D-Tour Continuation and White Mound County Park in Autumn

 

Sorry that I didn't blog yesterday. Travalon and I had to go to the community gardens and do some volunteer work, and then I talked to Tiffy. I also kind of half-watched the Badger game before talking to her, and the new red-shirt freshman quarterback is amazing! They won 45-7!!

Today Travalon and I had to bring the boat in for the winter, because the neighbor who always helps us is traveling soon. Since I was wearing my new knee-high rubber boots, I was able to just step out of the boat and help guide it onto the trailer. Travalon might need hip boots next year - his knee-high boots weren't quite high enough, since he had to wade deeper into the water to push the back of the boat into the right spot, so then his boots were full of water. Otherwise, things went way more smoothly than they often have in the past. I remember one year we stayed in the boat as Richard Bonomo pulled it out of the water on the trailer, and that was terrifying! We were sure we were going to fall out! But now we've got the system down.

After that, I planned to take the cash my neighbor paid me for the high vis vest I bought her and go to Our Lady of the Valley Cistercian Monastery to buy - you guessed it - a rosary. (She even asked me if that was what I was going to do with the money as she handed it to me.) That was on the half of the figure eight that we didn't get to during the Art D-Tour, so I thought we could poke along that route, although all the art would be gone. First we drove to Sauk and had lunch in a Mexican restaurant, then we checked out the antiques shop across the street, and I bought a little brass bunny and - can you believe it? - three rosaries. We went to the VFW Park, and some of the trees are bare, but now the colors are deeper. Travalon said, "This is going to be one of those one hundred picture days," and indeed he did take 113 photos. Here are a selection of the photos from the park in Sauk.

Then we went to Our Lady of the Valley Monastery, and I followed the directions: ring doorbell, enter building, wait for help. The nun who came to help me seemed a bit confused - all I wanted was to buy a rosary. She disappeared and reappeared to say it was a suggested donation, so I gave her the cash my neighbor had given me and picked out a rosary. Here are some photos of the monastery and the grounds.

Then we drove further down the road it was on, because it was so picturesque. 

We did see one piece of artwork still standing: the word "HEALTH" written with hay bales. When we got to Plain, we went partway up St. Anne's hill again. We didn't go up the really steep part at the top.

Then we hiked around the lake at White Mound County Park again.

And I heard this woodpecker, but Travalon was the one who spotted him.

He made a really cool little video of him, but Blogspot says it is too large to post, so I will have to make it into a YouTube video at some point. I do apologize for leading my readers astray about this path around the lake - I thought it was about three miles long, but according to my FitBit, it is almost four miles long. It takes us a little over an hour to do it.

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