Exploring the Upper Yahara

Sorry for my silence the last couple of days. Tuesday I was going to blog after Irish class, but when I got home, Travalon and I got into a conversation that somehow involved the miniseries Roots, and he mentioned that he had it on DVD, so we had to watch some of it. Yesterday I took the day off of work so that we could do some exciting business stuff like taxes, but then we also went hiking on the northern part of the Upper Yahara Trail, which is not paved. We had Rodney with us, but the wind was blowing so hard that it almost blew him away, and he didn’t like it at all, so we took him back home. After lunch we went back to hike even further along the river, but the trail does not really go any further than the Veterans’ Memorial Park in DeForest, so we drove to find the source of the river. We discovered a little town called Morrisonville, and according to Google Maps, from the town’s park you should be able to see the pond or small lake that is the source of the river. However, we saw nothing across the street but a corn field, so that was confusing. And do you know, if you change Google Maps to the Google Earth view, there is a field right where the pond or small lake should be, so obviously someone filled it in and planted it. We drove back to the park in DeForest and met Jilly Moose for a hike along the river the other direction, and then we all got pie at the Norske Nook. After that I went to band practice, which we haven’t had in awhile, and my mandolin was a little out of tune. Both the guitarist and I have been playing a lot of ukulele in the interim, and we both had to get our brains back in the mode of the instrument actually in our hands. It took me the first part of a song to remember mandolin chords, but then it was like being with an old friend I hadn’t seen in awhile, when everything is just like you left it and you can talk as if your conversation was never interrupted. I do like the ukulele – it’s a fun little instrument – but the mandolin has felt like my identity for the last two decades. Who am I? A mandolier. Is that a word? Spellcheck doesn’t like it, but who cares? It’s what I am.

Shout out to Pa Hat, who was not feeling well earlier this week but is out of the hospital and feeling much better.

Famous Hat