Backtracking in Brodhead

Well, it's August, so everyone can laugh at me. I had thought Trump was the mouthy horn from the Book of Daniel since the 80's, when he had no political power, and he was only supposed to rule for a year, two years, and half a year. I told everyone he would be gone by the end of July, but he's still here. So feel free to mock me pitilessly.

Last night Travalon and I went to see 42, the biopic about Jackie Robinson, at the Duck Pond. I sure do miss baseball, but going to a drive-in movie about baseball on the baseball field was a lot of fun. We watched the movie on the scoreboard. It was terrible what Jackie had to go through, but his wife and Branch Rickey were very supportive. I totally think baseball needed to be integrated, but there are always unintended consequences to everything, and when the Negro League ended because blacks could play in the Major Leagues, a whole bunch of black-owned businesses connected with black baseball went out of business, and it really devastated the black economy in this country. At least, that's what Ken Burns says in his documentary about baseball. There should have been a way to avoid all that misery, but I suppose it would have involved letting black business owners sell things at white-owned parks, and I'm sure they wouldn't have allowed that back in those days. And sometimes I feel like we haven't made much progress since then...

Today Travalon and I drove south and took a hike at the Magnolia Bluff County Park, a lovely wooded area. Then we went to Brodhead, partly because they have put those billboards up again advertising it like crazy. (They had one up on the way to the airport, and I thought, "Who flies to Brodhead?" but they do have an airport, and biplane rides apparently.) We tried to find some antique shops; one was right downtown but was not open on Sunday, so we tried to find another one south of town with an address, but my phone led us to a private residence. So we tried to find another one south of town, couldn't, went back to town, and asked at a gas station. The woman directed us to an old church that maybe was an antiques shop at one time, but currently it is a bed and breakfast. So Travalon called one of the ones south of town, and the woman was just closing by then, but she said she would stay open for us. I did find a number of cheap rosaries, so my total was less than what I'm used to paying on a per-rosary basis. Travalon got a statue of Big Boy and a sign for Texaco with Dalmatians in a fire truck. Then we wanted to find the covered bridge Brodhead is known for, but that is north of town so we had to pass through downtown again. We were joking that if anyone was watching, they would wonder why this maroon Lexus keeps going back and forth through town. 

We came to a beautiful park on the banks of the Sugar River, and we asked a couple of bicyclists if they knew were the covered bridge was. They directed us to the bike trail and said it was about a mile past the road. So we started walking, and I saw a purple coneflower like the ones I had seen at Magnolia Bluff from too far away to get a good picture.

I'm not even sure we had to walk a mile to get to the covered bridge. Here it is from each side. It is a replica, built in 1984.

Then we went back to the park, which was called Pearl Island. Here are some shots of the Sugar River.

We crossed a dam and walked along a path on the outside edge of Pearl Island, but it didn't go all the way around. I had the brilliant idea to take a path into the woods on the island, thinking it would be a shortcut, but we walked and walked, and just as we were almost there, we came to this scary bridge. We had backtracked enough today, so I carefully inched my way over the bridge, and then Travalon did, and I took a picture to prove it. It looks like something from an obstacle course for military training.

That worked, and we came out of the woods right by the dam, so we crossed back over to the car. Then as we drove home, it would drizzle while the sun was out, and I said, "Where's the rainbow?" Then suddenly - there it was! The two I had seen in Madison lately were double rainbows, but this one was a single rainbow with a supernumerary rainbow - that's the faint teal and pink stripes you can see under the purple stripe.

Last time we went to Brodhead we saw a rainbow, so maybe they should play that up in their advertising campaign.

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