Today we were able to hit the road by ten, since we had already gone to Mass last night. We had an uneventful drive to Stevens Point and decided to have lunch at the Hilltop Tavern, a place near the park we often go to that looks kind of like a castle. They had an excellent enclosed patio where we sat, and I had a chicken sandwich and a cup of Creole chicken soup. (It had okra in it.) Then we drove to Eau Pleine County Park, where we took a short walk in the woods. The park is on a peninsula surrounded by water, so it's very lovely, and a lot of people ride horses there, so we had to dodge horse outputs along the trail.
We didn't take too long of a walk there because we had to save our energy for the George W. Mead Wildlife Area, which we had gone to last Memorial Day, but we had taken a detour and then didn't have the energy to go all the way to the cormorant rookery. This time we were determined not to make that mistake, so we set off straight on the trail, where we saw lots of trilliums still blooming.
When we got to the marsh section of the trail, right away we saw an egret.
And a kingbird, which from a distance I thought might be a bobolink.
We saw lots of geese with goslings.
A couple of Millennial guys were heading back, so we asked where the cormorant rookery was, and they said straight ahead. I asked if they were going back because the path wasn't a loop like it implies on the sketchy map by the parking lot, and they said it is a loop, but it's like five miles long, so no thanks. As we got closer to the rookery, we could see it in the distance, and pelicans and cormorants would fly overhead.
From a distance, the rookery looked like a bunch of utility poles with white stuff at the bottom, but I figured it must just be trees that were killed by the cormorants' droppings, like we saw on Pilot Island up in Door County. But then we got closer, and we could see that in fact they were utility poles set up on two small islands in the marsh, and the white stuff at the bottom was a flock of pelicans.
The cormorants had built nests on the utility poles.
The pelicans appeared to be nesting on the ground, and there were lots of gulls around as well.
I liked this shot of a lone cormorant.
And here is a parent with two babies in the nest.
More shots of the pelicans and gulls.
This parent cormorant is preening, but the baby is posing beautifully.
The pelicans continued to fly overhead, as if they were very concerned by our proximity.
In this shot, you can see both islands with utility poles on them.
And a pair of blue-winged teals that we kept startling.
I look like I've walked five and a half miles and know I have another mile and a half to go...
We surprised this turtle on the trail. I think it was a female looking for a place to lay eggs. Whoever said turtles are slow never met this one! She bolted right over to the water.
We saw a swan chasing a couple of geese in the marsh part, and out by the pond near the nature center we saw a couple of pairs of swans in the distance. Travalon got photos of these swans, but they are not that clear so if you need to know what swans look like, consult one of my previous posts from Horicon Marsh.
We debated about going to a restaurant outside of Wausau with amazing food, the Cedar Creek Grill, but alas, it is closed until after four tomorrow. Instead, we went back to Stevens Point and found an Italian restaurant called Grazie. I had spicy pistachio cream pasta, which was really good but had - you guessed it - chicken in it. Will I overdose? Is it weird to walk for miles to see birds and then eat their cousin? I could only finish half my pasta, and surprisingly Travalon was in the same boat, but we did split a piece of limoncello cheesecake because that just sounded too good to pass up. Anyway, we have a fridge in our hotel room, and there is also a decent pool here that we swam in for about twenty minutes, but the hot tub and the sauna were both too hot for my taste. Now we are relaxing in the hotel room, and Travalon is watching the Wolves game that was earlier today. He has no idea who won. I'll report back tomorrow.
Famous Hat
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