Sandy Hook

Hey everyone reads this. This is Erin. We have just left Sandy Hook. There was not much there. They had a little town, but they had no beach!!!! There was one across the way, but no beach at Sandy Hook. We played tennis in Sandy Hook. We did our first over night motor sail. It is called off shore sailing in natical terms. It was a great night to do it. The moon was full. I had to be careful the whale wolves might have gotten me. We got to stay up very late and eat popcorn! At Sandy Hook we had gotten a huge bag of popcorn. We ate only a little bit of it. It is different in the ocean. The waves are real long and big. I got ocean sick. During the first part of our 24 hour motor sail we drug a line behind us to catch fish. We caught 2 fish within an hour. It was so cool. If some of you were wondering in New York what it was like on the double decker bus well we were very high. We had to duck for traffic lights!

New York City

Hello, this is Erin. I know we have not updated the website for a long time, so sorry. We have finished going down the Erie Canal. What I liked about the Canal is that there were lots of locks. I studied locks when I was in 5th grade. In the Erie Canal I got to go down a lot of them, 35 to be precise. They were like giant bath tub, only the locks were slimy .You had to hold onto slimy lines to keep our boat from bouncing around in the lock. We would write in the slime on the walls. It was funny because a friend of ours was behind us a few miles and when they went through the lock they saw our writing in the slime. We are in New York City. It is so big and at night there are a lot of lights. So far in New York we have been taking the subway. We got lost a couple of times but found our way home eventually. We never took the wrong train to the wrong place, but we got on a lot of trains then realized we were on the wrong train. We also got to see the US open (tennis game). It was great, we saw Roger Federer play and he won. It was a very close game. In the US open, the players would take a break and the camera men would show people in the audience. I didn’t get shown. They also gave away grills. We were in top section and you could hear people yell at Roger Federer. They would say things like “come on Roger” and “I love you Roger

The Erie Canal - First few days

This is Erin. Hey everyone reading this we have had a great time on the Erie Canal. It is really neat. It is very small compared to the lakes. It is only 90 feet across and 300 miles long. On each side of the canal there is a tow path where the horses would pull the barges. (That was a long time ago.)

The canal was built in 1825 and it was all hand dug. Horses would pull the barges down the canal on now what are tow paths. People back then figured that it was easier to ship things then to send it by train. The train owners did not like that so they built a rail way bridge. instead of having the frame on the top of the bridge it was on the bottom.. So the barges carrying big loads could not get through. The railroad bridge looked really neat. You can see it in the picture above.
Hey there again long time no see! This is another post from Geneva! :
We are in the canal and let me tell you it’s not like the North Channel, everything is mucky. But on the bright side I got to go down my very first lock and take a cave tour of an old underground factory. Did you know that back then it took the Canal to be built around 8 years? That to make the huge caves of factories each time they only blew a basketball hole in the wall and did that over and over again? Well that’s not the job for me because my middle name is not patient. In the cave, I got cave kissed!!!! That is when the cave drips on you. Wow, I must have a lot of luck! On the tour of the lock and the cave there was an upside down bridge. The reason for this is because the train industry was losing lots of business to the canal shipping and needed a plan. The upside down bridge would not let any big shipping boats around causing everyone running back to the train industries arms! Wow even back then they were clever! Well that was my favorite thing and I will be writing more of my ingenious words so stay updated!!!!

Home sweet home

This is a post by Geneva!!! : Hey Peeps we just started our journey to the BAHAMAS!!!!! At home we got to see our friends and family, but most of all we went to band camp!!! I’ll get to that after I tell you about the awesome Stars party at Sulfur Springs. We got to go creek hiking and roast marshmallows over the campfire! Yum! At band camp I played the saxophone and Erin played the flute. The band directors were Mr.Luce , Mr.Chongris , …… But the best part of all we got to meet the one, the only Dr. Jon R Woods (OSU Marching band) !!!! He was a great director and I had a blast!!!! But finally it was time to say goodbye and leave for a whole new adventure. BAHAMAS!!!!

Mackinaw, back home for a few weeks

This post was by Geneva: Hey everyone!!! We have just come back from a awesome adventure with horse drawn carriages, shopping and more shopping…. My family and I had just gotten back from Mackinaw City and Mackinaw Island. In Mackinaw City they had over 200 shops in at least walking distance. One of the cool things we did in the city was getting to go in the House of Mirrors and let me tell you never ever walk in there with your hands at your side instead of in front of you. Erin and I even got to make soap; mine smells like Black Cherry, is purple and has a sea horse in it. Finally we got to the see the new GET SMART movie, it was “the bomb” ! The next day we got to go to Mackinac Island on the Shepler. The first thing we did when we got there was to rent a bike and ride all the way around the island. Not saying that it’s a huge island but, it was a long ride and traffic was terrible considering there are no motorized vehicles. We had a great lunch at Mama Mia’s pizza place. Now I wouldn’t say that Mackinac Island is the cheapest place saying that to stay in a “special” hotel a hotel room it’s 500 smackeroos. No I’m not kidding but that’s just The Grand Hotel which is huge.

This is Erin here. Not many people travel down the Michigan coast on a jetski considring the fact that the water is so very cold. Well the Water Warriors did. The Water Warriors are a group of 25 jet skis that traveled down the Michigan coast. They raised money for the Special Olympics. One lady rode in her jetski raised 50,000 $$$$. That is a lot of money for just riding on a jetski all day. It was really cool that we got to wave to the special needs kids. They had so much fun. You could tell by the smiles on there faces. I added their web site to our Blog ( http://www.waterwarriors.org/ ).

Okay, as you saw Geneva and I were in front of a HUGE wave that had splashed up on the break wall. You don't know how long we had to stand there to get a good picture of us and the wave.That day they had about 5-7 foot waves. They were not big, not huge, but
enormous.

The Pool, Benjamins, North Channel

This post is written by Geneva: Hey everyone out there! Sorry we haven’t been updating you on the blog but Erin and I are here to catch you up. Well to start with, we just came from the Benjamin’s and the water is FREEZING!!!!!!! We have been having the best time of our lives (well so far). The first thing we did when we got there was go hiking and you won’t believe what we saw. Once we got on land (I drove the dinghy) we were climbing up these huge, pink rocks, and we actually saw a fox coming down the hill. My mom was bustling to get her long lens and you wouldn’t believe it (but we have pictures to prove it) the fox came right up to us not 2 feet away from me and it was almost like it was posing for us! The next time we saw it, it had caught a squirrel. Yum! The next day my parents taught Erin and me to….. Snorkel! I loved it and so did Erin, so much that our parents say they created monsters because we wanted to keep snorkeling in the freezing cold water. Later that day my dad took me around the island in the dinghy to see if we could make it around and we went really fast. I wanted to go snorkeling again, so when I got back Erin wasn’t there turns out she had followed us in the kayak and was going around the island. Her battery had died so she didn’t answer when we called her on the radio. My dad and I went looking for her but it probably took her 1 hour to get around the island with the huge enormous waves. When we went all the way around the island there she was sitting on the boat. I was astonished that she had made it all the way around. Well that’s one adventure she or anyone else will ever forget! The last day there we found our treasure. It was one of those plastic 50$ sailing plates and it was in perfect shape. We found it on the bottom of the lake! That’s one treasure but we hope to find more! That’s the end of what I have tot say for now! See you guys soon!

Update from Erin:


I will be writing about a place we went called Turnbull. Two of the couples we were traveling with split from us. We made up for it. We met 4 new people. They had two kids one named Eric and one named Becca. Becca was nine years old and Eric was ten years old . They had a sail boat called the Blue Moon.
They let us ski behind there dinghy. So we took them tubing and had a ton of fun.

I will also write about a place we went to named “The pool”. Wow do I have a lot to say about this place. Well, we got to go on a hike with the bugs buzzing in our ears. We hiked a mile uphill, then…we made it to the most beautiful place that I have ever been in my life. You could hear the birds chirp. You could not see the bottom of the water because it was so deep. The water was a blue, clear color but it was cold. I mean not cold dry ice freezing! I had to wear a wet suit to get in the water and it was still cold .We found a cliff that we could jump into the water. To warm up we did a little bit more hiking and we found the jackpot on blueberries. They were good even though they weren’t in season yet. Okay now back to earth, that night the mosquitoes were bad. What do I mean by bad??? Geneva counted 32 bites. Yah, that bad. Well that is my update.

Long point Cove

This post is written by Geneva: Hey people of the earth we are still having a blast (and trust me with the wind we are having it is a blast). Anyway my family and I just came from Long Point Cove. We got to climb a humongous cliff, it was beautiful up there and I got a bunch of pictures. The cliff was about flat in the front so we had to take a back route with all the trees and little rocks to hold. Erin and I got to go swimming and jump off the arch. I know what you are asking “Wasn’t the water cold?” The answer is maybe. But you will never know. You have to find out from the pictures of us swimming. Now…. Take it away Erin!!!!!

Update from Erin –
Having fun!!!!! Now it has been almost 3 weeks. The weeks have one by so fast. We have just come into Gore Bay. It is a very nice place with some little stores. We were out of civilization for a number of days and it was a lot of fun. We went hiking at Long Point Cove over these huge cliffs. When we were up there, we could see for miles. That night we had a camp fire on the rocks and roasted marshmallows.