Friday I had to work half a day because of a Very Important Meeting, then Travalon and I drove to a very cute little cottage on Lake Wisconsin for our sixth anniversary.
Across the street is a park with this gorgeous view, and we walked out onto the sandbar visible on the lefthand side of the photo.
Further up the river, we saw a sandbar with a volleyball net on it! Super fun! We drove along the lake and went for a walk on the path to Paradise Island. There is a little marsh along the path.
Then we took the ferry, but you can't get out of your car because of social distancing. We drove to the park in Merrimac with the incredible views of the lake, and I took some pictures.
Owl's Head Bluff
Paradise Island
We got a fish fry (bluegill!) to go from Hooker's Resort, and we came back to the cabin in time to see this spectacular sunset. The first photo is from Travalon's camera, then two from mine, then one from my phone. You can choose which one you like best.
Then we hung out inside the cozy cottage, looking at photos on my computer. Here are a couple of pictures of the inside of the cottage.
I posted a photo of the sunset on social media, and a former coworker recognized the view because her grandparents had a cottage nearby that was still in the family. She and her cousin (another former coworker of mine) were excited to learn that it was five doors down from where we were staying. You can distinguish it by this red arrow.
Yesterday morning Travalon and I took a short walk to find the other cottage, but of course we didn't bring our good cameras, so when a young bald eagle landed on a sandbar right in front of us, we couldn't get a decent picture of it. Then we drove to the Necedah Wildlife Refuge, passing through Necedah on the way, and in town there was a lake with two swans on it.
Just inside the wildlife refuge, we saw this pair of nesting whooping cranes.
Then we went for a walk on a boardwalk and saw this interesting plant. A type of willow?
We heard some unfamiliar bird sounds, kind of like geese but not exactly, and then we rounded a corner and saw over a dozen swans, some on nests.
Since that trail was so wonderful, we wanted to go to another one, but the road was washed out and muddy in some parts. We made it pretty far along, but then we did get stuck. I felt weirdly calm about this, even though we were in the middle of nowhere. I began to pray the rosary, and before I could start the third decade, some people came by in a pickup truck and towed us out. Look at what a mess Noelle was!
We hiked on some other trail and then went to Necedah and got a car wash. The coolest part was the "tri-color wash," when it squirted magenta, teal, and yellow soap onto the car. It made a beautiful abstract design on the windshield, but I had changed into a lighter coat, so both my camera and my phone were in the backseat in my other coat pocket. By the time Travalon grabbed my other coat, the soap was already rinsed off. Alas, I have no photo or video of that. But look how clean Noelle is!
We were all hiked out, but we took a short walk at the Juneau County Wilderness Park on the Petenwell Flowage.
Then we went to Fitz's on the Lake and had a delicious dinner in our car. They are doing carhop service during social distancing, so we sat in our car and gazed at the lake (sorry, I didn't think to take a picture of that view) while we ate our anniversary dinner. I had coconut shrimp with bang bang sauce. So good! There was so much food that I brought plenty home for breakfast this morning.
Today it rained all day for our actual anniversary, nothing like the beautiful day six years ago when we got married. Here is a view of the geese enjoying the rain. I laughed at one that ran as fast as it could over a sandbar, but it was running to bite another goose. How mean!
We had a lazy morning eating leftovers and watching Mass on my computer, then we drove along Lake Wisconsin. We stopped at Columbia Lake, a much smaller lake with a power plant on it. In this picture, it looks like the smokestack from the power plant is creating the oppressive clouds.
We found a path around the lake and started to walk on it, but it was very cold. We did see two sandhill cranes and a great blue heron, but the wind picked up and literally began to howl, so we hurried back to the car. We drove along the south side of the lake, over the causeways and by all the islands, then we went to Sauk and took a walk at the VFW Park. We went to the dam; we didn't see any pelicans, but I did see an eagle fly by. So we had plenty of bird sightings this weekend for our anniversary. I'm glad Travalon likes to look at birds as much as I do - I definitely married the right guy!
Famous Hat
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