Air Conditioned ATM

 

This morning Travalon and I went to a pastel bakery for a pasty, since that's a traditional food in Ironwood, Michigan, from back when there were a lot of miners there. We also got coffee and white lotus drink, then we went to a small town called Gile that Travalon remembered from his college days, but the bar called the Oval Office is now called the Longhorn Grill. We also stopped by the beautiful Gile Flowage, which had the most cheerfully decorated bathroom I'd ever seen. I wanted to take some photos of the flowery stall and the smily face trash can, but someone else was waiting to use it. Back in Hurley we were both amused to see a sign on a dive bar that said: "Air Conditioned ATM," as if the money has to stay cool. This isn't the first bar I've seen advertise their air conditioning as if it was a huge selling point.

Our next stop was Minocqua, where I bought a couple of rosaries at the antiques shop, and then we hiked on the Bearskin Trail for over an hour. By then we had worked up an appetite, so we went to the Thirsty Whale and were finally successful at getting a seat on the patio overlooking the lake. We had wild rice clam chowder and fish sandwiches, and we saw a loon. The weather was perfect, not too hot and very breezy. 

Then we drove to Harshaw and hiked on the Bearskin Trail from that point. We went north on the very long trestle, then we went south to a small bridge. By then we had walked way over five miles, so when we got to Tomahawk, we just looked at that bridge but didn't go across it. When we got to Wausau, we drove up Rib Mountain but only went to the overlook and didn't hike at all. 

Just a few pictures tonight - mine aren't uploading to Boethius from my phone, and I need to airdrop some from Travalon's phone, and there are so many from his good camera that it's going to take me a while to wade through them. And it looks like once again these were uploaded in reverse order, so this is a mushroom from the Harshaw segment of the Bearskin Trail.

Here are more photos from the Harshaw segment of the Bearskin Trail.

Here is the loon we saw from the patio of the Thirsty Whale.

Here are some photos from the Minocqua segment of the Bearskin Trail. What happened to this tree? Did a beaver attack it and give up halfway through?

And this is a photo of a landslide at the Gile Flowage. It looks so cool, like a volcano among the pines.

Stay tuned for a lot more photos from our trip. I am already missing the North Woods, except for the flies that were always biting my feet. Tomorrow it's back to work for both of us.

Famous Hat