Day at the Dells

Today Travalon and I took the day off of work and went to the Dells. The day started on a sad note, when I found out my cousin's husband, who had a stroke back in May, died early this morning. They had just celebrated their second wedding anniversary. Then Travalon and I went to the Coffee Gallerie, and a sign on the door said it was their last day in business. That was a shock! We wondered what the third bad thing today would be, but other than having to get a tire patched before we hit the road, we had a great day. We took the same Upper Dells boat ride that Ma and Pa Hat took earlier this summer, and it was a very scenic ride. We stopped at a place called Witch's Gulch and took a walk, and then we stopped at a place called Stand Rock, where back in the 19th century a photographer named H.H. Bennett took the first action photo, of his son leaping from one rock formation to another. Today they have a German shepherd that leaps from one rock to another, and I made a short video of it. After the boat ride, we went to Nig's for a Swig, where we bought a raffle ticket to win a Harley Davidson, then to Bennett's old studio, which is now a museum, and then we had a delicious dinner at the High Rock Cafe, where we ran into Handy Woman. I knew she had the day off of work too, but I didn't know she was also going to the Dells! The last thing we did was go to a T-shirt shop where I had a tie-dye shirt emblazoned with the words "Famous Hat." I dithered about whether to have the letters done in black or white but settled on white, which turns out to be hard to read. I guess you can say it's subtle...

Here are some photos from our day. First is the writing on the sidewalk that says "Dells," but from the other direction looks like it says "sttop."

Here are examples of the beautiful rock formations called the Dells, from a French word for layers:

 This is Louie Bluff, named after a French fur trader who settled on it:

This does not seem like a very PC name: "Nig's"!

I took this photo for the typo at the bottom: "liqour."

This is my new "Famous Hat" shirt, but you can probably barely read it:

And finally, here is a short video of the dog leaping from one rock formation to the other:

Famous Hat