Travalon's Treasures

I haven't posted all the antique rosaries I recently bought yet, but it only seems fair to take a break and show my readers what Travalon buys at the antiques stores. He has more varied interests than I do, but in general he likes sports memorabilia, old cartoons, and old gas station signs.

This first picture is bobble-heads of three old Bucks players: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Brian Winters, and Bob Dandridge.

This, of course, is a doll of Ty Cobb, the meanest SOB to ever play baseball.

Travalon just found this on Sunday. He used to have this Tom Cat... and a Jerry Mouse too! He is still on the lookout for the Jerry Mouse.

This is a Theodore Roosevelt figurine.

These are bobble-heads of Hank Aaron (Braves) and George Scott (Brewers), the two baseball teams from Milwaukee. The Braves are now in Atlanta.

These are bobble-heads of Paul Hornung, the old Packers running back from their original glory days, and their coach Vince Lombardi.

These bobble-heads are Quisp, a character from a sugary cereal that existed back when Travalon and I were kids watching cartoons, and Droopy Dog from the cartoons.

Anyone else remember Hong Kong Phooey? Number One Super Guy?

And this is the singing, dancing frog from the Warner Brothers cartoons.

This is a Road Runner car and a Winnie the Pooh cement (honey) mixer.

Here are some gas station signs hanging on the walls in Travalon's man cave.

This is a Hamm's Beer sign. Travalon loves the Hamm's Bear.

And this is the Hamm's Bear! Travalon found him in Baraboo.

I hope you have enjoyed this visual survey of Travalon's treasures.

Famous Hat

Basque Boat Captain?

Today my walking buddy was busy, so Travalon came on a walk with me. We noticed a boat in the marina across the way that had a Basque flag on it: red with a white cross and a green X. I wondered if the person who owned the boat were of Basque heritage, or if they actually speak the language. I studied it many years ago, so long ago that if I had spent the summer having a baby instead of studying an isolate language, that kid would be pushing Dirty Thirty. I would love to try practicing it again with someone, but how would I ever find this person? Do I just hang around the marina until the boat's owner puts in an appearance? And then what? "I see you have a Basque flag on your boat. Euskara esaten dut." Which I seem to vaguely recall means that I can speak Basque. Or maybe I should just say "kaixo," which is pronounced "kye-show" and means hello. That might be safer.

When we went to Sauk on Saturday, Travalon shot this footage of two white pelicans swimming by the dam. I love how when he zooms in on them, you can see how much their faces look like dinosaurs. I assume - I have never seen an actual dinosaur, unless you are of the school of thought (as I am) that birds ain't nuthin' but modern dinosaurs, and then I have seen many, many of them. This footage has a mellow vibe (as pelicans generally do - if I were a bird, I'd totally be a pelican) so I set it to "Maga Dog" by Peter Tosh. They are just living their best lives.

Famous Hat

White Mound County Park

Today after Mass and brunch (with Rich, the other bass from our currently on-hiatus choir, one of the regular readers at Mass, and our Lutheran organist), Travalon and I were planning to go to the Nature Conservancy land where the prickly pear cacti grow, because this time of year they are blooming. We went to the antiques store in Monona on our way out of town, and they did have lots of rosaries, and then we went to the antique store in Sauk, where they also had lots of rosaries. There are still plenty left at both stores, in case any of my readers also collect antique rosaries. (I can't afford to buy them all!) Then we were going to drive from Sauk to Spring Green on Highway 60, a scenic route we often take, but I was distracted by a really cool hill, so we ended up taking Highway PF. If you have never been on this highway, it has a lot of amazing hills and bluffs and rock formations along it. I took a bunch of pictures.

Highway PF ended at Highway 23, so we took that toward Spring Green. We passed a sign for White Mound County Park, and I said let's check it out. Were we ever glad that we did! It has a beautiful lake (called White Mound Lake) with a lovely beach, and bluffs in the background.

We found a trail around the lake and began hiking on it. Deep in the woods we saw this wintergreen.

We kept seeing this hill, which might be White Mound.

Here is another view of the lake from the opposite side.

And here is Travalon on a fishing pier out in the lake.

We saw lots of flowers in the fields between the woods. This is vetch, and I forgot to look up the yellow flower on my plant ID app, but it's really common.

And these are wild grapes!

On one side there was a berm with a dam, and on the other side of the berm was a creek.

I just loved this stand of sumac with pines behind them.

Sorry, out of order photo - here is the creek on the other side of the berm.

Is this White Mound behind me? It's somewhere to the south of the lake.

At the very end of the trail was a scary little bridge that wasn't too sturdy.

Then we continued with our original plan, to see the blooming prickly pears.

There are cool rock formations on the hill behind the cacti.

I was like a kid in a candy store with my plant ID app, because there were so many species of plants in the prairie, like this goat's rue.

purple lovegrass

 hoary verbena

 St. John's wort

black-eyed Susans

 large beardtongue

 leadplant

 candle anemone

 woolly plantain

racemed milkwort

 clasping Venus's looking glass

 stiff ticksweed

And, of course, milkweed. I saw a lot of monarchs flying around it. That brought back memories of when I used to raise monarchs from egg to butterfly. This isn't nearly all the plants I identified with the app, but they are the photos that turned out well.

Famous Hat