Is It Wrong to Move for the Recreation?

There was a lot of recreational activity in Chicago, where I lived for 15 years. We lived on a boat, after all. We cruised around the lake, fished, swam, ran and biked along the beautiful 20-mile lakeshore path. As far as recreation goes, Chicago is not a bad place to be.

But I'm greedy. I want more recreation. It's both amazing and a little disconcerting that I live at a place and time when I can even make a statement like this. But all 21st century western guilt aside, I can at least be responsible for how I get to recreation. And in the winter months, Mark and I were in the car every weekend, driving eight hours north to where we could find snow and ice. In the landboat (a 1982 Oldsmobile) which burns about five miles to the gallon, we were single-handedly melting what's left of the polar ice caps in our pursuit of winter recreation.

So now, besides being able to drive to work in under 15 minutes, we can also get to all sorts of recreation - skiing, climbing, fishing, camping, hiking, biking - in less time than it used to take me to find a parking spot on the north side of Chicago.
We went to an old quarry to climb some ice a few weekends ago.


And on my afternoon cross-country ski break, I see more deer than people.

(For a great resource on cross-country skiing around Duluth and northeastern Minnesota, check out Andrew Slade's Skiing the North Shore.)