Late Lunch with a Loon

 

This morning Travalon and I went to Contrast Coffee in Ironwood, where I had a pistachio and rose latte. I usually prefer my lattes plain, but that flavor combination sounded amazing, and it did taste a lot like a dessert they have at the Globe that is so delicious. As we were leaving town, we saw a taco place with a sign that said "Worst taco ever eaten by a guy on Yelp," and we did find a good place to take a photo of the view of Mount Zion rising over the town of Hurley.

It was a very cold, overcast day, and the top of the mountain is shrouded in mist like the mountains in Alaska. Then just outside of town we passed the Gile Flowage where Travalon used to fish when he went to school up there. He said there was a road that crossed the flowage, and as we drove on it, we saw a few adult geese with over thirty babies. It looked like a school or something, because the ratio of young geese to old ones seemed too high for normal goose families.

Here is an island in the flowage.

In Mercer we stopped to check out a railroad museum; the inside was closed, but you could see stuff outside.

We saw a bridge over the Manitowish River that was part of the Manitowish Waters Bike Path, so we parked on the side of the road and took a walk on the very woodsy path.

We passed a section of highway that was adopted by "Chad the Rad." Then we took a walk in the Powell Marsh Wildlife Area. We didn't see much wildlife except red-winged blackbirds, but we did see marsh irises, multiflora roses, and beautiful pink wild roses. Travalon took photos of the wild roses today; see recent blog posts for examples of the other two flowers.

Finally, we saw some geese flying overhead.

We did see lots of yellow water lilies.

In Woodruff we went to an antiques shop where I found a rosary. There was another rosary that was a cheap but cute one, but they had made it part of a necklace and were charging more for it than I wanted to pay. Also, I had mixed feelings: was it better to buy the rosary and rescue it from this degradation, or would buying it just encourage the person doing such things to keep doing them? So I didn't buy it. We also went to the antiques shop in Minocqua where I have always found rosaries, and I got quite a few. Photos soon. Then we went to lunch at the Thirsty Whale, partly because their food is so good (wild rice clam chowder!), and partly because they are right on the water, and we have seen loons from there before. Today the outdoor patio was closed because it was so windy, but we got lucky and had seats right next to the window. We were almost done with lunch when I spotted a loon coming toward us, and Travalon got some excellent photos.

The loon dove and resurfaced, and Travalon got a couple more good photos.

We took a walk on the Bearskin Trail from its start right by the Thirsty Whale to the next trestle.

There were pages along the trail with a "Choose Your Own Adventure" theme, and one page was a quiz about bears. Travalon complained that it was too simple, because the choices were photos of a black bear, a grizzly bear, a polar bear, and a panda bear, and I said, "What? A quiz made for five-year-olds is too simple for you?" and then I laughed about it for five minutes. Travalon said I could blog about this. He also came up with the title of this blog post.

In Wausau we went to the top of Rib Mountain, and Travalon got some photos from up there, of Wausau and the Wisconsin River.

I asked him to recreate my profile photo on this blog, which a bandmate took years ago. I was wearing my original Famous Hat and gazing from the overlook to the scenery below. I didn't even realize she took the photo until she posted it on the Rib Mountain web page. Here is the updated version.

When we got back to town, we realized we were too hungry to cook something for dinner, so we went to Falbo Brothers Pizza near our house... only now it's Doughboys Pizza, and they were closing in five minutes. Still, we were able to get two slices of pizza. Now we are home and already missing the North Woods. Hopefully we can get back there this summer.

Famous Hat