Sorry for my silence the last few days. I'll get to Sunday and Monday soon, but first, here are a few photos of the graves we saw in the Token Creek Cemetery on Saturday, on our way up to Horicon Marsh. Some of these are of soldiers who died in the Civil War!
Sunday after Mass we drove to Arena for Irish Fest in the Barn. (Sorry, I didn't take any photos of either the inside or the outside of the barn.) There were two stages, one in the barn and the other on the porch of a house, so that the audience sat on the lawn, and they had singers and dancers all day long. This was in the Driftless Area, and we took a short walk up this road along Mound Creek.
My first Irish teacher was there with a native speaker, so I got to speak a little Irish. We had shepherds pies for lunch, and there was a stand selling "Scottish blossoms" of all the clan tartans, so I got one of the Hat Family Tartan and put it on my hat.
There was a fountain on the grounds (this barn is generally used for weddings), and when I took a photo of it, some random guy walking by offered to take my photo in front of the fountain.
I was wearing my Bru na Boinne (Newgrange) T-shirt, and several people stopped me to talk about it: had I been there? They wanted to go, or they had been, and it was the coolest thing they'd ever seen. Travalon and I did participate a bit in the caeli dance at the end of the evening, but we are old and out of shape, so we only did one dance. Afterwards there was a jam session open to everyone - next time I will have to bring my mandolin! Or my fiddle! Or both...? I was not surprised to see a lot of people there I knew, but I was surprised by who some of them were. Never knew they were Irish music lovers! It was a lot of fun - I highly recommend Irish Fest in the Barn. It's more chill and a far more beautiful setting than Irish Fest in Milwaukee.
We stayed at the Round Barn Inn in Spring Green, and this cool artwork hung above our bed.
The original round barn was a (sadly defunct) restaurant, but there is a replica round barn that holds a very lovely swimming pool that was open until 11! We swam for quite a while, until teenagers invaded.
Since the restaurant was long closed, we weren't sure where to get breakfast, but there was a diner in Arena that was open Memorial Day, so we backtracked a few miles and had a large breakfast that held us most of the day. Then we drove to Muscoda, still pronounced MUSS-ka-day and not Muss-KOH-dah. Here is their War Memorial, appropriate for the day.
As we walked along the river walk, we heard a band and then a 21-gun salute from the cemetery, where they were having a ceremony for Memorial Day. Here are some photos along the river. The walk smelled lovely because of all the black locusts in bloom. (On Saturday, Horicon Marsh smelled heavenly because of all the honeysuckle in bloom.)
We took a walk on the path in the woods as well.
We saw these mushrooms that I am pretty sure are edible.
I also found Muscoda Moe on the ground. It's a piece of prickly pear that was just lying there. I have no idea if cacti grow wild in Muscoda; we didn't see any. Muscoda Moe was our traveling companion, but I had to get him some sand, and I knew just where to find it...
... in Boscobel! Just outside of town we stopped at a scenic overlook, and we saw this eagle.
Here are some photos from the park in Boscobel, where they have lots of sand.
I thought from a distance that they had decorated the middle cross for Easter, but it's just a bush growing up alongside it.
Then we went to Wyalusing State Park and admired the view from the overlook.
In the parking lot we saw cowbirds, with their shiny brown heads.
Then we drove down to the boat launch. Years ago I saw a pileated woodpecker there, and yesterday we did hear a woodpecker pecking on a tree, but we never saw it. This is the railroad crossing right by the boat landing.
We didn't take a photo of the fishing pier, which was partly flooded yet an intrepid couple had waded out to it and were fishing from it. We headed back, stopping in the same parks in Boscobel and Muscoda as we had on the way out since nature called. In Gotham, Travalon was delighted to see the bar called the Bat Cave has reopened, but we didn't stop there. We had to get back to go to Rich's Memorial Day cookout. He had some issues with his email invitations, and mine had gone to spam while apparently some people never got them, but there were still quite a few people there. Mr. Icon is visiting from Alaska, and his beard is bigger than ever. He says they call him "Santa" up on Kodiak Island. I wanted to plant Muscoda Moe in Rich's garden, and El Vegetariano backed me up on this. He calls prickly pears "nopales," which is the Spanish word for that kind of cactus, and we agreed it would be a good garden plant because if it survives, it will produce fruit and pads that we can eat. Yum! Then a bunch of us did Night Prayer from Rich's yard, in the dark. That was... interesting. But it mostly worked.
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