Camp Du Nord, part 3: iPhone

Just a few iPhone snaps to round out coverage of our trip to Du Nord.

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Camp Du Nord, part 2: film

I don't normally use my 35mm camera for family snapshots, but I had this idea to bring it along to Camp Du Nord. It made sense to me to use an analog format during our time away from electronics. (I had my digital camera with too, of course, but there were a few outings where I only brought the 35mm.)

I finished up the existing roll I had in the camera on the first night. These two exposures are fine.

S'more production:

I appreciate the color in those shots more now because...

At Christmas last year, my father-in-law and long-time Four Peas reader (hi, Mike!) gave me a 24-exposure roll of film from an unknown decade that he found in a box somewhere. There was no doubt that it had expired long ago. I knew what I was getting into and that there was a good chance the exposures on it wouldn't turn out. Well, they didn't.

This isn't the first time film has failed me and probably won't be the last. Yet, it was a fun experiment and there is something to be said about the faded, obscured look of the following shots.

This is the only one I got of the family in a canoe:

We paddled to a rocky island on Burntside and explored:

R held onto the canoe because there was nowhere to land it:

That's Omri scrambling on a rock:

Back at the cabin now, Omri is getting some time with the loom:

Veronica can be seen here at the edge of a cliff out front of our cabin:

The quality of this one is slightly better:

I thought this one would have made a good print, but it would have been all about the color and textures that are not at all present here:

Coffee tastes so good in the woods:

This may have been my favorite shot from the roll if it had worked out. You can kind of see the island on the water:

I have a few others as well that were captured better with my iPhone. We'll look at those next time.

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Camp Du Nord, part 1: digital

We tried something new this year. During the last week of summer vacation we traveled up to Ely and spent four nights at at rustic cabin on Burntside Lake. 

It has taken me a while to get to this series of posts because 1) Blogger was recently updated and it's become more difficult to format posts anymore in my usual style and 2) I'm waiting to get some film back from development, including about 20 exposures from our time up there.

Camp Du Nord is kind of like a family summer camp. There are activities, like craft making and organized hikes, that you can all do together (or separately), but you can opt out and just relax too. I think those were the four best nights of sleep I've had all year. Maybe it was the fresh air or the break from electronics. That's right--we had no internet for four days.

It was a good way to say farewell to summer.

That said, we had kind of a rough start. The first day was rainy and cold. We had to walk a long way to our first activity and got lost and very wet along the way. The activity was called inkle weaving and it looked like this:

V was not terribly enthused to be there:

But the weaving was therapeutic and gave us something to do with our hands, not having our phones to play with and all.

Omri helped too:

We were able to bring the loom back to our cabin and we managed to finish two six-foot long straps. 

Honestly, if we hadn't had some rainy downtime in the cabin I would have been severely disappointed.

It seems like we had been together a lot since the pandemic started in March, but it wasn't quality time together the way it was at Du Nord.

Love these snuggles:

Of course we got out and about a lot too. This was self-taken during our hike to Little Baldy:

We also went on a canoe ride to an island, but I was too nervous to bring my digital camera on the water. You will need to wait for my film photos to see what that excursion looked like (assuming they turn out).

Omri and I attended a rope making session.

He was happy to get a souvenir... some rope:

Veronica and I took a hike, just the two of us. We saw these two tall trees called The Sentinels:

Under Troll's Bridge:

I was so proud of Veronica for doing the polar bear plunge. She and R jumped into the lake three mornings in a row (including the rainy/cold one) at 7:30 to earn this t-shirt:

The sentry at the beach:

Here's another look at our cabin:

And here's the view from inside:

More to come...

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Omri turns 6

Yes, Omri turned 6 and, like the rest of us this year, he had a relatively low-key birthday. The kids went to school and then we had a quick dinner (Omri's choice = chicken nuggets) before rushing off to Veronica's soccer practice. Omri hung out at the nearby playground during practice.

A man of action:

He and I used to spend a lot of time at parks together, so it was nice to have such an opportunity on his birthday.

He told me he was going to do a belly flop onto the mulch... Crazy kid.

Back home for some cake (made by momma):

Good thing you can still open gifts during a pandemic:

He got some good ones.

This is an excited look:

Omri spent much of his weekend putting together Legos. So much fun!

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