The wind & rain was hard enough to wake me up on Saturday night, even before the front screen door got caught and started banging! Sunday morning dawned lovely & bright, though.

We began with leisurely coffee & breakfast, then cleaning & packing up for the trip home.

After all of my whirlwind travel this year -- especially the dashing through Dublin, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Saint Louis -- Annie says that perhaps I should consider adding a day to all of my future travel plans.

I didn't take that advice for this little jaunt, but that's exactly why we only went to the U.P.!

We checked out right on time and headed over to the Seney National Wildlife Refuge to enjoy the 7-mile Marshland Wildlife Drive. Yes! I spotted the eagle nest (but not eagles). It was so beautiful and quiet... except for the trumpeting swans and whatnot. We spotted a few swan families -- the young swans almost as big as their parents, but still unmistakably gray.

From there, we drove toward Manistique and Kitch-iti-kipi (The Big Spring), and was that ever worth the price of admission (even Rusty agreed)! I am sure that this would have been incredible even in the rain, but I'm so glad that it was sunny & bright!

We're waiting for the self-operated observation raft to return, top, and Rusty's straight across (in pink) peering through the middle of the boat during our voyage, above.

He's looking at something like this! Those are all fish... and their shadows. If you look closely, you can see some circular patterns in the sandy bottom and those are where the water that feeds this spring bubbles through -- at the rate of 10,000 gallons per minute! It was mesmerizing. All of it.

The water is super-clear! And chilly!

Twice, I heard a fish jump, and was then even more mesmerized by the "waves of light" left by the ripples as they moved across the water, the shadows crawling across the sandy bottom; I barely captured it in this photo (dumbstruck, I was)!

We drove down to Garden in the Garden Peninsula, had lunch overlooking the bay, and then hit the road for home in earnest. We arrived at around 4:30 -- in time to sit down and enjoy the second half of the Packer game with Kate (we won, yahoo!).