From Mass Confusion to Lake Nokomis

 

This morning Travalon and I dragged ourselves out of bed in time to get to the 9:00 am Mass at our usual church, which was bilingual today. The first reading was in Spanish, and the homily was in both languages. I enjoyed practicing my Spanish comprehension, and the Mass was well-attended. There had been a Spanish Mass at 11 that people would start coming for as we were leaving, but I thought I'd heard they had moved it to noon, yet people were coming. Were they going to be confused? Travalon said, "It's Mass confusion!" and I said, "That has to be my blog post title!"

After Mass we joined a bunch of people for brunch at Borough, because there had been something on the brunch menu that intrigued me, but then I couldn't remember what it was. I did have a peach butter and grilled cheese sandwich with optional bacon, since that was my best guess about what had caught my eye. It was very good. Then Travalon and I hit the road, stopping at Rib Mountain for a short hike on the top. I felt such a sense of love up there, but why would Travalon love me more while hiking than while in the car? Is it possible the mountain itself was exuding love? Mountains aren't animate, as far as I know, but I've felt something up there every time I've gone, and this time was the strongest yet.

We listened to the music on my phone on the way up, so poor Travalon got to listen to me singing along to it a lot. We are staying at a resort on Lake Nokomis in Tomahawk, and our suite overlooks the lake. We took an hour and a half hike north along the Bearskin Trail, with lovely views of Lake Nokomis. Then we went to a supper club and sat on the patio overlooking the lake. We had a typical supper club dinner of surf and turf followed by a grasshopper, then we went down to the beach below and walked on the sand. We came back to our resort and sat on a deck overlooking the lake, watching fireworks being shot off all around the lake by random people. We were hoping to see loons up here, but they are probably hiding from all the fireworks. 

Here are some photos Travalon took of the walk along the Bearskin Trail. The internet is excruciatingly slow here, so look for a lot more photos once we are back home.

Here is a photo of the post-sunset sky from the deck at our resort. We missed the sunset because we were at dinner, and that patio faced east.

This firework photo turned out pretty well.

In Chinese they call them "fire flowers," which to me makes more sense than "fireworks." Does our culture value work so much that even something as fun and frivolous as a firework has to be working?

Famous Hat