Travalon's LV Birthday

 

Today Travalon turned LV years old, and we started the day with me giving him his gift. Meet Heinrich!

Heinrich is the mascot of the Great Dane Brewery, and he probably has some official name (which is probably not Heinrich). Then we talked to Travalon's mom over FaceTime, and then we drove out to Sauk, where we saw two eagles in a tree at the VFW Park!!

It's as if they decided hey, it's December, time to make an appearance. And here is a picture of a bluff across the river I have featured on this blog several times.

These are some other bluffs you can see from the dam. I particularly like the conical one on the lefthand side of the picture - you pass it as you go to Wollersheim Winery.

We drove on Highway 60 out to Spring Green, where Travalon got free lunch at the general store, a discounted journal with dogs on the cover, and some discounted books at the bookstore. A lot of the places where you can get free stuff on your birthday were closed on Tuesdays. Then we drove back to Sauk and had Travalon's favorite drink at the Wollersheim Distillery, the Apple Cream. We had to drink it outside, but fortunately it was a little warmer by then.

We could see smoke coming from the north, so we drove toward Lake Wisconsin to see what was going on. It looked like maybe there was a fire in Baraboo...? but we couldn't find any news stories about it. We stopped by Sunset Island and took a picture.

Then we drove on Highway J and passed Gibralter Rock, which we have hiked up to before. That's quite a climb! It may be worse than the one the Dairyman's Daughter makes every day up St. Anne's Hill in Plain.

Looking the other direction, you see a bucolic scene.

We hiked on the Fern Glen section of the Ice Age Trail, but there were ashes and smoke in the air, so it kind of hurt my throat. We did get quite a few staircases worth of elevation, but not as much as Sunday, when we hiked up Webster Bluff. As we headed home, we passed Webster Bluff, and you can see how high we hiked up it - the trail ends right at the yard of the house on the top.

Travalon went to the Come Back Inn while I got my hair cut, then we had dinner at the El Dorado Grill. After that we drove through the Fantasy of Lights in Olin-Turville Park, and I took pictures, but they were all pretty awful. (Question: if awe and wonder mean similar things, then why are awful and wonderful antonyms?) Here are some of the slightly better ones.

Yes, that is an elf kayaking at the end of the light tunnel.

I don't know why I took this picture, but it was the one that turned out best.

Mallards Baseball, how we have missed you! Next summer?

This is the Capitol Building and the Monona Terrace, and you can barely see the real Capitol in the background.

New this year is a display commemorating the Ice Cube project at the South Pole. The far left thing is a supernova or something, creating neutrinos, then the middle thing is the graph the neutrinos produce, and the far right thing is the building. In related news, my Ice Cube T-shirt arrived today. Sorry, I forgot to have Travalon take a picture of me wearing it.

I took a bunch of pictures of this cute little train, and this was (if you can believe it) the best of the bunch.

It looked like a full moon tonight. This picture kind of turned out.

I think the actual full moon was last night, and I vaguely remember hearing there would be a lunar eclipse that I forgot all about. So sorry, no photos of that. It always looks cool when the moon seems to have a bite taken out of it, or during the full eclipse when it is blood red. Next time.

Famous Hat