The Inconvenient Thing

If you are among those lucky folks whose family lives close by, consider yourself very blessed.  Our family isn’t so fortunate. My parents live 1300 miles away. My brother lives 800 miles away.  My wife’s folks are 450 miles away. When we want to celebrate the Christmas holiday with family it is a most inconvenient activity.  In fact, all my life this has pretty much been the story. As a child my grandparents were all four hours away from us and we always spent our Christmas breaks on the road.  Now-a-days I’m at least home for Christmas, being a pastor and all. But we’ve had many a Christmas afternoon where we’re hitting the road travelling to see our loved ones. Inconvenient, yes?  But worth it? You bet.

So much of our lives today are rich with activities helping us to fight inconvenience.  Modern plumbing is probably one of the first amenities that comes to mind. The automobile, trains and planes have also come along to help.  We even now have growing amounts of businesses trying to ship you everything known to man, even food, straight to your homes at your quick convenience, soon you won’t have to lift a finger.

Newfound Gap

Trailhead Elevation: 5,045 ft.
Distance: 1.11 mi. (my Forerunner 230)
Elevation Gain: 305 ft. (my GPS)
Start Time: 8:42am
End Time: 9:09am

Trip Report:
A simple hike today. We're in the midst of a long drive from Michigan down to Florida to visit family over the Christmas holiday. When I was planning out the driving route I saw the option to drive through the Great Smoky mountains was only slightly further. This seemed like a good choice for the way down. I then began to look for hiking options that we could make a quick strike with. Newfound Gap was the obvious choice. We could start up from the road and not leave our primary route for very long. The fact that the Appalachian Trail passed through here also helped.

Fun and Hard Work?

How often would you say that fun and hard work go well together? We typically picture hard work as something laborious and sweat inducing and probably to be avoided. Visions of shoveling a foot of snow off driveways are soon upon us and for most of us create a sense of dread. That kind of hard work just makes us want to stay in bed.

But is it possible that there is a kind of hard work in this life that might couple nicely with having some fun along the way? I believe so.  I experienced it this past July as I was in Minneapolis with the youth from my congregation.  We were up there for a national youth gathering. One of the elements the gathering offers as part of its program is to participate in a servant event.  They send groups out all over the community to clean up yards, help in nursing centers, and other great service activities.  Our group was sent to an organization called Feed My Starving Children. This is an organization which creates packaged meals and sends them all over the world to help feed starving children. Our servant event was to join them for one of their packing days and spend two hours helping to pack meals. Hard work? Yes. We gathered around stations and were each given a job to do as part of packing the meals. Some of us were measuring out ingredients, others were weighing the packages as made, others were stacking the finished products and putting them in the boxes. We worked and worked and worked and didn’t stop for those two hours. It went by like it was 20 minutes. Amazingly we enjoyed every minute of it.  This was the kind of work that often most people would get paid for and do as their regular job, and yet here we were volunteering and absolutely loving it. Fun and hard work together.

North Country Trail - Jordan Valley to Warner Creek

Jordan Valley Pathway, North Country Trailer, Warner Creek Pathway
Trailhead Elevation: 1,283 ft.
Distance: 10.35 mi.
Elevation Gain: 781 ft.
Start Time: 12:59pm
End Time: 3:13pm

Trip Report:
This was another return trip to the Jordan Valley Pathway for myself. I've yet to make it all the way to the west end to the Pinney Bridge Camp, but I've looped around most of the trail from the Deadman's Hill Overlook. Today I set out to get 10 miles one way or another. I set out down the large hill from the main parking and as I neared the bottom I decided I would give the North Country Trail heading north another try. I had done this a few years back but probably didn't go more than a quarter mile seeing how grass and unkept it was. I'm glad I gave it another go.

Pinckney Blind Lake Backpacking Oct '19

Potawatomi Trail
Pinckney State Recreation Area
Trailhead Elevation: 888 ft.

Oct. 4 Hike In:
  Distance: 4.18 mi.
  Elevation Gain: 246 ft.
  Start Time: 4:53pm
  End Time: 6:51pm

Oct. 5 Hike Out:

  Distance: 4.18 mi.
  Elevation Gain: 221 ft.
  Start Time: 9:04am
  End Time: 11:01am

Trip Report:
This trip was all about another opportunity to get my boys out hiking and backpacking. My two younger boys Jonah and Seth were able to join me this time. Luke had a previous engagement attending a homecoming football game with his girlfriend. Yes, I've reached that stage in life. The younger two though were excited to be able to get out camping. I had given them the choice of backpacking or car camping and much to my delight they chose to backpack.