The Saturday List

I have done some traveling in my life. Not as much as I would like to, but a pretty good amount for someone who grew up in a pretty remote part of the country. I have a lot of places I'd still like to see, but that can be a list for another Saturday. For today I present:

Places I'm glad I've been

1. The Dead River Basin, Ishpeming & Negaunee, Michigan. Dad built a 2 room cabin on the basin in the mid 60's. Brother and I spent nearly every weekend there every summer while we were growing up. It is, without question, my favorite place on earth.

2. South Dakota. A couple of years ago we went on vacation with my in-laws, including Brother and Sister-In-Law and Nephew. We went to South Dakota in September to watch as the buffalo were brought in from the plains for the winter. We saw a lot of stuff in the week we were there, including Bear Country, Wind Cave, the Reptile Garden, and, of course, Mount Rushmore.

3. Singapore. When I worked for Arthur Andersen (remember when that was a company?) I did a bit of traveling to do training classes. One of the trips was to Singapore, and we spent a couple of days during the trip seeing the sights. I have photos of the trip, but you'll have to come over to the house to see them since they are actual photos, and my scanner doesn't do a good job on real photos. We saw a lot of cool stuff, and ate some really good food, but the coolest part (and most touristy, to be fair) is a place called Sentosa island. There are all kinds of things to do and see. Sort of like Disney without all the rides. The mascot of the place is the Merlion, which is a couple of stories tall, with stairs so that you can climb up and look out of his mouth into Singapore harbor.

4. Courthouse Mountain, Colorado. The in-laws live in Montrose, Colorado. Their house is in town, but town is in the middle of the San Juan mountains, so it's still a pretty nice place to be. One year when we were visiting we went hiking up Courthouse Mountain. It's called that because, well, it looks like a courthouse. In the photo it's the peak on the right. Once you get to the top, it's very flat and offers a very cool view. Again, I have no photos as that trip was pre-digital camera, but I borrowed this one from another website.

5. Any campsite. We've been going camping the last couple of years, and we haven't yet been in a really terrible place. True, there was one year that we had the only campsite in the area with NO shade, but we just hung out at our friends' site next door, which was fully shady. Just the fact that we're sleeping in a tent under the stars makes it great.