Savor the River Valley Redux

 

Sorry for not blogging the last couple of days. I worked from home and didn't have much to say about that. However, today was a lot of fun. Wolverhampton won, so Travalon was very happy. It's been a while since they had a win. Then we headed back to Spring Green to hit some more stops that we hadn't had room for last week on the Savor the River Valley Tour. Our first stop was a bakery called Sky Blue Pink, where Travalon had a pistachio scone and I had some sort of Polish pastry that was like a cross between a donut and a danish, with chocolate and cheese on top. Yum! Then we walked to the General Store, because we thought Hardingfele and her husband were performing there, but they are actually playing tomorrow. Oops! There were lots of beautiful earrings there, but they were way too expensive.

We walked to a bar called Baron Brooks, since apparently the previous owner was named Baronbrooks, and they just kept the name. Someone on social media said we had to try their burgers, so that's what we had for lunch. They were very tasty. Then we went to a home decor store that for some reason served ice cream, and Travalon got fancy pretzels while I got a stone heart. (Some would argue that I already have one.) We sat outside enjoying our ice cream, under wind chimes that sounded like they were playing "Scarborough Fair." I made a video:

They must be in the Dorian Mode. On the walk back to the car I saw jonquils - they were like tiny daffodils, four to a stem, but I didn't take a picture or bend down to see if they had a scent. Then we went to the Arena boat launch, and Travalon took some photos.

We were going to hike on the trail in Mazomanie, but after seeing the bluffs on the other side of the river from the boat launch, I wanted to find them. We stopped at a gas station back in Spring Green, where Travalon found a map of Sauk County, and then we drove east on Highway 60 and tried to find some of the points of interest. One was a German Swiss Historical Area, so we drove on the road where it was supposedly located, but all we saw were some farms that looked like any other farms. We did see this old school house and abandoned church.

The views of the bluffs on this road were stunning. Check out the colorful foliage on this one.

And there were plenty of others.

There were also wild cacti growing near the road. This was a road we turned off of to see a lilac hedge, but it wasn't in bloom yet.

On this road, we saw more interesting bluffs.

The third point of interest we went to was Ferry Bluff, which we have climbed before. This time we took a path down by the river, and we saw a nuthatch.

And these flowers that I thought were called trout lilies, but my phone calls them merry bells.

Across the river, we could see pelicans.

Here is the view down the river.

Then we parked at the VFW Park in Sauk and hiked on the trail between there and the dam. We saw some flowers in the woods. Maybe these are the trout lilies? My phone didn't even recognize them as plants.

These are Dutchmen's breeches.

In the sandier areas, we saw this sand cress in bloom.

And of course we saw pelicans.

This is a view of the VFW Park from just off the trail.

Travalon has taken a lot of photos of this bluff over the years.

We came across something wonderful in the woods: a feral crabapple tree!

By the dam, there were lots of pelicans.

It looks like one pelican and the cormorant were dancing:

At least they could laugh about it afterwards!

On the way back, I went to smell the feral crabapple, and what a sweet scent it had!

I think this might be a wild plum. Its blossoms smelled a bit like grape soda.

It had been a lovely day up until then, and we were planning to go out to dinner with a gift certificate I had purchased way back for Travalon's birthday, but ominous clouds rolled in, and we could see lightning in the distance. We opted to pick up a quick dinner at the nearby gyro place and stay home tonight. There was a lot of lightning all around us, but whatever storm was going on never actually hit us. I did quite a few lessons on DuoLingo this evening and was shocked to get this sticker:

I assume they mean a personal record, which is surprising enough because there have been days I did more lessons, but the sticker seems to imply that I set a record for all users of DuoLingo. Is this possible? And if so, then why am I not winning my league? As soon as I stopped doing lessons, I got a notification saying I'd dropped out of the Top Five in my league, so START DOING SOME MORE LESSONS!! Is that any way to treat a record breaker?

Famous Hat