Day in the Life of an Idiot

If I’m writing about my adventures a day behind, I should probably make a short list of the things I’ve read to start with. I finished listening to Blood Ink Sister Scribe last night. I will admit that I got a little bogged down in the middle of the book, re-read Trouble and Her Friends (for an up-coming podcast,) and then listened to the second half of it. While I’ve been up here, Martha Well’s Network Effect came up for grabs as an audiobook, so I downloaded that during one of my daily treks to the lodge for internet.

Yesterday started with a nice canoe trip around part of the lake. Shawn and I like to get up early, around 6:30 or 7 am, and do a near-silent drift along the lake. It often pays off in terms of animal sightings. Yesterday we had our first truly sunny morning, and we saw (we counted) ten turtles in various spots sunning themselves on logs. On our return trip, we got the piece d’resistance: a river otter! The river otter was actually in the lake with us and bobbed up a couple of times (almost like trying to stand in the water) to try to decide if we were a danger or not and then disappeared under the water.

Super cool!

It was pretty darned magical, even though at that point in the trip around the lake we were fighting a chilly headwind so strong that if we stopped paddling the canoe would start to go sideways.

Almost immediately after making landfall, Mason and I hopped in the car and headed off to nearby Judge C. R. Magney State Park to revisit Devil’s Kettle.

Shawn elected to stay behind. Her knee, which has been performing like an absolute champ this trip, has been getting stiff and sore after canoe rides. She bends very well for someone who is really only about six months out of knee surgery but getting in and out of the canoe from the dock is more of a challenge. The idea of doing all those stairs down—and then back up again—to see the first set of falls felt like a bad idea to her. I don’t blame her, but we still felt sad leaving her behind even though she said it was okay.

Mason and I have been to this state park before, four years ago, but I was not yet a member of either the Passport or the Minnesota State Parks and Trails Hiking Club. I brought my state park passport along and got my stamp!


Image: passport stamp


I was glad Shawn did not come once we started the hike. I’m here to tell you that being fat and asthmatic is no real barrier (so long as you have your inhaler, are generally mobile, and are willing to take it slowly,) but I do not think Shawn’s knee would have survived the uneven, sloped parts of the trail, NEVERMIND the stairs.

Speaking of being fat, I did have at least one stranger feel free to tell me that I was “doing great, honey!” But you know what? I was! So, I decided to ignore the fairly pointed assumption about my general health based on my size, and said, “Thanks! You, too!”

The effort is always worth it, however:



Image: famous Devil's Kettle.

If you have never heard of Devil's Kettle before and why it's so fascinating, feel free to read this article about the mysterious kettle that takes water in but maybe sends it straight to hell... https://www.treehugger.com/the-mystery-of-devils-kettle-falls-4863996



Mason and I had a lovely hike back down. I’d swear, actually, that I took the stairs back up much faster this year than I did four years ago. This is not to say that we didn’t pause on any of the landings that are on offer, but I made very steady progress and never felt like my heart was pounding out of my chest or any of that. I honestly think it helped that the weather has been quite cool up here, so while I worked up a sweat, it never felt overwhelming. TMI? But I’m kind of proud of myself, I guess? Especially after that lady’s “encouragement.”

On our way back to Gunflint Trail and the Lodge, Mason and I stopped in Grand Marais for lunch. This trip is a gift to Mason for graduating from university and so I let him pick the place. We stopped at Angry Trout to have fish sandwiches and an incredible view of the marina, if you can call it such, on Lake Superior.


Image: Mason contemplating the menu at Angry Trout.

The drive back was uneventful and we spent much of the rest of the evening sitting on the dock staring out at the lake (or reading.) We have new “neighbors” in cabin two. They are two old duffers who are here for a guy’s weekend of fishing and catching up. Shawn, who was here all day, talked to them a bit. One of them is from the Twin Cities (Oakdale or somewhere like that) and the other is previously from the area, but has since moved to Arizona. He told us he left nearly 100 F / C temps. We made the classic joke about having brought the sun with him, since this was one of the first non-rainy days.

Normally, we don’t interact much with the other cabins, but the forestry service has done a lot of fire maintenance around the lodge and so all of the underbrush is gone, chopped down. It looks little denuded, and apocalypse-y and it also means you see more people coming in out of cabins from further away and have to make the tough Minnesota decision: “Do I wave? Do I have to wave? Oh crap, we made eye contact, I will lift my hand and wave. Oh, god, this is awkward, how long do I wave?” And, yes, I’m actually the family’s extrovert. But I’m also very aware that most people in Minnesota do not actually want to have to talk to strangers, especially when they are “up nort” on a fishing trip with their old college buddy.

More wildflowers!


Wild sasperilla?


Image: blue flower of some variety??

The weather here has been overcast and rainy. As Shawn told a somewhat uncertain staff person, “It’s gorgeous!” (The staff was concerned that she was being sarcastic. Shawn assured her that she was not.) Our family is very happily indoorsy. So, we spent much of the day inside, by a roaring fire, reading.

However, the weather cleared up on and off, and during one of the ‘on’s, Shawn and I headed out for an early morning canoe. We tend to canoe much like we hike, which is to say, we don’t go all that far, and we glide along at a snail’s pace.


Image: Shawn in a canoe at Bearskin

I’ve also resumed my quest to walk as many of Bearskin’s ski trails as I feel is reasonable. I tend to enjoy a hike to a destination like Sunday’s accidental trip to Rudy Lake, but not all of the ski trails are set up for vistas. In fact, most of them aren’t. A person can tell, even as hiker, how excellent they are for skiers. So many up and down slopes! We are technically in the Pincushion Mountains here, (though people from the Coasts are allowed to scoff at what we call mountains around here.) However, the elevation changes are real! In fact, it usually takes me a few days to get used to the steep slopes. This time, having just come from Middletown, CT, which I feel like was built entirely at a 45-degree angle (all of it uphill!), I didn’t seem to need as much time.

At any rate, this year, I decided to try and find Ox Cart. FYI, an Ox Cart would not make it around this loop. I mean, I guess oxen are strong? But pulling a cart would be tough! Skiing however? It would be glorious.

Bob, the owner of Bearskin, did want to point out that if I walked Ox Cart, I would see the new boardwalk that they installed.

The boardwalk goes over a very marshy, swampy area. A place that my family would call “very moosey,” as this seems to be the sort of areas that we imagine moose tend to enjoy. This is a highly unscientific “hot take,” however. The one time that we saw moose in the wild, while hiking (at, of all places, “Moose Viewing Trail”) there was a place a little like this, though much more lake-y and slightly less boggy/swampy.


Moosey view.

I did not see moose here.

I will note, however, that I did see moose tracks and what was very obviously moose scat on my way back out of this trail. So, perhaps our family is not entirely wrong as to what constitutes a moosey place.

Much of my hike was just woods.


Image: wooded path

However, I have been trying to stop and take pictures of wildflowers that I’ve been seeing on my hikes. Here are a few:


Image: pussy feet? Something like that (looking for id, pameladean !)


Image: star flower

 
Image: whaling ship in the grey, cold rain

Shawn and I have made this trip to Connecticut (and back again) five times. Once to move Mason in, and then four times now to move him out. We have never, ever been able to see anything more off the coast of Connecticut than mist. I was pretty sure that the whole fog-of-nothingness/evil was supposed to be a Stephen King thing for Maine, not Connecticut, but here we are, our fifth trip, and there is clearly NO OCEAN OFF THE COAST. It is all greyness and LIES.  

But, we managed a fun sight seeing trip anyway. 

We went to Mystic, CT, bringing along with us both Mason and his partner Jas. 


Mason, our grad, (left) and Jas (right) at the Black Sheep in Nantic, CT. 

The Seaport Museum was probably an interesting choice given the foul weather, and, honestly, I would have hoped that pouring rain would mean that we'd have the place to ourselves. No, every school group in the history of school groups were all there, making trying to get into the litttle faux village shops somewhat of a crapshoot. It was a lovely little space, though. Mason and I explored the whaling ship and I got inspired to do a better job explaining how cramped berths on sailing ships (in my case space ships) can be.  

I'm going to say, however, that my favorite thing was seeing a family of geese and their three little goslings. 

And getting to see Mason hanging out with the person he calls "love."

We did not get any packing done today, but the four of us got very moist and a little cross, so it's back to the AirBnB for us. Clothes are in the dryer and my wet toeies are tucked under the covers. We are giving up for the day, with only dinner out for plans. I wish we'd had better weather, but we had excellent company and that's what it's all about.

 I made it back to the Twin Cities late last night, but naomikritzer and I had a full, lovely day.

First up, of course, was the event itself was called Moving Words: Writers Across Minnesota, which generally seems like a cool event. We started at 10:30 am, which is a bit early for Naomi, but I was up in time to see the sun rising across the southwestern Minnesota planes. Even so, Naomi was up and breakfasted in enough time for us to do a little wander through Luverne. Luverne is, as noted previously, is famous for its extensive nutcracker collection so the streets of the town are decorated with a number of nutcracker statues, and also murals. Wikipedia tells me that the murals and such are for an annual scavenger hunt (or possibly you can do it at any time, that part is less clear.)  Wikipedia also tells me that Rock County also holds the distinction of being one of only FOUR counties (out of 87) that doesn't have a lake. 

The event itself was very nice. There was a great turn out. 



Image: I took this picture early. All the seats were filled by the time the event started.


It has a rather grim, industrial look in part because this was a library's basement. Still, a pretty neat meeting room. It got a little stuffy (but perhaps that's because I was the only one wearing a mask). The other two speakers included a picture book writer and illustrator, Cori Doerrfeld (with whom we'd had dinner the night before) and Dr. Jody Lulich, a memoirist and veterinarian, who I wish had hung around longer, but he was the only Black guy (and gay, to boot) in a town with a LOT of Trump signs, so he pretty much zipped in, did his talk, and GTFO. I don't blame him, but I'm still sad that we didn't get a chance to rope him into our silly adventures.

Later, when we hung out with Wendy, the organizer of this event, I wish I'd thought to ask her what, if anything, was the connection with these three people. They were, at one time or another, all winners of the Minnesota Book Award, but a lot of people have won that award over the years. Thematically, this felt a bit scattershot, but I think that one of the things Wendy talked about which might apply is that the Friends of the Saint Paul Libraries (who administer the MN Book Award, among other things, of course,) talked to regional libraries and asked them what they wanted in terms of programming. So, maybe there's a desire to have the kind of author talks that could appeal to a wider range of readers? Like, here we have non-fiction (memoir), genre (sff), and picture books for children. That's potentially draws from a more diverse population than say, just having a genre writer or a memoirist or a picture book author on their own.

After the talk, Cori, Wendy, Naomi and I all had lunch at a dive bar called the Howling Dog. The most interesting thing about the Howling Dog is that on their menu they had an item called "chislic," which none of us had heard of. Naomi tried it, as it is apparently a specialty of South Dakota, and in this case the game meat it was made of was, I believe, buffalo. 

We all got along like a house on fire so, in addition to hanging out and chatting for hours, we all agreed to meet up at the Rock County Historical Society to check out their famous collection of.... nutcrackers.


 
Image: so many nutcrackers.
 
This was just one room... of three. 

It is, however, unclear how many of the nutcrackers actually function as nutcrackers, but that's kind of beside the point. there were just so many different kinds of nutcrackers. Apparently, even LEGO made a nutcracker?


Image: LEGO nutcracker

We spent enough time in the Rock County Historical Society having fun looking not only at the nutcrackers, but all the other things they have on display that it was getting close to closing time by the time we made it to the Minneopa State Park (near Mankato.) I had wanted to stop at Minneopa in the hopes that we might actually see their bison herd. 

Alas the bison hid from us. 

Ah well. At some point on the drive home, rather than stopping for dinner, we stopped for caffeine and OMG we talked the whole rest of the drive home... so much fun.

 So, despite not being in the mood for any REAL roadside attractions, by chance we stopped at a Culver's in Deforest, Wisconsin, that was directly across from Sissy, the Cow..



Image: Sissy, the fiberglass dairy cow (me for scale).

Sissy stands in front of a "cheese chalet" which also has a mouse climbing the signpost.


Image: How to say "I am in Wisconsin" without saying "I am in Wisconsin" (a painted wooden cut-out of a  mouse so hungry that it is willing to attempt to eat a sign that says "cheese" but isn't even a picture of cheese.) 

If we had been in the mood, we would have stopped in the chalet. We debated it for about ten seconds, but we were all just in a "let's just get home" mood. Even so, I was happy that the travel gods not only blessed our trip through Chicago on the way back--y'all, your good wishes performed a miracle, we were through Chicago on the way home in record time. I don't think I slowed to more than 40 mph (64 kmh) through the entire city, and we decided to just go STRAIGHT through downtown. So, thank you to all of you who wished us better luck on the way home. WE GOT IT. 

Yesterday, Shawn caught up on laundry, but otherwise we very consciously did NOTHING in order to recover from the trip. I think it was really smart of us to come back on Saturday so that Shawn would have a day to get her feet back under her before returning to work. 

 
Image: Classic lunch counter in diner built in 1956 just outside of Milford, PA

Today was mostly just driving again. By chance, I took the majority of commenter's suggestions and listened to Darcie Little Badger's A Snake Falls to Earth, having finished the Murderbot audiobook. I'm enjoying A Snake Falls to Earth so far, though I agree with sabotabby that the plot is very meandering. Currently, I care more about the story in the reflective world than in this one. But, I'm only about three hours into an 11 hour book. There isn't much more road ahead of us tomorrow, so I might not get back to it until we're making our return trip. 

We are in an actual roadside MOTEL just outside of Milford, PA. 


Image: The Scottish Inn, an honest-to-god motel

We got off the highway ahead of this motel just to see what the town of Milford looked like and we've determined that it's worth a detour (back a few miles) just to wander around a little bit before we head on to Middletown, CT. Milford, if you are unaware, is THE town where the Milford Method of critiquing was born at Damon Knight's science fiction workshop. So, it seems appropriate for us to wander around there a bit tomorrow before the very short (only two and a half hour) drive to our AirBnB near the Wesleyan University campus. 

Hopefully, I will have some fun pictures tomorrow. 

Now, off to a shower and well-deserved sleep!

 On Monday, we're leaving to head off to Connecticut to help Mason pack up his dorm room. I suspect most people's parents do both move-in and move-out, (which we did the first year) but since he stores all of his stuff in Middletown over the summer, we decided it was easiest just to fly him back in time to do his own moving in. 

One of the reasons we do it this way is because Shawn doesn't like to fly and Mason always swaps out books and such over the summer. So it seemed easiest to haul things home in the car. (We figure if he needs new things it's easier for us to ship them out or he can buy them in Middletown himself.)

The other reason we do this is because we then turn this May trip into a gigantic road trip/family vacation. In past years, we've spent time exploring the Pennsylvania Wilds hoping to spot an elk in the wild, checking out a very famous ground hog in Punxsutawney, and seeing the world's largest comic book collection in Indiana. This year, we're focusing the "slow" part of our trip in my home state of Wisconsin. I don't want to spoil for you the sights we're going to see, because I will hopefully be posting updates from the road, as I've done every year. If you want to see some of the things we've done, I think I've been really pretty good at using the "might be worth a detour" tag here on DW. Though "road trips" should get you all the road trips we've ever done, including our big one out to Yellowstone while Mason was still in high school. 

We're big fans of regional tourism. 

In fact, just today I booked Shawn and I a spot in September for the tea ceremony out at Como Park. I surprised Shawn with this booking, but told her that it was part of her continuing tea-themed birthday celebration. (Her birthday was in April.) It should be really fun, even though it is not private, per se, though the seating is limited. Instead, it's booked as a class, because the tea master will explain the whole event as we go through the steps. We're both really looking forward to it.

Also, last night, on a whim, we decided to have our dinner out of a food truck.


Image: Deep Roots food truck parked outside of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Shawn and I both got Polish sausages, some chips, and a root beer. We ended up in a Summit Hill neighborhood, watching a turkey eat cracked corn out of someone's bird feeder and drink water out of the bird bath. The weather (as you can see from the blue sky in the photo) has been stunning. So, it was spontaneous fun. 

 
Image: Clouds reflecting on the lake

A friend from Michigan was supposed to be staying with us for a few days this weekend, but plans changed due to a funeral. I ended up driving him to Blue Earth, Minnesota, where he was going to meet up with family and then make the rest of the trip to the Dakotas. Since I was already all the way down at the butt-end of the state, I decided to see if there was a state park I could check out. 

The internet suggested Myre-Big Island. 

I didn't have a huge amount of time to explore this park, since I arrived at it around 6 pm (technically the park is open until 10 pm, but I was not equipped for nighttime hiking.) So, I drove out to see the "little island" and then parked at the Big Island for a little tromp in the woods. The first thing I saw was a "fat friend" in the restored prairie near the lot. The muskrat or groundhog was munching on some clover and I paused long enough to try to get a blurry picture of her. (It's on Facebook, but it's really too pixelated to reproduce here.) 

The trail was dark and lovely, full of looming trees.


Image: trail into the woods

I probably only hiked for a half hour, but I got my passport stamped and stretched my legs (which was the real point of this detour.) Plus, I saw some cool, heart-shaped mushrooms.

We arrived in Connecticut yesterday morning and helped Mason with his last minute packing stuff. Our car is now loaded down with the books he's bringing home for the summer. The rest is stored in a nearby storage united rented by him and his friends. 

Today, despite the rain, we went off for a little sight seeing. 

When Mason's friend Dalton and his mom visited Connecticut a couple of months ago, they went to Dinosaur State Park. Mason remembered the place fondly enough to want to show it to us. The main attraction is a huge slab of rock with fossilized dinosaur tracks, left by ornithopods. A cool thing to see, but difficult to express in photographs. I tried anyway:


Image: ancient footprints! Oooo! Ahhh! Yeah, okay, it doesn't look like much.

They tried to help you visualized how cool this really was with a lot of dioramas and statues of life-sized dinosaurs. 


Image: Look, this is who might have made these tracks! Are you impressed yet??

I fail dinosaur because I don't immediately recognize the one pictured above. Please drop me a comment if you do. But, I know for sure that it's an ornithopod, because I failed a quiz to guess what type of tracks these were. My guess had been theropod, like T-Rex or velociraptors, because I had assumed they were the only three-toed dinosaurs. Shows you what I know!

At any rate, the whole place was quite fun. If you are a dinosaur fan, I would say it's worth the detour. Because it's part of the State Park system, there are several walking trails. We didn't wander too far in the rain, but we did do a tiny bit of the bog walk. We wandered out as far as a little observation platform and looked out at the bog and watched the rain on the water. 

Then we headed down to the coast to Niantic. We've been to Niantic before and so we didn't do much meandering. Instead, we drove straight to Skipper's to have our now traditional lobster roll. In Connecticut, lobster rolls are served hot with melted butter.  Wikipedia informs me that legend has it that the lobster roll was invented in Milford, Connecticut, so probably to get it "done right" we should have tracked down Perry's.  But, we go to Niantic because Niantic is also home to the Book Barn. There are several Book Barns in town, in fact. We really love the one in downtown on Main Street, because that's where they house the science fiction. Since the rain was coming down quite hard at this point, book browsing was perfect, indoors. We did briefly stop by the big barn complex/campus, but a lot of it was closed up to protect the books. It was actually pleasant that way? Not too many people were there. The cat who greeted us was very determinedly looking her "her person." According to the staff, she has a favorite whom she even goes home with on occasion because he lives nearby. He had had to run back home for his cell, so she was stomping around, glancing at peopled, quickly deciding we were not HIM, and moving on. It was really adorable. 

When I was at the Main Street annex, I picked up a couple of Star Trek books for light reading. They had two written by Diane Duane: Spock's World and The Wounded Sky. 

On the way out of town we stopped at another State Park, Rocky Neck State Park. The thing I most wanted to see there were the salt marshes. We drove past those and saw a lot of egrets and Canada geese, but there wasn't clear directions about where to park to walk around those, so we checked out the beach, despite the rain. Again, thanks to the drizzle, we were alone. 

After all that, we were all pooped out. We came back to our AirBnB (which is quite lovely) and CRASHED. 

The best part of the morning was probably seeing the year old African spurred tortoise, who was getting to have a clover snack, at the Dinosaur State Park. 


Image: tortoise eating clover. Head is blurry because he was eating in a frenzy!  Very cute.

 My wife and I have argued long and hard about whether or not there is anything interesting in Indiana. 

Apparently, we simply never drove far enough.

If I could recommend you any town in Indiana, my recommendation would be Elkhart. Go to Elkhart. It's got a cool, historic downtown, a Botanical garden,  a really pretty amazing Environmental Center, and... The Hall of Heroes. 

We ended up in Elkhart, entirely by chance. We had, in fact, not intended to stop anywhere at all today, and, instead, just drive straight through to Youngston, OH. But, at one of the rest stops, I picked up a tourist brochure which had been organized by "stops along I-80." Shawn read to me in the car and when she hit the Hall of Heroes, I was like, "WAIT. There's a comic book and superhero museum and it's only about a minute off the main highway???" 

Of course, we had to go.

The only problem was that it didn't open until 11:00 am. We arrived in Elkhart at 10:20 am. We could have just sat outside the shop? But, we would have been staring at this rather unimpressive storefront for a half hour:


Image: A very boring view of one of the coolest places on EARTH.

So, Shawn flipped through our little tourism guide and discovered that there was a Botanical Garden just down Main Street. We found that, stopped in, but even though it looked like it might be quite nice, we were a bit put off by the sign that said that free admission was only for people who could PROVE residence in Elkhart County. I inquired within to see if we were BARRED or if we just had to pay, and it turns out we could have gotten in for $10 a piece. We decided, instead, to hop back in the car and check out the free Environmental Center further down the road.

What a good choice.


Image: cool fungus!

We wandered around through a wetland (saw a number of baby ducklings with their mama) and through an open prairie (and watched purple martins flit into their houses.) The trails near the Interpretative Center were very short loops and so perfect for a quick stretch and stroll, while we waited for the superhero museum to open.

A train stopped us for a short time, but we made it back to the Hall of Heroes around 11:30 am. We were the only people in the museum and so the guy behind the counter, John, gave us a personal tour. He asked us if we were fans of the movies or comics, and I was able to tell him that I grew up reading my cousin's father's comic books, which he'd started collecting almost from the moment comics were published, so I'd grown up on Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Shawn came to comics from a slightly different angle, having loved all the Strange Tales and horror comic books. We collected comics together all through college, and then, of course, became fans of the MCU. 

John was THRILLED and so very carefully pointed out all the cool draft sheets and inked pages they had on display, like this early Kirby art:


JACK KIRBY'S ART!!!!!!

Shawn and I spend a good hour at the museum, even pausing to play Deadpool pinball for awhile. 

Man, what a find!

That was all we did today, but tomorrow, it's the Pennsylvania Wilds. I should have a lot more to share.  And, because I've been listening to books on tape, I'll even have some things to report for "What Are You Reading Wednesday." 

Hope you all are having a good week without me!