Yesterday Travalon and I met Jilly Moose and OK Cap for coffee at Leopold's, then he and I drove to Brodhead and hiked on the trail with the covered bridge.
Then we went to the Rock County 4H Fair, where we saw lots of chickens and rabbits. This chicken is so fluffy!
This rabbit looks so much like Charlie, my old bunny!
This is me holding a baby pheasant that just hatched. Notice that I also have a commemorative drink container that looks like a palm tree. That's part of going to the fair, getting silly things.
There were also displays of baked goods. I loved this colorful cake.
We tried to get soft pretzels, but the line was always so long, although everyone in line assured us the pretzels were worth the wait. The Lutherans (who were also making a fortune from renting spots in their parking lot) grilled delicious cheeseburgers, and the 4H Club made wonderful cream puffs.
We were there to see Charlie Behrens, and we could see the bleachers were filling up an hour before he was going onstage. About a half-hour beforehand, we got seats in the bleachers and said why isn't anyone checking our tickets, and the people around us told us it was free to sit in the bleachers - if we paid, we could sit on the lawn. If we'd only known! Not that these tickets were expensive, but I think I might have preferred to sit in the bleachers. I was wearing white shorts, but I did manage to find a plastic bag to sit on to avoid grass stains. We did see a lovely sunset from our spot on the lawn.
A guy who was mildly funny opened for Charlie Behrens, who was hilarious. Travalon and I both thought his best joke was when he said the Cowboys are so brave because they made their average Yelp rating their symbol. (Their symbol is one star.) I laughed SO HARD!! He mostly tells jokes about being from Wisconsin, because he tried to get into broadcast journalism but everyone mocked his accent and vocabulary, so then he thought, why not play it up? And that's how he found his success!!
Afterwards we thought we'd really like to try these pretzels. The sign glowed with the giant golden word "PRETZELS," seeming to summon everyone at the fair. At that late hour, the line was still very long, but Travalon got into it. I went to find a bathroom, but all the nearby ones were locked. I had to go all the way across the fairgrounds. When I came back, he hadn't seem to have moved in line. So I went to take photos of the fairway at night.
When I got back from that, he still hadn't moved forward. Then the pretzel people announced they had thirteen more pretzels, and there were twelve people ahead of us (and plenty behind us), so we weren't sure if we would get one. We were only getting one - they were so huge, and we were so full of other fair food, we couldn't handle one each. Then the woman said no wait, there were twenty-two more pretzels, so we all cheered! Pretzels for everyone in line! People kept assuring us they were worth the wait. Finally we got to the front of the line and ordered one pretzel for $7. Travalon had read it was Amish style and used "German salt," however that differs from any other salt. We each took a bite... and this really was the paragon of giant, soft pretzels. It was the Platonic ideal of a pretzel. I don't think I can ever eat any other pretzel again. It was warm and soft and buttery and yeasty with big, crunchy chunks of salt. It was definitely worth the wait!!!
We got home late last night and overslept, so we went to the nearby church for Mass, then we went to a Honduran restaurant for a fabulous brunch. We went to Olbrich Gardens for their butterfly display and got in free since we're members. The butterflies feed off these funny doughnut-shaped sponges.
Here are some cool flowers.
This one looks like it has pomegranate seeds hanging off of it.
And here are some butterflies.
And really interesting flowers.
The East Side Club had a luau this afternoon for members at the Tiki Bar.
We had a cute pig cake that was chocolate. I think I burned my piece off by bringing pieces to everyone else.
Here we are, enjoying the perfect weather. Notice that we got lei'd, which allowed us to get the free Members Only drink of blue curaçao and lemonade.
We listened to a steel drum band as a refreshing breeze blew about us. As we drove home, we passed a path off of Fair Oaks Avenue that I had always been curious about, so we parked and walked along it. It came out on the bike path around Lake Monona, and from the bridge you could see this railroad bridge.
We followed the bike path to Garver Mill, and Travalon got pizza for dinner while I had a salad, since I had been bad enough already. The path continues on the other side of the road, so we will have to explore that some other time. By then it was starting to get dark, so we just walked back to the car and came home. We had already had enough fun for one weekend.
Famous Hat
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