Travalon's First Full Day as an Orphan

 

Here is the photo I had promised of the Balearia commemorative cup from the ferry:

It just looks blue in this photo, but in real life it's greenish-blue. I'll try photographing it in different light at some point.

Today Travalon and I took the day off work, and we went to Sauk. We saw some eagles flying around at the VFW Park.

And we saw one in a tree on the island.

All we saw at the dam were lots and lots of gulls. Then we went to the bakery in Sauk and had coffee and treats (mine was not chocolate, since it's Lent), and after that we drove to Lake Wisconsin. It was a very cold day, but very sunny, so good to be in a car. We stopped by the spot to see the two little islands, and Owl's Head Bluff in the background.

We didn't see anything but gulls by Fitz's, so we went to Whalen Grade and saw Canada geese, gulls, scaups, and shovelers. First the scaups and a goldeneye, who were very far away from us.

This is a pair of common mergansers. The female has the brown head. They were also very far away.

Much closer, we saw some northern shovelers. (I don't know if there are southern shovelers.)

Then we went back to Fitz's for lunch: their famous haddock cake sandwiches, and I also had their famous salad bar. We drove back to Madison and tried to take a walk around Tiedemann's Pond, but the cold wind was unbearable, so we walked at West Towne Mall and didn't buy anything. I did look at a squishy axolotl pillow and an eye necklace, but do I need either thing? It seems like a good Lenten penance to not buy everything you want. 

Perhaps it had warmed up a bit by the time we got home, because I did go for a walk outside in the neighborhood. I went to watch the sunset, but it was not a particularly beautiful one today, so I didn't bother taking a photo. I like when they are pink and orange, and this one was just a tinge of yellow. 

I forgot to note that when we saw my mother-in-law on Saturday, she seemed agitated and was asking who was driving. I told her Travalon was driving, and she said, "Where are we going?" (she was hard to understand), and Travalon said, "Tahiti." I figured we couldn't drive there, so I said, "Holy Hill," since she loved it there. She laughed and said, "Hilly Hole," which is an inside joke because Travalon's Aunty Katie from Hungary called it Hilly Hole once, and another time she said she loved to go out in the evening and sit in her zucchini, meaning her jacuzzi. Travalon's mom loved to tell those two stories. I love that as she was dying, she could still joke and sing. Not sure what she was singing, maybe the first word was "Alleluia" and not "All," but I'm sure she had no idea it's Lent now. Not like that concert Tiffy and I went to on Saturday, where they did an encore after all those 16th century Italian songs of a German liturgical song of the same vintage (by Martin Luther), which I sang years ago with the Lutheran choir, and which ends each verse with two Alleluias. Now they really should have known better.

Famous Hat