10 posts tagged “journeys”

My wife and I marked a quiet 38th anniversary last Friday.

It was quiet because the previous three days were spent running around central Wisconsin on a mini-vacation trip. We came home a bit tired out and spent out. So for the big night, she made chicken parmigiana for supper, and then we went to the local theater (the only movie house in the entire county) to see “Up,” which just arrived in town. (According to the posters, “Public Enemies” will be getting here soon. Before the DVD comes out!)

We planned this vacation so she could go to some places she was interested in. With the help of her AAA book and some diligent web-surfing, she picked some pretty good ones off the beaten track.

Our first one was a stone arch bridge in Merrill, Wis., which carries traffic through the downtown area …

We saw a park nearby and walked down a path to another, even older bridge. This one had a sign from the construction company, dated 1909. It was much narrower–one lane wide …

The next stop was Wausau. Our main stop there was the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. My wife was mainly interested in a sculpture garden on the grounds, and we walked around there. They had an exhibit with metal sculptures by artist Wendy Ross …

We also walked down by a small garden, where the bees were busily at work …

From there, we walked around to the main (temporary) entrance of the museum and went inside. They had two temporary exhibitions. One was photos of jungle life, taken by a National Geographic photographer. The other was called “American Ruins,” about places like ghost towns and crumbled, overgrown mansions from long ago. All the photos were taken in black-and-white, using infrared film, so the leaves, grasses and other foliage comes out white, not dark as you would expect. Interesting effects. We studied the photos for quite a while.

None of the photos on their website show the white leaves that well, but they give you an idea of what the exhibitions were like. No photos were permitted inside. The LYW Museum is best known for its “Birds in Art” permanent display, but we had to bookmark it for a future visit. We had one more place to visit this day.

This last stop for Tuesday was way out in the country, about 70 miles away on country roads. Called Jurustic Park, it is composed mainly of fanciful sculptures of animals and other creatures made from scrap metal.

But we had spent so much time at the museum that we arrived about 15 minutes after it had closed for the day. All we could do is take a few photos of the main entrance …

… and a telephoto shot of a “hobbit house” inside …

… before leaving. You can look over some of their other creations on their website–they really are fun to look at.

From there, we drove south to Marshfield and then east to Stevens Point, where we spent the night. Wednesday, we drove back west. This time our destination was the Rudolph Grotto, a Catholic shrine, gardens and “wonder cave.”

This place was started during the 1920s by Father Philip Wagner, who became very ill while studying for the priesthood in Europe. According to the brochure from grotto, Wagner went to Lourdes in France, to the Grotto of Our Lady, in 1912. He prayed and prayed and promised that if his health was restored, he would build a shrine in Mary’s honor. He got better and started planning.

Wagner became the priest in Rudolph in 1917, a new church was built, and he started envisioning flower beds and tree arrangements for his grotto. He used rocks from the surrounding area to build shrines. “Stones and large rocks were piled because he knew nothing of construction or masonry. In order to create the beautiful structures we see here today, Father Wagner began using concrete and the trial-and-error method of construction.”

Father Wagner lived at the church and worked on the grotto until his death in 1969. Another man worked with him on the grotto until he died in 1991. They kept making more and more shrines in the park–the last one was completed in 1983.

It is intensely Catholic, of course. There was a series of stations of the Seven Sorrows of Mary, including this one …

They also had statues for all 14 Stations of the Cross, plus many other shrines, plaques and statuary. Even a little wooden chapel …

And then there was the Wonder Cave. We couldn’t miss that. “A 1/5th mile catacomb-like passageway through the grotto depicting 26 shrines of the life and teaching of Jesus.”

It sure was narrow, and you had to duck your head pretty often. Even my wife, who rarely needs to duck her head for any reason …

It’s very dark inside, of course, and the shrines are illuminated with colored lights. Quite difficult for a camera without a tripod or a flash, but at least this scene came out well …

Outside we walked around the grounds a little longer when suddenly we encountered an untamed Wisconsin wildlife creature …

And we also stopped at a museum about the history of the shrine, the parish and Rudolph, Wis. And among everything else, we came across this heartbreaking relic …

One more stop before leaving the Stevens Point area: The Herrschner’s catalog outlet store. How many of you have seen the Herrschner’s catalog of craft items? This is where they come from. Here is the door to the store …

… and here is a wall of yarn of all colors of the rainbow …

They also had a large variety of fabrics. I was impressed, but my wife said she has seen larger varieties at the Hobby Lobby stores, which was on our schedule for Thursday. She was especially disappointed by the relative lack of needlework items and the large quantity of “close-out” items for sale–she thought there would be a lot more to look at.

From there, we got on the highway and drove to Oshkosh, where we met up with S and her husband. It happened to be his birthday, and our original plan was to see “Public Enemies,” which they hadn’t seen yet (even though some scenes were shot in Oshkosh and they took me to see the preparations over a year ago). But S doesn’t like violent movies, so she wasn’t going to go. They also had their 5-year-old grandson with them, whom they were babysitting. Hmmm.

We finally decided: We would go to a movie that everyone could enjoy. We opted for the new “Ice Age” movie, and everyone went and had a good time. From there, we had supper at the Golden Corral buffet, and then we went to our motel, to relax in the swimming pool and (especially) the hot tub.

That wasn’t the end of our day. They invited us to join them at a neighborhood bar near their home, for a birthday toast. Neither of us visits bars very often, but we went this time, spent another hour with them and had a good time. The highlight was when Johnny Depp (from “Public Enemies”) came on the David Letterman show, and life at the bar ground to a dead stop. The younger women were swooning!

That capped a very busy Wednesday. Thursday was supposed to be a lot easier: Just visit a few stores my wife wanted to visit (Hobby Lobby, Fashion Bug) and then start driving home. By about 11 a.m., the shopping was done, and we pointed the car north. In Appleton, the last big city on our way, we stopped at a sub place for lunch. As we walked to the store, I reached for my cell phone out of habit, to see if there were any messages. It wasn’t there.

I checked my pockets, to see if I had stuck it in there. Then I went back to the car and checked the area around the front seat. Then the trunk, where I had changed a shirt earlier and may have absent-mindedly put it down.

It wasn’t here. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere.

My wife said, “Maybe we should go back and look.” “Back there” meant Oshkosh, about 30 miles south, where we had started the day. We had only made a few stops, and I knew I had it while waiting at Hobby Lobby. We zipped back south. Once we got there, we stopped at each place. Nobody had seen anything. I left addresses and phone numbers, just in case.

We still hadn’t had lunch–it was 1:30 by now–so we went to a Subway, and my wife got something. I was just too upset at myself to eat anything. I had a sip or two of her soda, and that was all. Nothing to do but drive back north, phoneless, my mind racing, imagining the cost and hassle of getting a new phone set up.

Three hours later, we were home. My wife checked the answer machine. Sure enough, a woman had called, saying she had found my phone in a parking lot. The next message was from S. The woman had contacted her, too, and they had gone down to pick it up.

They aren’t going to mail it to me: We had earlier made plans to meet again this weekend at that clothing-optional “beach,” where they like to camp in summer–I haven’t been there yet this year, and that was on my to-do list. A mailed phone wouldn’t arrive until late this week, so I told them to just keep it until I get down there.

A hectic end to a busy trip. On Monday, the first official high school football practices were held. Summer is nearly over.

We’ve got just one month to go in a summer that never really got going. We didn’t know that back in early June when my wife and son and I took a one-day trip to Rhinelander to have a little fun.

That was before the short trip to Canada and before the Fourth of July trip. On this one, the featured stop (aside from exercising our shopping muscles) was a visit to a city-operated historic museum named Pioneer Park.

It’s not pretentious at all, but there was a lot to see and study. It’s a quick jump into the time machine and back a few generations. Back when trains carried goods and supplies and raw materials all over. When lumberjacks chopped down trees with pure muscle power. When children went to schools that had all the grades in the same room.

An old train and a semaphore marked the outside of the depot and the Rhinelander Railroad Museum …

Nearby, a crossing sign showed the little reflectors that were used on signs in the days before reflectorized paint was invented. I turned on the flash to get the reflections …

Then inside the depot, to the ticket counter, which stood under some old station signs …

A little further, a display showed what life in the old train depot was like–manual typewriters, glass insulators, hand-written account books and a hand-wound clock in the corner …

Downstairs, they had a model train layout that showed what Rhinelander was like back in the old days–minus the pillars, of course. At the bottom right, there are some coin slots that were supposed to make the trains run. David and I both deposited quarters … and shrugged our shoulders as the trains remained stationary …

We went back outside to look over a big log sledge that once carried logs out of the wood in winter, pulled by horses on ice trails …

What kind of loads did those horses pull? We went to the Rhinelander Logging Museum to find out. This photo from 1897 ought to answer that question. Several other pictures in the museum showed huge loads …

The museum included a cook shack and the loggers’ barracks. Here is the room where the loggers ate0–the kitchen is in back, beyond where David and my wife are standing …

We didn’t get to the barracks in time, but this is what they were like back in the day …

Then we went to another building and went down a short entry hall …

… into a one-room school building, the Rhinelander School Museum …

Very nostalgic place. How many of you learned how to make letters (printed and cursive) by following these guides lined up above the blackboard? …

And how many of you first read from books like these? …

How did the one-room schools teach eight different grades in one room at the same time? By intricate planning, as this schedule shows …

The old classroom had a working stereoptican with cards, and my wife enjoyed trying that out. Outside of the wall maps and blackboard and books and globe, that was the extent of multimedia. Most of the stereoptican cards were over a hundred years old …

Such teaching demanded a lot from a teacher, and so did the rules that they were expected to follow faithfully. I got several different sets of rules set for teachers, and here they are:

• You will not marry during the term of your contract.
• You are not to keep company with men.
• You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function.
• You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.
• You may not travel beyond the city limits unless you have the permission of the chairman of the board.
• You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother.
• You may not smoke cigarettes or play at cards.
• You may not dress in bright colors.
• You may under no circumstances dye your hair.
• You must wear at least two petticoats.
• Your dresses must not be shorter than two inches above the ankle.
• It is understood the teacher will attend church each Sunday and either teach a class in Sunday school or sing in the choir.
• To keep the schoolroom near and clean, you must:

1. Sweep the floor at least once daily.
2. Scrub the floor at least once a week with hot soapy water.
3. Clean the blackboards at least once a day.
4. Start the fire by 7 a.m. so the room will be warm by 8 a.m.

Here are some teachers’ rules from 1872:

• Teachers every day will fill lamps, clean chimneys.
• Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coat for the day’s session.
• Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
• Men teacher may take one evening each week for courting purposes or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
• After 10 hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.
• Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
• Every teacher should lay aside from each payday a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
• Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
• The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of 25 cents per week in his pay, providing the board of education approves.

****
I’ve got many more things to write about. The trick is finding the time, especially since my wife and I will be making a mini-vacation trip to central Wisconsin this week. Three days and two nights, starting Tuesday morning.

Coming attractions include some photos from the recent U.P. firefighters tournament and the rodeo held here last weekend. Believe me, I’ve got some really spectacular rodeo action shots–stuff good enough to submit to the state newspaper contest, I think.

The firemen’s pix combine action with humor–at times humor too suggestive for a family newspaper. But you aren’t offended by stuff like that, are you?

I didn’t think so.

That distance (1,732 kilometers for those of you who are into metrics) is how far I drove during my extended Fourth of July weekend trip. If you plot it out on a map, my course looks sort of like a backwards "7," as I drove mostly west to Minneapolis-St. Paul, then southeast to the neopagan gathering ... and then retraced my tire tracks a couple days later. My wife and I left home on Wednesday around noon and got back home the following Monday at about mid-afternoon.

I did this so I could have my first visit with B, my friend from Alaska. We met at the MSP Airport on Thursday just after noon and parted on Sunday, late in the afternoon. That gave us most of four days and three nights together. Without getting into a lot of words, we both had a great time, and the days passed very quickly. Way too quickly. We had packed a lot of activities into those four days, so we were very busy, and we both slept well each night--even I, who often wake up in the middle of the night and can't settle down again.

Thanks to our cell phones and texting, we kept in touch with each other as we neared our rendezvous (the baggage pickup area at the MSP airport). I had parked at the nearby Mall of America and took the light rail train to the terminal. She texted me when her plane landed. By the time she phoned me a little later after exiting the plane, she had already spotted me. It was a 10-second phone call. Happy hugs and kisses ensued.

We rode back to the mall, where we did some shopping, got lunch (Arby's), then hit the road for the three-hour drive to our motel. Supper was at Pizza Hut. The next morning, we finished the drive to the gathering, passing through some very scenic, hilly country that thrilled her, including a brief drive up narrow roads to a top-of-the-mountain park. Lovely place, but we didn't stay there long; we had places to go.

We got to the gathering site, where she started meeting some of my friends. All went very well there--she said she had a great time at the events we went to, meeting many new friends along the way. She had never been to an event like that, and it was exotic, to put it mildly.

We missed many of the events--B wanted to see sarong-tying workshop, and I wanted the drumming and dancing circle; we arrived a day late for that. But we made it to a discussion of the group, a potluck dinner and a "henna play party," with people decorating each other with henna. B really wanted to see that, and she did. We took part--I drew a little butterfly on her ...

And she drew a moon with some stars on me ...

They only exist in these photos now; the henna has already faded away completely.

A symposium was held in the evening, and I hoped for a starry night, because you can really see the stars and Milky Way from this hilltop location--no light pollution at all. But it was mostly cloudy. We went back to my tent and slept well. I just brought one sleeping bag for the two of us. When it got cool overnight, we put the thermal blanket under us on the air mattress and the sleeping bag over us. Problem solved.

The next day, we stumbled through a "mirror dance," then enjoyed the sensual pleasures of taste at a "naked lunch," where a poem of that name was read. "Clothing is definitely optional," said the program, and so it was. One important rule: When someone feeds you something by hand, you have to happily moan with pleasure. Strawberries (a few with chocolate on top), grapes, melon, date bars. Mmmmmmmmmmm!!!

After that, we took part in a very serious discussion of polyamory that went two hours and could have gone for two more. The people there are very committed to the lifestyle they lead and their lovers--all of them. After it ended, B and I went back to our campsite, took down the tent and moved things back to the car. We stayed long enough to take part in the main ritual was that evening, and we left right after that, with more hugs for the people there.

We drove back north, and she was delighted to come upon a big fireworks show in one of the towns.  B has lived in Alaska for years, and they don't have fireworks that far north on the Fourth of July. Just after the start of summer, the sun is up 22 hours a day, and the sky never gets dark. They have fireworks for New Year's, but people have to bundle up for subzero weather to see it.

We got to our motel at 11:30 p.m. and were pleased to find the hot tub and whirlpool still open. We relaxed and let the rushing warm water sooth away our tense muscles from the drive before going to bed. During our final morning, as we were getting ready, I remembered that we still had to do a tick check on each other. Lucky that I remembered--I spotted one on B's tummy. We had to get out her tweezers to carefully pull the little bugger out. She said I was tick-free.

She had gifts, both for me and my wife. She gave her a book on Alaskan wildflowers, a cutting board and an ulu (an all-purpose cutting knife with a rocking handle, like those used by the Inuit). She gave me a black Alaska T-shirt with a multi-colored moose on it.

I only took a few pictures, and there was just one of the two of us together. We stopped at a gas station near the motel on that final morning and saw a big orange moose on the motel grounds nearby. A woman saw me taking a picture of B and took a picture of the two of us together ...

Then, back in the car. A few hours later we were back at the Mall of America. A visit to Taco Bell, an ice cream at Dairy Queen, and then back into the light rail train, heading back to the airport. She got her boarding pass. The security checkpoint lines nearby were very long--but one of the officers told us to walk down to the other end of the terminal, where the lines were a lot shorter. Indeed they were--B just had one person in front of her. Within minutes she was through, and we waved good-bye for the final time.

The next morning, I got an e-mail from her, saying she was back in Alaska, safe and sound, ready to go to bed and dream of ticks.

****
Now ... I bet you're wondering what my wife was doing while I was gone.

She was having a great time with her sisters. All three of them live in the same area, and I drove her to one of their homes that first day (leaving for the Twin Cities by myself the next morning). On her first solo day, she and the sister drove up to Duluth, took in two Imax movies, visited a big flower display at a local park and ate dinner at a revolving restaurant, 18 stories above the ground. That's pretty big for Duluth. When they told me about it, I was impressed.

On day two, she stayed in town with the family, they had a big cookout and went to the circus that night, seeing fireworks afterward. On day three, she and the sister went down to Eau Claire to visit some parks, a mini-zoo, visit some nephews and have a nice supper. I guess they had a good time--they got home an hour after I got back from the Twin Cities. We stayed there that night and left for home the next morning.

While she and I were separated, we kept in touch the best we could--but she doesn't have her own cell phone (not interested), and I didn't have the sister's cell number, so I kept calling her house. They weren't home that much, but I did talk to her a few times from the road (or the tent or restaurant or motel).

It all worked out, and I'm very happy with how everything went. B and I knew we didn't have a lot of time, and many things we had talked about doing fell by the wayside. Even so, we did a lot, we had very busy days, and I don't think we could have packed much more into our time together. She loved the gathering and wants to go back next year.

Meanwhile, my wife said she really enjoyed having a long holiday weekend with her sisters, so this whole story could very well be repeated next summer. Why not? It sounds like it worked for everybody.

****

B and I talked for the first time since the trip (besides e-mails) on Saturday night. It went well, and my wife was part of it too--I put my cell phone on speaker. Since we said good-bye two weeks earlier, both of us have been trying to catch up on our sleep--she, especially, was fatigued when the visit was over. She also had to deal with a few health problems (nothing major), exacerbated by an unusual Alaskan heat wave that sent temperatures shooting up into the 80s and low 90s, along with wildfires and smoke.

All that is past now. We had hoped to meet again in August, but those plans didn't work out. So our next time will be ... whenever. When the time is right. As it was two weeks ago.

I just got back from a very enjoyable adventure on the road. But before I report on that, I still need to fill you in on our recent trip to Canada.

One city in Canada, really: Sault Ste. Marie, the closest Canadian city if you live in the U.P.

We made our trip in the first weeks after new passport laws went into effect--since we had applied for and received the new passport cards, we were all set. We showed them to the Canadian customs officer, answered the standard questions and were off--off to the Ontario tourism office, where we changed our money into the more colorful Canadian currency. You don't think it's colorful? Take a look ...

There are no $1 bills because Canada hasn't used them for years. Instead, they use a $1 coin (the loonie) and a $2 coin (the twonie). Canada wanted people to use the loonie, so they did a very clever thing U.S. officials haven't figured out yet--they stopped printing dollar bills. People were soon using loonies.

We also bulked up on tourism brochures and then did a little shopping, got our motel and settled down early: We had a very early wake-up the next day. The Agawa Canyon Tour Train pulls out of the station at 7 a.m. (Central Time; 8 a.m. local time), and we had better be at the station in time ...

The Algoma Central Railroad was owned by Wisconsin Central for a time and now is owned by Canadian National. Why they were using a Denver and Rio Grande train, I have no idea.

The Agawa Canyon trip is a favorite adventure that we hadn't done since about 2002. The train takes us 116 miles north of Sault Ste. Marie through the Canadian wilderness--known locally as Algoma Country--to the Agawa Canyon. Long-time readers know that I love trains and train rides. I was born too late for that to be a part of my life.

It's not totally unpopulated. We passed many beautiful lakes with a few little fishing cottages, and the train is the only way people get there. Deep, dense woods lined the tracks, which also frequently passed through rocky walls--must have taken a lot of manpower and dynamite to blast a train for the trains that.

Unfortunately, our seats were on the right side of the train--most of the lakes and other neat views were on the left. So we had to make sure to switch to the other side for the trip home.

Here are some of the sights we saw ...

At a number of places, the train passed wilderness scenes located on the other side of large mirrors ...

Of course, this long-time train lover savored the rocking of the cars and the clickety-clack of the rails. There were many camera-worthy sights along the way, and the shutters were clicking when we crossed the curved trestle over the Montreal River ...

We finally got to the canyon, passing several waterfalls that flowed down tall granite walls. This one is Bridal Veil Falls. Because it looks like bridal veil. Don't know why they named another Big Beaver Falls. I was afraid to ask ...

I had set myself a goal for this trip. There is an observation/lookout tower near the tracks that is open to the public ... if you don't mind climbing a few steps. This time, I decided, I would make the climb. So up the steps I started climbing. A few flights of steps, then a short path to more steps. I stopped and looked up ...

Gulp!

That's a lot of steps. A lot of stair-climbing was required if I wanted to reach the top. I sighed ... and started on my way. Up, up, up.

Lots of steps. Luckily, I didn't need to count them because somebody did that for me already; there are little signs next to every 50th step. So up I kept climbing. 50. 100. 150. It was steep. Occasionally I stopped for breath at a landing before pushing on. It wasn't easy, but I was persistent. Bull-headed, in other words ...

I had never climbed up to the observation tower before. Even when we were kids and my brother made the climb. I kept going. Past 200. Past 250. Up more. We're getting close. Here is the 300 sign. Just a little more. And then there were no more steps to climb.

They didn't have a sign, but it was 320 steps top to bottom. Twenty steps past the 300 sign, anyway. Yes, I took my camera along, and yes, I took pictures of the view ...

See down there, that pink dot under the closest building? That was my wife, looking up at me. If I zoom in ...

She had her camera along, too, and zoomed in to get a photo of me as I was climbing the final steps, holding the railing with both hands ...

Fortunately, the trip back down the steps was a lot easier than the way up.

After that, we walked and looked around--they had some nice daffodils in the park. The stop at the canyon would have been much more pleasant if we had remembered to take along bug spray--I did bring it, but it was back at the motel. They had some no-see-ums, which didn't seem to be biting but were everywhere. Meanwhile, the dinner bell had rung for the mosquitoes. It was a 1 1/2 hour layover at the canyon, and nearly everyone was back on the train in plenty of time.

We got back to the Soo at about 6 and had supper at an Italian restaurant--meat raviolis with two enormous meatballs. After that, we went around looking for a garden we had heard about--drove around and around, finally found it and discovered it was a arboreal garden. My wife wasn't interested in looking at trees.

The next day, we tried to find some garden north of the city, but it was just a nature reserve--no flowers there, either. We did find a place with some beautiful scenery--I got some pictures but the no-see-ums (or were they blackflies?) were there, and they were biting, and we had to beat a retreat. My wife did get a picture of me looking at the landscape. The bugs wanted to get in the picture, and so ...

From there, we went to a bookstore, then saw some old, old buildings by the Canadian locks. Then it was time to cash in our Canadian money and head for the bridge. We were both ready to go home.

But we sure had a great time and wished we could have stayed longer. It is, as I said before, a favorite trip.

****
The story of my latest adventure comes soon.

On our recent trip to Canada (the Canada part of the story is still to come), I got to fulfill a pledge I had made a long time ago, on some dead or dying blog or another: I saw Christmas in June.

It's about a five-hour drive from our home to Sault Ste. Marie and the International Bridge. We went via Marquette, and less than an hour past the Upper Peninsula's largest city (population almost 20,000) we entered Christmas. How could you miss it? ...

There are various places around the country that try to capitalize on holiday-inspired names. Christmas. Santa Claus. St. Nicholas. North Pole. They do so with varying amounts of success, especially in this more cynical era. But it's tourism, you know, and souvenir shops. A few dollars change hands. There are certain places where it's Christmas 365 days a year, and this is one of them.

We first came upon a motel that didn't look very busy, regardless of what the sign in front says. Note the bow on the gift-shaped sign ...

The unmown lawn and the gravel in the driveway both indicate that it's been pretty quiet at the Christmas Motel for a while.

A little later, we came upon the Christmas Mall. Alas, it also looked like it has seen better days. For example, how did Mrs. Claus lose her head? ...

And as you see on the right, you can get your eggnog or whatever you fancy in Christmas.

I felt sorry for Mrs. Claus, so I took a picture from the other direction, where you can see a faint smile. Note that the Christmas Mall, which has a fudge shop, an ice cream shop, a liquor store and a gift shop, also houses the post office. When you get mail postmarked Christmas, Mich., this is where it comes from ...

Despite the state of her sign, they still have a street names for Mrs. Claus. And they have a Santa Lane. And a St. Nicholas Avenue. And the main drag through town is Christmas Avenue.

Then we hit paydirt: Santa's Workshop. It says so right there. In case you have any doubts whether this is a viable place, just look at the left of this photo. That ought to erase all doubts ...

Of course, right outside is a huge Santa, standing right next to the North Pole. I mean, how could it not be the North Pole? It says so right on it.

The business of Christmas may be Christmas, but they have other businesses, too.  On the way out of town, we came upon the place where Santa gets his sled tuned up ...

When Santa has visitors in town--maybe some elves brought in for short-term seasonal work--they probably stay here ...

Soon we were out of town and on our way to the Soo. About three hours later, we were on the International Bridge. The two flags mark the international border ...

and the end of this part of the story ..

Oh, that was a big stone to pass!

That big stone was the spring sports season, which ended last Saturday with the track finals. Because of budget cuts here in the office, I couldn’t travel to cover much of it in person, and because of space restrictions, I couldn’t write too much or put in too many pictures. The shoe in pinching here, too. So the trick I had to perform was to squeeze in the same amount of information in less space. Just one trip per week. Write tight. Trim down the pictures and use fewer of them.

Anyway, now it’s over. The local sports scene should be a lot quieter now that high school is done with until next August, and I will have a more time for other things. The hockey playoffs are still going on, but that’s in the final lap, too. It may be over this Saturday night. It could go until next Friday. Either way, it won’t be long.

It’s nice and sunny today, with temperatures close to 70, but spring has been reaaaaaalllllllyyy slow to arrive up here. A couple days ago we never reached 50 all day. It’s a spring characterized by persistent chilly winds from the northwest. Lots of wind, too. We also have had freeze warnings from time to time, including last night. Sweet! Are we really in June? I’ve got a feeling that all of a sudden summer will hump on our backs, and we’ll go from brisk days in the 60s to muggy ones in the 90s–just like that.

Whatever the weather, my wife and I are going on a little trip next week, a mini vacation. We are going to the eastern end of the U.P. and then north, across the border into Canada–Sault Ste. Marie, specifically. We will be looking around town and taking a train excursion north into the interior–a one-day trip.

Yes, we know about the new travel laws, but we went to the post office about a month ago, filled out the forms and had pictures taken. A week or two ago, our brand new passport cards arrived in the mail. Neither of us have ever had a passport (or had any need of them), so this was a new experience.

The cards are only good for crossing into Canada (or Mexico) by land or sea. If we ever fly into Canada, we would need the familiar passport book. But we have never flown anywhere. Our vacations have always been short and close to home, and this one will be no exception.

In all, we’ll be gone four days, including two days of driving. We are hoping to be back home on Saturday, in time to go to a Baby Bison fest at a nearby ranch where they raise–you guessed it!–buffalo. Maybe that will have to wait for another year, but I hope not.

On Friday, I’m taking the afternoon off and driving my wife and son to Rhinelander–just for fun and to look around, maybe a little shopping. We haven’t been down there for a while. We were planning to there over Memorial Day, but my car blew a muffler (or so it sounded) on my way to Memorial Day events.

Meanwhile, B and I continue to fine-tune plans for our first visit and our trip to the neopagan event in southern Wisconsin around the Fourth of July. I sent in the registration forms and the check Wednesday morning. (In case you forgot my plan: I am driving my wife for a visit to her sisters in northwest Wisconsin, then continuing west to the Twin Cities airport to pick up B. We drive down there, spend three nights on the road (one in a tent, two in a motel), then I drive her back to the airport. Then, I’m solo as I drive back to the inlaws, pick up my wife again and head for home.)

We have been talking a lot about it, and we’re both really excited at the thoought of finally getting to meet each other.

I think we can declare summer unofficially over. Labor Day has come and gone, and we are back from a three-day trip to visit my wife's sisters/brothers. On the day before we left for home, temperatures were in the upper 80s with high humidity. Two hours after we got home, a cold front blew through. (It was following us!) Today, it just reached the mid 60s.

The last time I wrote, I was tired from a day of sitting around at my late father-in-law's house, watching seven (of eight) brothers and sisters trying to divide up some of the items there. It got a lot better after that.

Monday morning, we were invited to go blueberry-picking by one of my wife's sisters. In all, five of us went: us, two sisters and one great-niece--granddaughter of one of the SILs. We headed west about 20 miles or so, in western Rusk County, Wisconsin. The little place was way out in farm country, but the directions led us right to it.

My first self-appointed task, of course, was to get some pictures of the blueberry bushes. The plants I found close by had both blue and pink/purple berries. So, in addition to the blueberries, here's what pinkberries and purpleberries look like ...

Then I put the camera away and started picking. The rows I worked had been picked over, but the berries are growing quickly now, and it wasn't hard to find nice, dark blue blueberries. Some were high--too high for the women to get at easily--and others were down low, a foot or so above the ground. Others were well inside the bushes. I took my time and picked away. Of course, I also had to do some quality control work: sample the occasional berry to make sure they were worth picking. My verdict: They were. Of course, I double-checked every so often. Just to make sure.

It was partly cloudy as we started (about 10 a.m.) but as the morning went on, the clouds started breaking up and the sun started beating down. We went till about 12:30 p.m., by which time I was getting kind of hot--I later discovered my neck got a little sunburned. Surprised?

But it was worth it. And here is the reason why ...

That's about four pounds of blueberries, and my wife picked another four. We paid the woman for the berries (at $2.50/pound). For a while, I couldn't find my wife--the bushes were tall and the rows were narrow. I was hot, but I wanted to see where she was. So I started going up and down the rows--including some rows that we didn't pick in.

Oh, I wish I had taken the camera along, because it was like a jungle back there. Very narrow spaces between the rows of plants. And near the ends of the rows ... it was just incredible how many big berries there were. All dark blue. All large. All more than ready for picking--no pinkies here. I had already picked enough berries, so I had left my bucket by my camera bag. But I would have picked many more berries a lot faster if I had found that area earlier. As it was, though, I was getting hot and still hadn't found my wife, so I continued looking.

As it turned out, she had gone to the car: She decided she had enough berries, too.

We were all pretty hot and tired and hungry by then. So we went back to town, got lunch, stopped briefly at the house to change clothes, whereI dropped off the camera. Then we went to a park in town--the SIL with the granddaughter wanted to take her in her kayak. The SIL likes to kayak and has even kayaked in the icy waters of Lake Superior, near Duluth (in quiet bays, I should add).

"Would you like to ride in the kayak?" She asked my wife, and she agreed to give it a try. She climbed in, and the SIL pulled her along with a nylon rope. Then she asked me. I said Why not? I climbed in--carefully; she said that is the tricky part--and then graspedthe paddle.

I know how kayakers move around in the water--I don't watch the Olympics for nothing!--and started getting the hang of paddling quickly. I learned how to turn and how to get from here to there on the river. I took a short run to a boat landing and back. About 15 minutes, I tried it again.

This time I went the other way--past the beach and up the river (along the shore) maybe a quarter mile or so before turning around (that again was the tricky part) and paddling back. The river is about 200 yards wide at that point, and I got maybe 50 yards from shore at times.

My shoulders were getting a little tired by the time I finally got back to where I started, but I made it all by myself. The kayak wasn't anywhere near as tippy as I feared it might be. Again, climbing in and getting out wasn't so easy, but I stayed mostly dry.

So where are the visual aids? Well, it's like this: While in the water, I thought about my camera ... safely back at the house. My SIL took several pictures of me paddling around in the water. But she uses a film camera, so it may be some time before I get to see what I looked like. (FYI, I was wearing a brimmed hat, a light blue T-shirt and tan shorts (which you couldn't have seen, anyway.)

Our next stop was to be supper, at a pizzeria on the outskirts of town, with the SIL we were staying with and her BF. (The other SIL took her granddaughter home.) We drove there--and discovered that the pizzeria was taking Labor Day off. Closed! Grrrr! So we went to a Country Kitchen instead.

After that, the other SIL (and her BF) joined us for a movie: "Mamma Mia" was playing in town, in the city's big, old theater. A nice place to see a movie, and that's what the six of us did. One of my wife's sisters had invited another SIL to join us, but she decided not to, luckily. She is very conservative, and "Mamma Mia" doesn't reach out to that demographic.

The next morning was Tuesday: Our day to drive home. We talked with the SIL for a while, then said good-bye and hit the road about 11 a.m., for the four-or-so-hour trip home.

We had a long-delayed, very serious talk during the drive, but I'll save that part for another time. It went well. As did the trip.

Today ... back to work.

Back again. Back home from the last mini-vacation of summer. It was the quietest one of all. Maybe it was the nicest of all. Not that everything was perfect.

The game plan: visiting my friend S and her husband at a clothes-optional "lake" in eastern Wisconsin. Calling it a lake does a grave disservice to all real lakes, since this one is really, really small. But it does have a beach on one side; on the other three sides, tall weeds. I bet I can throw a Frisbee from one end to the other. This pond (for that's what it really is) is located at a former farm in a rural area. I first visited it last month.

The trip, from start to finish, only lasted about 36 hours. Not too long, but that's all the time we had available.

After a lot of thought, my wife decided to go along this time. We left late on Wednesday morning, later than I had wanted to. First, I went to the office for a planned meeting to set up coverage for a local fest this weekend. The meeting was never held--too many people were missing. Eventually I went home ... to find my wife in her PJs and on the computer. She had gotten trapped by a sewing website and placing an order.

That meant she was well behind in her packing and preparations for the trip. She can go only so fast, and that's all. She got her stuff selected, filled the kitty food dishes, loved up her favorite kitty for a while, got some water bottles filled, looked around for a craft project to work on in the car (finally found one; the other is still hiding). Then we were set to go.

Due to the delay and stops for lunch and to buy other items we needed, we reached our destination at about 3 p.m., about an hour later than planned. Well, it happens. I wasn't mad. Just impatient, that's all. S and her husband had already set up their tent and stuff. S was wearing a beautiful sky blue see-through, long-sleeved blouse and a dark blue sarong. Her husband was wearing his glasses and some sandals. But within minutes, all four of us were in their tent ...

We had driven through rain showers on our drive south, and other showers were moving through the area. We saw some lightning flashes and a couple bolts hitting the ground. Zap! Zap! So into the tent we went for some talk and snacking on corn chips. It was easily big enough for the four of us and their two dogs.

The shower passed. They said they had been in the pond earlier, floating on air mattresses, but the water seemed cooler today, especially below the surface. The day had mostly been cloudy, and a cold front was moving through the region--that's what was causing the showers and thunder. But now the shower was over ...

About time for us to put up our tent and move our stuff inside. After that, I took a shower to wash off the sweat--they have an outdoor shower with solar-heated water--and relaxed with them.

Her husband had found an appropriately named beer for our trip ...

It's from the Point Brewery in nearby Stevens Point, Wis. Point beer is a very popular regional brand. Here's what it says at the end of the box ...

By now, it was the late afternoon, time to start making supper. But the wood they had brought along with them was wet and wasn't lighting. They forgot to bring a fire log with them. I volunteered to get dressed again and drive into town to and get one--after they explained to me what a fire log is. Earlier, S had asked me to bring some wood with me, too, but I forgot. Since I was going to town, they also asked me to get some paper towels--they had forgotten some stuff, too--and a box of smokes. They both smoke, and neither of us do.

Once the fire was burning happily, they made some supper--some veggie burgers. My wife and I shared a foot-long sub we bought at Subway earlier. After supper, we went to the campfire, added some more wood and sat around and talked about this and that, occasionally messing with the wood and dodging smoke, as daylight faded away.

Well, what do you know? Seems they also forgot to take a flashlight. I can fix that--I had brought a lantern for the tent plus a pair of small flashlights, so I went to get one of those. I looked in my bag--and only found one. I looked and looked, but the second one remained well hidden. So I took the lantern back for them.

Around 10 or so we all decided it was time for bed. My wife and I went to our tent and got ready. She took her pills while I held the flashlight. Then she held it while I reached for mine. And reached. And reached.

The pills weren't there! I was sure I had put them in the bag--right about the time I put that missing flashlight in. But as hard as I looked, they weren't there. I emptied the bag. Not even that worked. So I just took some Tylenols and went to bed.

The cold front had gone through, and it was getting cooler as the night went on. We had taken one sleeping bag (spread out open as a bottom blanket) and two thermal blankets. The weather forecast had predicted lows of about 60, but it must have gotten down well into the 50s. My wife and I cuddled up close and pulled the blankets around us, and I put on some socks for a while.

But it wasn't hard to get to sleep or to get back to sleep when we had to get up during the night. All things considered, especially that we rarely sleep in a tent, we slept fairly well.

Morning came, and we decided 8 a.m. was a good time to get up. We had brought some breakfast bars, but S made some scrambled eggs, veggie sausage, mushrooms, cheese, etc., and that was yummy. We started consolidating our stuff, deflating the air mattress, folding it up, sweeping out the tent and then taking the tent down. Packing it up gets easier each time as long as you don't trap air inside.

The air was crystal clear that morning--not a cloud to be seen--and the sun quickly got intense. After a shower (lukewarm water--no solar energy during the night), I was careful to keep the towel between me and the solar disc. We all talked about places to visit, what it's like up north, and it wound up with us offering them our home as a motel if they take a drive up our way next year.

We have a couple extra rooms--the kids' former bedrooms, which are sort of used for unorganized storage right now--and it shouldn't be too hard. They can stay here, save on motel costs, and we can go on day trips to several places in northern Wisconsin and the western U.P. that they would enjoy.

Then it was time for hugs, good-byes and some breaking Brett Favre news. Then it was time for the car to head north. We stopped at a Target and a Hobby Lobby in Green Bay, then back north. We visited my mom then went to dinner. It was our anniversary, so no fast food this time. Then home to our kitties.

The inevitable second guesses: We should have left earlier on Wednesday. We should have stayed two nights. But that wasn't an option this time; we both were on limited time off from work. The weather was too cool; but it's been coolish all summer. So for what we had to work with, it was a good visit. And we had a good time. That's what matters most.

For the record, we only walked to the beach once, and neither of us got into the water. Only the males got completely undressed. And I'm still thinking about S's sky blue blouse. That was really pretty. Ah, yes!

And about the missing pills and flashlight: We found them at home shortly after we got home. Things like that happen.

We went back to ancient times last weekend when we visited a Renaissance Fair taking place in Ishpeming. And we learned something: There were samurai during the Renaissance.

The event is the Ishpeming Art Faire & Renaissance Festival (held along with a gem and mineral show; the area has a long mining heritage, after all). From that quote I included in a recent post, I had been thinkinh I might see axes being thrown around, beer or related beverages and bosoms.

So here's that scoreboard: I did see bosoms. But those were mostly among the spectators, not the participants. Again, I kept in mind that this is the conservative/repressed U.P., so my expectations were as modest as the medieval maidens.

Beer? Ale? Mead? I did not see a drop of the stuff. Maybe I caught a glimpse of someone with a wine bottle--but nearly all the drinks there were the kind sold and distributed by our local Coke and Pepsi distributors, along with a few energy drinks thrown in for the cutting-edge crowd.

Throwing axes? Yes! I did see that. In fact, that was the first thing I saw. I came upon an area where a young woman was collecting $1 for three ax or spear throws. Most of her clientele were young males, like this dude. They were aiming at stumps nearby ...

Other kids were aiming arrows at targets ...

Most of the fair was in a triangle-shaped city park along a lake, where they had booths of artisans and vendors along the outside. One of the first booths was a blacksmith, where a guy with a Scots accent gave a humorous description of what smiths do ...

The walkway was mostly populated by vendors. Jewelry and weapons were very popular. Here are some of the weapons available for sale at one booth ...

Looks like free trade has enabled new nations to enjoy the benefits of the Renaissance ...

Several booths (at least three) had walking sticks for sale. Here are some of the more artistic creations. Actually, I was thinking about getting a less artistic (and less costly) stick ...

They also had many beautifully carved wooden boxes ...

As I suspected, there were a great many kids on the scene. This was a one-day event taking place in a city park in the U.P., so inevitably many of the activities were skewed towards the kiddies. Here, some knights led a youngster-powered dragon around the grounds ...

Here is a table with some of the medieval stuff. Several local groups affiliated with the Society for Creative Anachronism took part in the event ...

My tour of the park/booths was interrupted by David, who had gone off wandering by himself. He came back and informed me that the knights were about to battle. Well, hey! Camera in hand, I broke off to see what was about to go down.

There were five knights. They seemed about college-age, from what I could tell. They had several battles--when someone gets a good hit on you with the padded weapons, you were supposed to go down. And so the combat went on for a while ...

There were some impromptu battles, too, featuring unarmored warriors ...

OK, that was cool. Something cooler was next. Back across the street, the samurai demonstration, "Knights of Nippon," was about to start. The samurai (all two of them) led the next kiddie march and then returned ...

How about those outfits? The helmets look like Toshiro Mifune in "The Hidden Fortress."

This is a group (Kojokan Shinbutai) from Iowa City, Iowa, led by a dad and his son (about 17; he has been training for most of those years). The dad runs a samurai martial arts group, and he talked about the samurai and how they trained, about their weapons and how they fought. The idea, he explained, was to end their fights as quickly and efficiently as possible.

This was way cool, at least to me. I'm a big fan of the Kurosawa/Mifune movies ("Seven Samurai," "Yojimbo," etc.) and of classic samurai movies in general. I've got many of them on DVD. So when he talked about how they trained with the katana (the long sword), I listened closely. The boy and his dad did some sparring with their very real katanas ...

... and with bo sticks ...

Later, the boy showed what he could do with his blade, working on a rice straw target ...

Yes, he was quite impressive. (I only wish my photos weren't so washed-out--I noticed too late that I had reset one of the controls for dark shooting conditions earlier and had not changed it back. The pictures are OK--but they could have been better if I had the control set correctly.)

From the samurai, I went back to the main area. We got some very sloppy cheeseburgers for lunch (they just ladled cheese goop atop the burgers; what a mess!). Nearby, a group called Log Jam was performing. This is a drumming/percussion group, and they were impressive, too. As I watched and listened, I thought of the videos Chandra Moon has been posting here of various drumming groups she takes part in. My camera only takes stills, like this one of Log Jam in action ...

Then something new. The girls got to take center stage. With swords! Barefoot girls with swords! They positioned the swords crosswise on the grass ... and started dancing to bagpipe music, hopping nimbly around the blades (which were made of wood). These girls are from a Scottish piping and dance class that meets in the Marquette/Ishpeming area, and they sure knew their stuff ...

That was about the end of the show for us. We had to do a little shopping (just a little) and then drove home.

For a one-day show, I think it was about as good as it could be. The samurai were strange to find at a Ren Fair, but obviously I enjoyed them. For next summer, I'm thinking about the larger Ren Fairs that take place around the Midwest, with events more skewed towards adults. I found Ren Fairs near Detroit; near the Twin Cities; in western Wisconsin, near Eau Claire; and just north of the Wisconsin-Illinois state line.

It's something that slipped my mind this summer, with the other things we wanted to do. I hope I can give that more attention next year.

Our mini-vacation, which ended Sunday night, was four days long. But when you remember that two of them were largely spent driving from here to there and back again, that leaves just two days of actual vacation.

How were those two days? They could have been better, but they could easily have been far worse. I'm satisfied.

We left Thursday morning and arrived at my son's place at about 8:30 p.m. (We won't get into the time changes--even though Detroit is in Eastern Time, I'm using Central Time throughout. If I try switching Central to Eastern and vice versa, I'll only get myself bollixed up. In not too many more weeks, of course, I'll be driving from Central to Eastern fairly regularly, as football season gets going--only Michigan's four counties that border Wisconsin are on Central Time, and mine is one of them.)

Essentially, we dropped my younger son off at my older son's place. He enjoys visiting his big brother, and big brother, I think, enjoys showing off all his stuff to a properly appreciative audience. Here, they are playing his new Wii ...

And what cutting-edge game were they playing?

We also watched the "Family Guy" version of Star Wars before heading off to our motel.

We found a fairly nice motel, especially for the price. Let's just say that three nights at $45 sure is a lot easier on my wallet than three nights at $90 or so. Two double beds, a refrigerator in the room, (fairly) high speed internet, close to the exit door. I pay all the bills for this trip, so ...

My wife had dozed off at my son's apartment, but she was wide awake at the motel, reading a book she had gotten. As for me, my lower back was aching, as it usually does after a long drive. It took her until midnight to settle down and get to sleep. I checked some websites before shutting down for the night.

In the days leading up to our trip, my wife had studied some museums and other sights we could visit in the Detroit area. We both like to check out museums, and we found some good ones. A historical museum. A city museum. And the Detroit Institute of Art. All of them are downtown, within walking distance of each other. I especially wanted to visit the Art Institute. I very rarely get a chance to see an art museum, and I badly wanted to take advantage of this chance to see one. I think my wife wanted to see it, too.

The trouble is, the younger generation simply has other priorities. If I may grossly generalize, they think of classic artwork as "old paintings" that may hold their attention briefly, but not much longer. Bottom line: They showed little interest in going to downtown Detroit to see the museums.

On the other hand, another museum my wife found drew their rapt attention. It is called Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, and it features mechanical devices and coin-operated things from over a century. It's located in Farmington Hills, in the northwest part of the Detroit metro area. Find out more about it at their website.

I have to admit it--it really was quite a fun place to visit (and my son said that in his roughly 10 years of living in the Detroit area, he had never been there before!). It didn't have a lot of old pinball machines but other kinds of coin-operated devices. Fortune-telling machines. Mechanical bands. Vintage stuff, which always interests me. Here are some photos ...

They had all kinds of stuff everywhere, including old-time wall posters ...

... and clocks honoring various pop culture figures from the past. Lots of stuff wherever you looked ...

They had mechanized and computerized music machines (next to a vintage player piano) ...

... and a pint-sized carousel ...

... and funhouse mirrors ...

... and a scene of some lucky guy getting a nice backrub ...

Here is something from over a century ago. This is my wife trying out a Mutoscope--it showed short flip-card "movies." You put in a dime (the current price) and start cranking the handle. You see a short comedy story--in this case, a man who had a woman as his "typewriter"; his wife comes in, objects, and soon a male takes over as the "typewriter." This is what they watched for kicks in the 1900s ...

No, I did not take on Kill-R-Watt. If you see those two metal posts in the front, you will get a pretty good idea of how it works ...

That took up a lot of Friday afternoon. We had supper at a Red Robin restaurant and then wound up back at the apartment. Part of my master plan was to go to the Detroit Tigers' game against the White Sox downtown on Friday night. But we couldn't get comps, and maybe that's just as well. The game went long, the Tigers led until the 9th inning when their closer gave up a two-run home run with two out--one out away from the win. Grrrr.

Also, if we had gone to the game and stayed there until the bitter end, we wouldn't have gotten back to the motel until close to midnight. Instead, we watched the game for a while in the apartment, watched a DVD or two and made plans for Saturday. That's my son's big day--the day of the show.

If I didn't explain that before, he is into improvisational comedy and has been taking classes at a Detroit area Second City group for the last few years. There's a lot of preparation that goes into being spontaneously funny. The way he explained it to me later is that you have to take on a different persona and act the way that person would react to different situations that arise. They had to be on their toes, too, because often they are reacting to situations and locations suggested by the audience ...

I got a few (still) pictures of different classes on stage, but I didn't get any of my son: He had borrowed a video camera and wanted me to record their show. It was the first time I had ever operated a video camera; I think I did fairly well, considering I didn't know about the show in advance and had no way to prepare. Bottom line: The cameraman was doing an improv, too.

My wife found a video mode on her little camera, and she got a movie. Maybe we can transfer it to my laptop and show it to my mom. If I can figure out a way to do that.

The show went on for most of the afternoon. Afterwards, we went to a pizza restaurant for a victory party and then back to the apartment. I think we also visited a Best Buy, though I didn't get anything. We also visited several big bookstores, Borders and Barnes & Noble. I was looking for a new book, "Opening Up," about open relationships, but none of the three huge bookstores I visited had it. I settled for "The Complete Persepolis," the comic book memoir of a woman who grew up in revolutionary Iran. I later saw that the story is now out in a DVD. Well, I'll read the book first.

Of course we wound up back at the apartment, watched a little of the Tigers-White Sox game, but my wife and I were both getting tired, and we wanted to get an early start for the trip home the next morning. So, back to the motel and early to bed. Before 10, believe it or not. Of course, we didn't go immediately to bed. We had spent several hours together in the back seat of his Prius that afternoon, enough time to goof around with each other when nobody was looking. So we were looking forward to getting to bed.

We were both ready to go Sunday morning. We picked up David and left for home at about 9:30--and got home about 11 hours later. That is one bloody long drive! But the kitties were happy to see us. They both had food and water when we got back home. (The woman I asked to feed them had been around.) Still, we have been petting and loving up the kitties on and off ever since.

****
Monday, it was back to work. I wrote most of this up Monday night, but Charlie's feline Jedi mind tricks prevented me from working up the pictures until now.

I also wrote S on Tuesday. There's a chance I can visit S and her husband during his vacation next week. Meanwhile, my son wants me to take him to the Wisconsin Valley Fair this weekend near Wausau. That's about 120 miles away.

My wife may be quite interested in that. The grandstand show on Saturday night features Herman's Hermits, including Peter Noone as the lead singer. Way back when, when she was in high school, Herman's Hermits was/were her favorite band. A few years after we got married and were living in Milwaukee during the '70s, I took her to see the Hermits (without Noone) at a local club.

Now, 30 years later, the current-day Hermits, including Noone, will be performing before the Wisconsin Valley Fair crowd.