Bald Eagle = 50 Bucks

Ok, while growing up my mom often played games with us, mainly to keep us quiet. One of our favorite games involved car rides and money, hey what can I say we were kids. My mom told us for every red wing blackbird we saw (of course with her confirmation) she would give us a penny, not much, but when you are little, it's the 1980's a penny and you are riding in the car for hours, it can shut you up. However the stakes did get bigger a white tailed deer sighting would get you $1. Yes, a whole dollar, but you had to see the deer first and mom had to confirm it. It used to be a $1 a deer until my sister saw a heard of 20 and the rule quickly changed to a $1 a sighting. The next big bounty really jumped if we saw a moose it was $20, well there are not moose in the lower part of Michigan so that one was saved for our trips to Calumet. To this day no one has seen a wild moose. (yes I forgot to mention these animals must be in the wild, it did not count at the zoo.) But the big money is in the bald eagle, it was $50 for a bald eagle, however the sighting had to be confirmed by animal expert Pat Sahakian herself.

Well it took until 2007 but the Eagle has been spotted by me and confirmed by mom. And you maybe thinking why Jennie you are much too old for this game, but the answer is NO. Hey I have been working all my life to spot a Bald Eagle, I can't tell you how many hundreds of hours of car rides I had my eyes peeled to the sky with just the hopes of seeing the majestic bird so that I could go shopping and get some new clothes. This trip to Calumet finally paid off and my mom was a good sport too, because she paid up. (I have not yet spent the $50, I am thinking about framing it.)

I first saw the eagle soaring above Great Sand Bay on the shoreline of Lake Superior. Between two towns Eagle Harbor and Eagle River. Now my mom has been going to these areas nearly all her life (if you ask her grandson that is 22 years, but the rest of us know that she is a little older than that) and she has never seen an eagle in Eagle Harbor or Eagle River. So don't think I am taking this sweet lady through the ringer! The one ironic thing is the girl who is usually with camera in tow on vacation, did not take her camera down the big sand dune to the beach, which meant all we had was my mom's camera phone, which did not work because we couldn't zoom in far enough to make it look less than a dot.

However, my mom has made a new rule only one Eagle spotting in a lifetime (yes rules are subject to change at anytime in these games.) So I have seen my first and last $50 eagle, but it was worth every hour of sky gazing. It was really cool and of course I am now $50 richer! But Krista and Kevin you can still be a winner, so keep your eyes on the sky!