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June Highpointing Trip Part 4

After the big road trip I decided to use Tuesday June 6th as a resting day. Then on Wednesday I planed on hitting the Lake Michigan lake shore pretty hard before looking for some possible waterfalls in the Onaway & Posen area. I left the house around 10:30am bringing my dog Saphira with me. Our first stop was 30 minutes north of home at Duck Lake State Park, it’s been several years since I had last been here so I didn’t remember it well.

There are many hiking trail at Duck Lake, but I decided to do one of the shorter ones near the beach, after just 30 minutes of hiking we were off to our next destination. We arrived at the next stop at 2:00pm, it was 2 parks situated right next to each other. The first, Magoon Creek Park was little more than beach access. The Second Sundling Park, while still pretty small at least had an informal trail loop that took no more than 15 minutes to hike around.

About 15 minutes after leaving Sundling park we made our way into Manistee to visit the Man Made Lake Preserve. The Lake was formed by the removal of vast amounts of sand by a sand mining operation.

The preserve was quite nice, there was swimming access to both the man made lake & Lake Michigan along with a trail that looped around the man made lake. I let Saphira hop in to cool off a bit. At 3:45 I made it to Arcadia, by driving up Chamberlain Road I was able to access the beach.

No good trails here, but I did walk south along the beach for an hour until I got to where a large portion of the Arcadia Bluffs Golf Course had eroded into lake Michigan.

It was a big deal back in the 90′s when they bulldozed the sand dunes to put in a golf course & it caused quite the environmental disaster to the beaches of the area for years to come. Another hour of hiking back the way I had come brought me back to my car. From Arcadia I headed for the Sleeping Bear Dunes, which is where I had planned on spending the night. At 7:30 I arrived in the park & briefly stopped at inspiration point to snap a few quick photos.

Then I went to The Village Inn restaurant in Empire to get some food and a beer. I spent the night sleeping on top of a nice grassy area at the edge of the dunes in a super secret spot that I’m not going to tell you about :)

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June Highpointing Trip Part 3

Monday June 5th started out bright and early at 6:30AM since I had only one stop on my itinerary for the day I took a more leisurely hike up to the top of Eagle Mountain. The sky was still pretty foggy when I woke up, but it cleared up quite quickly as the sun warmed things up giving me some nice views of a lake & vistas from on top of cliffs.

The hike comes in two parts, the first hour is pretty easy with very little elevation gain, but the 2nd hour is all up hill. I arrived at the top of Eagle Mountain around 8:45.

I spent a little while at the top enjoying the view & relaxing. Then I hit the trail back to the car at a much faster pace, though I did stop at the lake once again to get a few photos of a beaver. He got pretty close to me, but as soon as he spotted me he did the tail smack & dove under water.

I returned to my car by 9AM & then hit the road for home. Of course I did stop at the Bridge View Diner in Mackinaw City for dinner, always happy to give that place business. I did make a stop in Petoskey at 8:00PM, I had head of a possible waterfall in the city so I needed to check it out. Unfortunately, even if the route of the creek is natural, I found the fall to be so artificially presented that I couldn’t add then to the list of Lower Peninsula waterfalls.

Also in Petoskey I walked around the Bear River Valley Recreation Area, again there were plenty of rapids here, but they were clearly artificial. Still though I would totally bring an innertube to this river to have some serious fun.

After spending an hour in Petoskey I headed for home and got there around 12:30AM Tuesday & fell to sleep.

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June Highpointing Trip Part 2

After getting only 5.5 hours of sleep I woke up on Sunday morning at 6:30AM to continue on my way to Fort Ransom State Park in North Dakota. I arrived to the park headquarters by 9:30 & was able to get directions to my target destination, Mineral Spring Falls. 15 minutes later I was at the trailhead & ready for a nice long hike. The trail was well worn & it seems that they allowed horses to roam freely in the area because there was horse shit EVERYWHERE. Aside from that the trail was pretty enjoyable offering views of from the top of treeless hills & also down in the river valleys.

I took me less than an hour of hiking to get to Mineral spring Falls, notable for being the only waterfall in the entire state of North Dakota. I’ve got to say it was pretty pathetic, side often over exaggerate the height of these falls to 15 feet, when it reality I’d say they’re 5 at best.

There was no loop here, so I had to follow the same trail back to my car & I eventually left the area by 11:15. It was a long drive through Minnesota to get to my next destination, Big Manitou Falls in Wisconsin, I didn’t arrive there until 5PM. There was no hiking to be done at Big Manitou Falls, just walk a short distance from the parking lot to get a few pictures & move on, I hate stops like that.

Next I headed back north into Minnesota to go for Grand Portage falls on the Canadian border. One of the reasons I like to go on these highpointing/waterfall trips is to just give me an excuse to visit various parts of the country & determine if there is stuff worth checking out there again. This has moved states like Arkansas & South Dakota to my must visit again states, while leaving otheres like Louisiana & North Dakota off the radar. After driving from Duluth Minnesota to the Canadian border I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this is one of the most beautiful parts of the United States. It would take you a month to hit just the well known hiking destinations in this area, let alone all the hidden gems that I’m sure exist here as well.

If it hadn’t been for a strong thunderstorm that rolled in I don’t know if I would have even made it to my Grand Portage State Park. The storm was making me pretty nervous for a good 2 hours, but it just so happened to clear up just as I was getting to the Grand Portage. It’s a pretty easy hike to the falls, a good portion of it is paved in fact.

The falls are quite beautiful, dropping over 100 feet, since this was the last stop of my day I spent quite a bit of time here just leisurely walking along the river.

At 9:15 I left the falls & headed to Grand Marais for some ice cream, I ate it along the beach & watched a beautiful dense fog roll off the mountains onto Lake Superior. I left before I froze to death though, the temperature had dropped down to about 50° F by this time. I drove up to Eagle Mountain & went to sleep there in the parking lot at 11:00.

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June Highpointing Trip Part 1

Starting out on Friday June 2 I set out to conquer 3 more US state highpoints, numbers 26-28 overall. Things started out later than usual with me not leaving the house until 5PM. This was due to the fact that Charles Mound, the first stop on my itinerary, is only open to the public on the first weekend of the Month’s June, July, August, & September. I planned on sleeping at Apple River Canyon State Park & then hitting the highpoint first thing in the morning. I arrived at the State Park at 10:45PM & slept until 6AM the next morning. Instead of immediately heading to Charles Mound I instead decided to do a little bit of hiking around Apple River Canyon.

There was a short system of trails that both followed the river & took you to the top of the bluffs, I was able to hike most of the trails where I had slept in about an hour. From there I read a few of the signs to get a very well written history of the area.

Around 7:15AM I left the state park & arrived at the trail head for Charles Mound about 15 minutes later. The trail itself is a fairly easy one, not much more than a mile there & it’s mostly flat until the last few hundred meters. The view from the top isn’t too bad, no trees to obstruct the view which is always nice, but not always guaranteed with these highpoints.

I got back to my car around 8:15 & headed for Dunnings Spring Park in Decorah Iowa. At 10:30 I arrived at the park & was immediately greeted with a view of my target Dunnings Spring Falls, which at 40 feet makes it the tallest waterfall in Iowa. It’s a very interesting waterfall that flows very heavily right out from a spring in the cliff wall.

Since there was no hiking to be done at the park I quickly returned to my car and headed to my next target. At 2:30 PM I arrived at Hawkeye Point, which is the highpoint of Iowa. While this highpoint is as exciting as standing in a farm filed can be this there is quite a bit of local history to be learned from a sort of mini museum that they had there.

Still there’s only so much to do at this highpoint, so I quickly left for my next target destination. The drive to all of these places had so far been pretty uneventful, A LOT of cornfields were seen. Then as soon as I crossed the Missouri River the landscape got pretty dang interesting, beautiful rolling hills as far as the eye could see, gone were the vegetable farms & in there place were now cow farms. I arrived at Smith Falls State Park in Nebraska at 7:30 & thank god there was hiking to be done here. Getting to Smith Falls was pretty easy, but there was a nice system of trails that takes you to the top of the bluff that I really wanted to get to. So I took a few photos of the falls really quick & then got to some serious hiking.

Most of the area was tallgrass plain with Ponderosa Pine covering the area immediately around the cliff face & waterways. I hiked this area for about an hour before returning to the falls to jump in and cool off.

It was a nice hike to end the day with. I took off from Smith Falls around 8:15 & headed north, eventually I had to pull the car off the side of the road somewhere in South Dakota to sleep around 1:00AM Sunday Morning.

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AnthrOhio 2017

 Trying to do some catch up today with the blog, lot’s of things have been happening, I just forget to write about them :(

Anyways lets go back to Memorial Day weekend, originally the plan for this weekend was to attend Great Lakes Fur Con for the second year, but due to various circumstances it had to be cancelled at the last minute. Mostly due to AnthrOhio occurring on the same weekend. I wasn’t going to let that ruin my weekend though, so right after work on Friday May 26th I drove for 5 hours to Columbus Ohio to attend AnthrOhio. Having got relatively little sleep the night before I was dead tired on arrival to the convention, around 4PM local time. Friday was very uneventful for me, I quickly registered & then wandered the Dealers Den & Artist Alley for about an hour before making my way over to the Hospitality Suite with Izisx where we chatted for various topics for awhile. At 6PM the Dealers Den closed so I met my artist friend Infierna for some food in the Hospitality Suite where they were servings some pizza. We headed to our hotel room where I tried to chat, but I was simply too tired & passed out. I woke up a few hours later when Tibs & Kanza arrived, but I was still pretty tired so the rest of the night is just a blur.

On Saturday we all got up bright and early around 8:00AM for breakfast, heading out to Bob Evans. We arrived back at the con around 9:30 where I tried to catch the end of the Ears & Tails workshop, but it was mostly over by then. More wandering ensued for me until noon when I got into my Winter the Deer fursuit for the fursuit parade. After some casual suiting for an hour after the parade I got out of suit & headed over to the Frankenfursuit making competition where I watched as fursuit makers attempted to make a fursuit in under 2 hours. After that I did some more wandering until 6PM when the Dealers Den closed. I met up with Infierna, Tib, Kanza, & several of their friends to go have dinner at a Japanese restaurant, which was a lot of fun. Upon arriving back at the con we all suited up to wander around for awhile before returning to the hotel room for some drinks & eventual sleep.

Sunday wasn’t such an early morning as Saturday was. It was a very lazy day for me, I didn’t attend any panels at all this day. I did head over to the Dealers Den & purchased a small badge from one of my favorite artists MLW.

Infierna closed up her table in the Dealers Den a little bit early & the two of us headed out in fursuit for an hour where we got our picture taken with the charity.

After suiting we headed out to dinner with Tibs & Kanza before I had to head back to Michigan. So while pretty uneventful for me in regards to what I did while at the convention I still had a good time hanging out with friends & meeting a few new people.

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Ludington State Park (May 21st)

After Hiking Silver Lake, me & my dad made our way up to Ludington. Once there we parked on the North side of the Dam on The Little Sable River. We crossed over it took a left, walked a short ways up the side of the dune & found ourselves on the Piney Ridge Trail. We had hiked one half of the trail the previous year, we were here to get the other half. We headed south along the trail, wildlife was pretty sparse, except near the Inter-Dune Ponds where we say many birds & some deer.

The hike was pretty uneventful except for near those areas, though were were able to explore some of the historical trails on our way back to the car. Some of these trails would have been set up back in the old logging days a hundred years ago, this part of the forest had many rather well preserved ancient tree stumps all over the place. There was a nice lookout near the end of the trail over looking Hamlin Lake.

It was getting dark at this point so we decided to not do any more hiking. We went back to the car & headed to the Asian Buffet for dinner.

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Silver Lake State Park (May 21st)

Oh no I’m falling behind on my trip logs D: So last weekend on Sunday me & my dad decided to take a trip up to Ludington State Park, but along the way we make a stop at Silver Lake to do some birding, which has become an annual event for us. We started at the south end of the park at the bridge that crosses Silver Creek. We headed west toward the dam to see the resident Great Blue Heron, we didn’t spot him at first but after hiking up the side of the dune we saw him fling around deep in the dunes trying to avoid all the tourists.

We continued hiking through the dunes for a short while, but once we got to the lone pine tree we decided to climb back down into the woods to spot some birds. The birding was moderate, but once we crossed the MacWoods dune buggy trail to get by the pond & Silver lake things really picked up. We Even spotted some newborn deer that were only a few hours old.

Once we got to the point where the sand dunes & the lake form a barrier for the woods, we decided to go out into the sand dunes, normally we head back to the car at this point.

This part of the hike wasn’t great for birds, but we did get some Spotted Sandpipers & some bank Swallows. I decided to run down the dunes & jump into Silver Lake, but I only did that once because the water was really cold :D After that we did head back to the car & got some ice cream for lunch.

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Port Crescent State Park

Last Saturday I found myself over in Midland Michigan at a Furry Picnic, I’ve got some social anxiety issues, so I try to go to these events at least once a month in an attempt to combat it.

I always try to have a backup pan though in case things get too stressful for me, luckily that didn’t happen this time, but I still tried to carry out my backup plans nonetheless. My goal was to do my first hiking trip in The Thumb of Michigan. I surveyed some points of interest via Google Earth the week prior & came up with 3 attractions that I wanted to hit.

First up on the itinerary was a large unnamed rock formation on the beach just west of McGraw County Park. Unfortunately at this time of the year the park was not yet open to beach goers, though I’m sure that will change once Memorial Day weekend rolls around in a few weeks. Luckily Port Crescent State Park, another stop on my itinerary was only a mile up the road, so I could walk the beach to the rock from there. I started hiking the trails at 4:00 PM, conditions were very windy & due to the very high water level the tails were extremely wet. Wildlife was pretty much non existent except for a few squirrels & a seagull.

It took me 30 minutes of hiking to reach the end of the park boundary, from there I would have to walk the beach to the big rock. The wind was pretty brutal, but I was wearing a hoodie so it was tolerable, but the waves crashed very high onto the beach getting my already soaked feet even wetter.

Walking along the beach it took me about 20 minutes about 20 minutes to reach the big rock. I found it covered in graffiti, but it was still quite an interesting sight to behold. I jump up on top for a few minutes to rest before heading back along the beach to the state park.

I lost track of where I had entered onto the beach from the state park so I ended up walking along the beach for quite a while on my return to my car. Though this led me to an area where the beach was completely eroded up to the tree & I nearly got swept away by the large waves.

I had to force my way through the trees to get to higher ground, this proved to be an exciting turn of events as I stumbled onto the hiding place of a red fox as he was eating a bird of some kind. These guys are quite fast so I was unable to react in time to get a photo. Shortly after seeing the fox though I made it back onto the trails & returned to my car by 5:45.

After taking out 2 of my must visit sites I continued east in an attempt to reach Turnip Rock. Very annoyingly tough I was not able to reach this site by car due to a lot of private drives & a private golf course. The only way to access Turnip Rock is via kayak. So my trip ended on a failure, but I was a good day of meeting new people & hiking nonetheless. As an added bonus to top off the day, when I returned home I found that a fursuit that had recently purchased had arrived in the mail early.

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Motor City Furry Con 2017

So for the first time in my life I’ve finally spent a few days in the East half of Michigan, it only 26 years for me to get around to it. My 7th Furry convention took me to Novi, Michigan, a city at the westernmost edge of the Detroit metropolitan area. Work was not kind to me on Friday morning so I wasn’t able to leave for the convention until 10:45AM, luckily it’s only a 2.5 hour drive to the other side of the state. Traffic through Grand Rapids & Lansing was uneventful so I arrived without any delays at 1:15PM to register, I met up with my roommate Aygis Dragon to get a room key & then I was off to have some fun. First up was the Furry Movie & TV Show panel which lasted from 2:00 to 4:00, where there was discussion on a wide variety of movies that are favorites in the furry fandom. I stuck around in the same room at 4:00 for the fursuit meet & greet panel, but it was a complete bust as almost nobody showed up. So instead I took this time to hit up the Dealers Den & Artists Alley, I checked on the status of a few commissions, but decided to hold off on any purchases. At 6:00 to 7:00 I attended Uncle Kage’s story hour where we got to hear the tale of Doug O. After that I decided to hang out in the hotel lobby for a bit & that’s when I was spotted by god. I had purchased a drawing of an anthro shark shooting beer bottles at cormorants from her at GLFC 2016. She remembered & came over to say hi & give me some rum, I followed her & some friends up to a room party where I got very very wasted. I don’t remember anything, but the best story I heard from that night was how we all went to Taco Bell, ordered some White Castle Burgers, & got them while still at Taco Bell.

I’ve got no idea when I made it back to my hotel room, but I woke up on Saturday with one hell of a hangover around 8:00AM :( It seem that no matter what I do I always wake up early. I had breakfast at the hotel where I drank much coffee, until about 9:30 when I headed over the Saturday Morning Cartoons Panel & just watched those for 2 hours. I was starting to feel better so I went & put on Winter for the fursuit parade & photo shoot, which lasted until 12:30PM. After the Parade at 1:00 I headed over to Caption This, where funny images are displayed on a projector & a group of people try to come up with the best caption for that image. At 3:00 I rocked out to some good 90′s songs at The Rock n Roll Dragon Rocks the 90's panel, which was followed by Kage & Alkali Charity Show at 4:00. I then went over to the sponsors lounge to get some food & that’s when god found me again, & thus drinking began again. The sponsors lounge at MCFC is one of the best because they serve free beer. MLW & a few other artists joined the fun & they started up an art jam, MLW gave me her notepad & I got to draw a shark in it :D I took to the drinking more slowly this night, while still having a good time & made it back to my hotel room around 11:15 after somehow losing my room key.

Sunday morning was much more enjoyable than Saturday morning. The first panel of the day for me was The Furry Nerd at 11:30, I joined Pandez & he chatted with the audience about movies, TV shows, & Video Games. At 1:00 I was at Quipfur & then at 2:00 the Charity Auction started. Didn’t see anything that I like at this auction, but there were some great photoshopped posters of Uncle Kage & Alkali that went for crazy amounts of money. I left the room to go get some food & then returened shortly after for the Furry Talent Show, which was followed by Closing Ceremonies. The closing ceremonies were nice & short in contrast to the ridiculously long ones at Fur Squared earlier this year. I left the Con at 5:30 & made it back home by 8:00. MCFC 2017 was another great convention & one that I will be revisiting in the future.

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Train to Busan

Last week Friday I sat down & watched the 2016 South Korean zombie film Train to Busan. Directed by Yeon Sang-ho & staring Gong Yoo as Seok-woo & Kim Su-an as Soo-an as father and daughter, Train to Busan offers fast paced action, tense horror, & quiet dramatic moments to provide an emotional roller coaster of a movie. The film follows Seok-woo a divorced fund manager as he travels by train with his daughter so that she can see her mother, while this is happening a Zombie outbreak starts to occur & eventually turns into a nationwide pandemic. The zombies in this film are very World War Z inspired, quickly infected & very fast moving, but they have their limitations. In fact a good way to describe this film is that it takes place in the World War Z universe, just with a different setting & characters. The action scenes are well filmed & easy to follow, there is a cast of other memorable characters, & overall this is just a good film. Unless you are absolutely sick of the zombie genera by now I’d check this one out if I were you.

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MuskeCon 2017

MuskeCon 2017 is the first ever Comic Book Convention held in the city of Muskegon. It was held downtown at the Holiday Inn on March 18 from 10AM to 6PM. I decided to get up at 9AM so that I could be there for the whole day. There was plenty of parking & a short line for registration, which was only $5. Plenty of people were already there at 10AM so it was looking like it was going to be a rather popular convention. The convention itself was mostly geared toward dealers & artists, which there was a large variety of. There were 20 Dealers selling various merchandise from tabletop board games, clothing, toys, props, & of course Comic Books. Additionally there were 10 artists selling their work & taking commissions. I met a nice artist know as Pinktasia who I bought a hilarious MLP/Titanic mashup print from & I kept on talking to her throughout the day.

Beyond the dealers & artists there were 5 miscellaneous booth’s promoting other cons or gatherings. There were only 3 panels throughout the entire day, from noon to 3PM there was a small Magic The Gathering tournament, from 4:00 to 5:00 there was a horror makeup application demonstration, & lastly there was a Cosplay judging competition from 5:00 to 5:30, winners photo just below.

I attended the latter of these 2 panels, after which I went home. Throughout the day there were at least 40 high quality cosplayers & many others who just a smaller amounts of effort. There were lots of Star Wars & DC villains, a couple of Deadpools, some folks who had designed their own character, 2 fursuits, some Borderlands characters, Ghostbusters, Neytiri, & many others.

The only obvious complaint that I have is a lack of panels to attend throughout the day, you can only walk around a dealers room so many times before you start to fall asleep, but other than that this is a great first showing & I look forward to future events.

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Get Out

To end off my day at the cinema I decided to go see Get Out, a thriller from first time director & comedian Jordan Peele. This film is freaking brilliant, I decided to go see this one based off of the trailer alone & boy was it worth it. Daniel Kaluuya plays Chirs, he has been dating his girlfriend Rose, played by Allison Williams, for 4 months. The plot follows Chris as he visit’s Rose’s parents in a isolated wooded area, where things aren’t quite what they seem. There are strong thematic undertones in film on the treatment of black people, which makes the already intense film all the more uncomfortable to watch. Jordan Peele throws some lighthearted comedic moments into the film every so often to break up the tension a bit before plunging you right back into it. I really don’t want to give too much away about this film, this is absolutely a must watch film from 2017. This is also a case where the film is best seen at the cinema with a mixed racial crowd, which only enhances how uncomfortable the film can be at times.

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The Lego Batman Movie

After watching Logan & taking a much needed bathroom break I had to rush over to the Lego Batman movie before it started. The 2014 Lego Movie was quite wonderful, this is no surprise considering it was written & directed by modern comedic masters Phil Lord & Chris Miller. Unfortunately they did not return as the creative team for this film, only serving as producers. For this film Chris McKay has his first go as a film director, while there were 5 different writers credited. The writers do their best, but they tried to hard to emulate the comedic style of the first film instead of bringing their own style of comedy to the table, this approach never works & a lot of the jokes fall flat because they don’t understand why the original approach works in the first place. Also the film doesn’t connect emotionally the way the first Lego Movie did, it’s pretty clear that playing with Legos was a big part of Phil Lord & Chris Miller’s childhood, this is reflected in the final scene of the Lego movie & it’s why it worked so well emotionally. For this film though, the film doesn’t have the same emotional impact because the story just tries to teach a generic lesson about friend & family. As a batman film, it does a better job, the basic plot is that Joker is sad that Batman doesn’t consider him his greatest enemy so he comes up with a plot to release a bunch of badguys from the phantom zone, some of which are King Kong, Voldemort, & Sauron. Along the way Batman learns that he can’t defeat the Joker alone & that he needs the help of his friends Robin, Batgirl, & Alfred. Overall the film is still pretty good with quite a few laughs in it, often poking fun of previous depictions of Batman, but it simply doesn’t compare to the first Lego Movie so some may come out of this film disappointed like I did.

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Logan

Yesterday I decided to go a bit crazy and watch 3 films at the cinema, the first up on my watch list was Logan. Since it’s beginning in 2000 the X-Men franchise has had one consistency across all 8 of it’s films, & that is Hugh Jackman as The Wolverine. Like Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, Hugh Jackman a Wolverine will go down as one of the most perfectly cast comic book characters of all time. He has shown time & time again that he has a lot of care and respect for the character, admitting to his mistakes & trying to fix them in subsequent film. Of course though Hugh Jackman can’t play Wolverine forever & with this film it marks his last portrayal of the character, & boy does he go off on a high note. The story line for the film is derived from the Old Man Logan comic books, where time it seems is finally catching up with him. Also the film has a lot of similarities to old westerns, in particular the John Wayne film Shane, which is even on displayed here in a hotel room. The film is set after X-Men: Last Sand & The Wolverine in the Patrick Stewart Professor X continuity. The basic plot is that most mutants have died off & the only new ones have been bread in labs for weaponization purposes. A nurses from one of these labs tries to rescue the young mutants & brings a young girl to where Logan & Professor X have been hiding out in Mexico for a number of years. When the hired guns of the lab come looking for the young mutant Logan & Professor X try to get her to a save haven in North Dakota. The film is the classic reluctant hero comes out of retirement to help out those in need. The action here is nice & brutal, being R rated there is really no holding back with the gore & brutality of the fights. There is also a good helping of slower more emotional moments to break things up. There really isn’t too much to complain about with this film, but if it does have one fault it’s that the movie is a bit too long & does drag a bit near the end. Still this is a great send off to a great comic book hero & I highly recommend this film, even to those who aren’t fans of the other X-Men films.

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John Wick: Chapter 2

Last week Tuesday I went and saw John Wick 2 at the cinema. The first John Wick was a pleasant surprise from 2014 so I was quite looking foreward to this sequel. The same creative team of director Chad Stahelski & writer Derek Kolstad return for the sequel to flesh out the world only hinted at in the first film. This in actually one of the films biggest faults, where the first film left it to one’s imagination why John Wick was such a badass, the sequel brings the word of these assassins directly into the main story line. The basic plot is that John Wick swore a blood oath to another of his fellow assassins & must once again do some killing, after which he goes after the assassin who made him fulfill his blood oath. The action here is absolutely top notch, you can really tell that the cast & crew spent a lot of time & effort into the choreography of the fight scenes. Also the director makes a conscious decision not to use the shaky cam technique that plagues many other modern action movies. I would recommend that anyone who is a fan of action movies give this one a watch, but don’t go in expecting the story to be as good as in the first film.

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Fur Squared 2017

With all of the hiking out of the way I was now set to drive straight to the convention hotel for about 2.5 hours with not stops inbetween. I was going to arrive at 5:30PM EST (4:30 local) which was 1/2 hour sooner than I anticipated, no big deal there. Traffic through Chicago was somehow pleasant so I wasn’t  going to have any unexpected delays either, but my god the tolls. I remember when 1 roll of quarters could get you to Wisconsin from Michigan & back, but now you need one roll of quarters just to get to Wisconsin so that kinda pissed me off. When I was about 30 minutes away from the convention hotel the weather was getting quite bad & it even started raining, the construction work on the highways right around the hotel made things rather stressful too. Still I was able to got to the hotel safely & I even got a good parking space near the door. For the next 1.5 hours I just wandered around the hotel learning the layout & figuring out where things were going to be. One of my roommates at the hotel, Stephanie "Infierna" Sendelbach , was out eating food & buying some supply's for her time as an artist in the Dealer’s Den for the weekend so I couldn’t get into the room even if I had wanted to. At 6:00PM CST Registration was supposed to open, so I got in line. Unfortunately due to some technical errors the line didn’t move at all for an hour, but since I didn’t have anything else to do I stayed in line until the problems were sorted out. After getting my con badge I headed over to the hotel bar & got myself a delicious burger & some Sprecher’s Rootbeer, a local soda that is very tasty. By 7:30 I was very tired, by this time I had been up for 16.5 hours coming off only 4 hours of sleep. Infierna had made it back to the hotel room by then so I headed up with my bags & took a shower, I tried to stay up for a bit longer to talk, but it wasn’t happening, I fell asleep shortly after that shower.

I slept for a very long time that night, I vaguely recall being woken up every so often by some lightning & thunder though. I think I eventually got out of bed around 10:00AM CST, at which point me & Infierna headed down to get some free breakfast. They foolishly put out a bowl of watermelon which I grabbed about half of along with some bacon, potatoes, & scrambled eggs. Opening Ceremonies started at noon, after which  Infierna headed to her dealers table & I went to several panels one right after another. At 1:00PM I went to Foxes Meet & Greet, where me and 4 other foxes sat around and just chatted with each other about various things, it was a nice way to get to know a few people. After that at 2:00 I attended Fur Squared Stars & Celebrities where the guests of honor came on stage & they answered a bunch of random questions. Finally at  3:00 I attended nerds with tails, where a bunch of furry nerds gathered to talk about various nerdy things like comic book movies & TV shows. I took a break from panels at 4:00 and wandered around the Artist Alley & Dealer’s Den for a couple hours. I did end up buying a new set of wrist sleeves with some claws from Pocket Wolf for one of my fursonas Icy Fox. The Dealer’s Den closed at 6:00 at which point me & Infierna headed to the hotel bar for some more delicious burgers to eat along with one of her artist friends GoldenDruid. Since there were no more panels that I wanted to attend on Friday night I headed back up to the hotel room to relax for a bit, this didn’t last for too long though as Infierna invited me to join her, Razz, & Odie down in the hotel pool. We all spent about an hour in the pool swimming & throwing a volley ball around. The pool was very nice, they kept the temperature at nearly hot tub levels of warmth. I was done for the night after this & just surfed the web until out other 2 roommates, Tiberius & Kanza, arrived at the room around midnight at which point I turned in for the night.

On Saturday things started off nice and early when Tiberius, Kanza, Infierna, & myself all headed down for another free breakfast at 9:00AM. This time though they didn’t put out a bowl of watermelon :( Once we ate breakfast we went our separate ways. I decided to attend Military Furs Meet & Greet at 10:00AM, this was a fun panel where I got to talk with some other furs about our experiences, for better or worse, in the military. I returned to the Dealer’s Den after that panel to commission a full body badge from Twinning Tree Creations for my other fursona Winter the Deer. At 12:30PM I headed over to the main events hall after having suited up as Winter for the fursuit parade, which lasted until about 1:30. I made it to Match Game at 2:00 & had a good time there. At 3:30 Charity Cards Against Humanity started up & that was an absolute blast, over $400 was raised for the charity at this event. One of the more informative panels I attended started immediately after Cards Against Humanity, the panel was Home Brewing & I learned lots of interesting facts about how to make your own beer & other alcoholic drinks right at home. After this I returned to the Dealer’s Den to meet Tiberius, Kanza, & Infierna for dinner. Instead of dinner at the hotel we drove over to Mitchell's Fish Market for some seafood. I ordered the Mahi Mahi. Tiberius & Kanza ordered some Calamari & Oysters as appetizers which they shared with us, I love Calamari, but this was the first time I ever ate oysters, & I must say it was pretty good. Pandaroohoo joined out table to talk for a little bit while we waited on our main course, leaving to join some other friends when our food did arrive. Again I was adventurous when I ordered the Mahi Mahi as I had never eaten it before, it turned out to be delicious, but really the only reason I ordered it in the first place was so I could say Mahi Mahi a whole bunch of times :D We all returned to the hotel room after dinner, where I had several large shots of mango infused vodka. Then at 10:00 me & Infierna got into our fursuits & wandered around the hotel. I don’t remember too much that happened after that except I don’t think I fell asleep until 2:00AM on Sunday :D

Some how after that long Saturday night Sunday started off bright & early with everyone making it down to breakfast around 9:00AM, again there was no bowl of watermelon :( At 10:00AM I made my way over to the What’s Your Next Con? panel, it’s unfortunate that Motor City Furry Con & Furry Weekend Atlanta both fall on the same weekend this year, it seems like there is an even spit as to who will be going to these cons, though sadly most of my friends will be in Atlanta :( My favorite panel of the trip was The Olden Days - History of the Furry Fandom. That panel started at 11:00AM and was run by Uncle Kage, I love history & I found this panel to be very informative & interesting. Being run by Uncle Kage most of the history wasn’t related to the whole furry fandom, but mostly just to Anthrocon, but still it was very good nonetheless. At 1:00PM I made my way over to the charity auction, which is one of my favorite convention events, I wasn’t able to win anything here as everything went for pretty outrageous prices, I believe that over $4,000 was raised for charity at this event alone. The last panel I attended at the convention was the Closing Ceremonies, they started at 4:00 I stayed for as long as I could but after they had dragged on til 5:30 with no end in sight I had to leave & take the long drive back home to Michigan. The drive back home was far more unpleasant than the drive to the convention, much more of the usual stop & go traffic typical of Chicago, also I took the wrong (more expensive) toll way. I ended up running out of money so I had to get out of my car to pick up all the quarters that people drop at those toll booths, fuck Chicago & their shitty ass toll roads. I made it back home at 10:30PM EST & immediately went to bed as I had to be to work by 5:30AM the next morning.

Fur Squared ended up being a very fun convention where I got to meet & hang out with some pretty cool people & attend some great panels. I would like to visit this one again in the future, but I’ve got to figure out how to get there without going through those damned toll roads.

[jawsinspace]

Hiking stops on my way to Fur Squared 2017 - Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

Van Buren State Park was my last hiking stop in Michigan, from there I headed into Indiana & arrived at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore at 3:00PM EST. I decided to hit this park in the winter to avoid the crowds & the park fee that visitors have to pay in the summer month’s. The weather had started to take a turn for the worse by the time I got here, the temperature was now down to the low 40′s & the wind was really picking up, so I decided to only do a brief hike at this time & save a more dedicated hiking trip for a later date. The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is a really messy patchwork of parcels & trails that stretches along 20 miles of Indiana shoreline. The main tail system is situated near the middle of that 20 mile stretch in a zone that is also designated as the Indiana Dunes State Park, like I said kind of a mess. I parked near the Devils Slide, after studying a map & gauging the weather I decided to take trail loop 8. Loop 8 starts off at the devils slide & then follows the beach north east for 1/4 mile, I’m very glad that I didn’t have to walk the beach for very long as the wind was pretty brutal here.

From the beach the trail takes you to the top of Mt Tom, one of the tallest dunes in the area, there was a nice view west toward Chicago, but with the fog it was impossible to see at the time.

From here I found the trails to be rather poorly marked, luckily from past experiences I’ve learned to always take a photo of the trail map so I had a good idea of where I was going. From Mt Tom the trail heads northwest & takes you to the top of Mt Holden, the view here is pretty limited, you can look north toward the lake, but there are many trees obstructing the view.

From Mt Holden the trail heads south & takes you to the top of Mt Jackson. Again your view is in a westerly direction toward Chicago, but this view was similar to Mt Holden in that there are many trees obstructing your line of sight.

After hiking down Mt Jackson the trail continues south to the Nature Center & after that the trail turns to shit. A logical loop would take you trough the campground, but there were very many signs telling hikers to stay out of the campground. The only other options for me to return to my car though were to either go back the way I came, hike a huge loop north east for a few miles, or hike the freaking road back. None of those options appealed to me so I just hiked through the damned campground, there was nobody there of course, it was the off season so it wasn’t even open. The campground look horrible by the way, little more than a glorified park that caters to the RV type of camping for rich white folk. On the other side of the campground there is a trail that takes you back toward the Devils Slide & beach, this trail was also littered with signs telling hikers to stay away, I took a piss on one of these signs.

After an hour of hiking I made it back to my car, but left the park with a very sour taste in my mouth. The close proximity to several steel mills didn’t really help improve my impression of the park, the whole hour I was hiking was filled with the low pitch drone of heavy machinery. I still would like to visit some more of the park, but it has now become a very low priority for me.