mercantile. There they have many souvenir items such as shirts, and hats. There are also a lot of kitchen wares. On the second floor is where the Pioneer Woman’s Bakery is located. There is a sweet treat for most anyone. While at the ‘Merc we also elected to take the drive out to Pioneer Woman’s Lodge. This is where she films her show. It was interesting to see the set of her show and the additional kitchen where much of the cooking is done.

After we left the Lodge we drove back to town and checked into the Frontier Hotel. This is a beautifully restored building that has been converted to a hotel. The building is in a triangle shape in the heart of Pawhuska. Our room was clean and spacious. We decided to go to P-Town Pizza for dinner. Here we had some “not knots” and we had a Steakhouse and a Marghe-Ree-Ta pizza. The food was very good and we took the left overs back to the our room.

Pioneer Woman's Lodge

The Mercantile

Drummond Ranch Truck

Sticky Buns from the Bakery

Downtown Pawhuska

View from the Pioneer Woman's Lodge

View while driving to the Lodge

Our room at the Frontier Hotel

Our room at the Frontier Hotel

Not Knots at P-Town Pizza

Clear Blue Sky in Oklahoma

After a restful night at the Frontier Hotel, we were on our way north. We left Oklahoma and entered Kansas. Our plan was to go north in the Nebraska and get a geocache then proceed back into Missouri and get closer to Missouri Star, located in Hamilton, Missouri. We motored into Nebraska and found a geocache in Falls City then we headed to St. Joseph, MO. We relaxed and did some more geocaching. After finding a few and spending the night we headed to Hamilton, Missouri. Hamilton is a quiet little town brought back to life Missouri Start Quilt Company. There are numerous quilt shops, current count of 14, that span the entire downtown. This is also the place where the first JC Penny store was located. I found the history of this small town to be quite interesting.

JC Penney's Store

Inside JC Penney Store

From Hamilton, we headed north into Iowa and found a cache to obtain the Iowa souvenir. Then we got on Interstate 80 and headed back east to home. In all we were in 7 states, about 1900 miles in 5 days. It was a lot of driving but some of the wide open country is absolutely amazing to see first hand. The old architecture, the restored buildings, the variety of food made this a very memorial trip.

New HF Radio

From my past blog posts, you can probably tell I love Jeeps, camping and the outdoors. Well another one of my hobbies that I enjoy is playing with ham radios. I have a new Xiegu X6100 ordered that should be here in a couple of days.

I’ve always been interest in ham radio and communication in general. I remember being in shop class in high school and my teacher had a station set up in the room and would occasionally get on the radio while we were in class. Then as a teenage / young adult, interest kinda faded as cell phone became more popular.

Just forward. 20+ years and as the geopolitical atmosphere became increasingly more turbulent and as I went down the rabbit hole of becoming more self sufficient, ham radio creeped back into the radar. I think ham radio will be crucial when SHTF. So in 2021 I attended the Elkhart Ham Fest and took the technician license and passed

Once you pass the first test, then you can learn by doing. I purchased a cheap Baofeng UV5R. These are cheap little Chinese radios. With this I learned about programing and started to learn about antennas. I joined the local ham radio club and got involved with ARES. I’ve learned about 2m and 70cm which is where I spend most of my time. I’ve learned about using hotspots and getting on DMR talk groups. There are so many different aspects of amateur radio, there really is something for everyone.

As a tech level there is a limited amount of high frequency bands that are available for a tech level to operate on. I will soon be testing for my general license. What I want to do is activate “Parks on the Air”. I love camping and while sitting around the fire I think it would be a enjoyable time to make contacts around the world.

KD9TFY

Memorial Day Weekend Trip

Something I’ve always wanted to do is to drive completely around Lake Michigan. I don’t know why just thought it would be neat to do. So I asked my wife, Nicole if she wanted to take an overloading trip around Lake Michigan. She agreed as long as we could go to a quilt shop in Wisconsin. We also decided to take our dog Baily. She is a Pit bull / Mountain Cur mix. She is just over a year old.

After checking what the hours of the quilt shop were, I decided to leave on Thursday night and visit the quilt shop on Friday. The quilt shop she wanted to go to is called Primitive Gatherings. My wife tells me they also hold some quilting retreats there.

So we headed out of the home base about 16:00 on Thursday evening. Bailey thinks she is my navigator. We arrived at Kettle Moraine State Forest - Pike Lake Unit for a single night stay. We arrived at dark, made some quick tacos with some precooked chicken then crawled into the tent. Friday morning we ate a quick breakfast of a cheese danish, healthy I know, then headed to Primitive Gatherings, a quilt shop located in Larsen, Wisconsin. It was a quaint little shop in a beautiful building.

From there we headed north and east through Green Bay, stopping for fuel and lunch then proceeded to Hiawatha NF. We were searching for a campsite for the night and stumbled upon Little Bay De Noc Campground. We set up camp at a beautiful site campsite on Little Bay De Doc of Lake Michigan. We made some dinner and watched an amazing sunset.

Saturday morning we woke up to a cold 37 degrees. It did warm up quickly as I made breakfast burritos. We had camp broke down about 9:30 and was on the road. We had a plan to head to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Munising, Michigan. It was about a 75 min drive to get there. We purchased a national park pass and proceeded to hike to Munising Falls. The falls were nice and it was nice to stretch our legs from the driving. We also checked out Sand Point. I walked into the water and I think my feet were numb in about 15 seconds. Lake Superior is very cold. Bailey wasn’t too keen on it either

We then headed to Miners Castle. We had a quick sandwich and some fruit then took the short hike to the Miners Castle Overlook. Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is a very pretty place. The water looks amazing and it is so blue. The rock formations along the lake were beautiful. We didn’t hike very much as many areas are closed to dogs on the trails. I have spoke with others that have been there and they have said the boat tours and kayak tours provide great views of the shore but since we had our K-9 Bailey we elected not to do the boat tours.

We were hoping to dispersed camp along Lake Superior for the night. As we were driving east along we were searching for a place to camp. We check a few spots in Hiawatha NF and many places were closed or didn’t allow camping. The places in the forest we did consider were so infested with mosquitoes, that we would have to stake the Jeep down to keep from being carried away. The mosquitos were huge and hungry. Bailey’s belly was bumps all over her where she was battling the little buzzards. Instead, Nicole found Straits State Park, in St. Ignace had a cancelation We were about 45 mins away and would head there for the night.

The park was full, as to be expected on a holiday weekend. Straits State Park is a great park to have spectacular views of the Mackinaw Bridge. We had “Fugi Pies” for dinner. Fugi pies are simply “pies” made in the sandwich makers or pie irons. For this evening we made our with bread, pizza sauce, pepperoni, sausage, and mozzarella cheese. After dinner I spent some time down on the beach gazing at the huge bridge. It really is a site to see.

We had a lazy day on Sunday waking up. We weren’t in any real hurry since we had no where to go. Those really are the best trips when God sets the schedule. I knew I wanted to get some fudge before leaving town. We packed up camp and crossed the “Big Mack” and pulled off on an exit in Mackinaw City. We browsed through one of the many shops, purchased fudge and started the drive south. I also wanted to drive through Wolverine. My grandparents spent many days camping there in the spring when they would hunt for morels. I spend a long weekend camping with them when I was kid and wanted to see if I could find where we camped and some of the paths we took when I hunted with them. I remembered some of the details my grandfather told be to find “Weber Lake Campground”. It was reminiscent to think back spending the weekend camping with my grand parents.

From the Weber Lake Campground we drove back roads and trails in the direction of Traverse City. I have never been through Traverse City and wanted to see it. Traverse City has as gorgeous down town. Those involved in the night life scene it looks to be pretty active with all the bars, pubs, and restaurants. We kept heading south. We stopped for lunch and knowing it was Memorial Day weekend and the way the bugs were we weren’t to keep on dispersed camping in the NF. We considered that if we did camp we would just throw up the tent and crawl in the tent to avoid the mosquitoes, midges, and black flies. That wouldn’t be very fun to just sit in the tent. We made the call to just drive it on home.

Overall it was a good trip. We logged 1250 miles, we saw a lot go God’s beautiful country, we had some very good meals and I checked another item off the bucket list.

About the Blog

I’m Mark. For as long as I can remember I’ve loved the outdoors. I can remember as a kid waking up and getting outside to play “GI Joe” or build forts in the woods. I grew up in northern Indiana. Growing up my brother and I were afforded many opportunities. We rode 4 wheelers and dirt bikes, we camped out most of the summer, we swam in the pool all day long. We enjoyed living.

I believe and love God. Without God I wouldn’t be here. Without God our world wouldn’t exist. Without God all of things I love doing wouldn’t be possible. Second, I love my wife and family and love spending time with them. God has blessed me with a wife whom I’m crazy about and kids that can drive me crazy.

As I’ve aged, I’ve found that I have lost much of the living part. It has always been in my heart but with being married, having and raising kids, starting, and operating a small business many of the things I have loved growing up have drifted away. Don’t misunderstand I wouldn’t change that season of my life, but now is the time for the next season to begin. I want to get back to adventures. I want to see places others choose not to go. I want to try things others may not try.

The past season in my life I have succeed in may aspects. Been married for over 22 years, raised two driven children, started and grown a successful contracting business. With those success have some at some cost. I’m overweight, out of shape, and could be in much better health. With this blog I want to focus on living with purpose. Trying new adventures, seeing new places, sampling different food. God has given us such an immense world to explore and so many of us get caught up in the daily grind.

This blog will be the beginning of my journey to reclaim what God has so graciously given to me, life. As a part of living I want to get back to many of the things I once did, scuba diving, mountain biking, hiking, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, among others. I want to travel to places I’ve never been, to do things I may have never done.

And if I DYTRYN, at least I know I was living.