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Published: October 20th 2007
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Obfuscator writes: Day 48 was largely another driving day. We started out in Worthington, and really didn't stop until we got to Spring Valley, MN. We stopped there for lunch, and to take a look around a bit, since our family friend C hails from there. Spring Valley is a nice little town, and we ran into a lady who runs the historical society right on the main street, so she was helpful in directing us to the points of interest. She also told us that the place to eat lunch was Homestyle Pizza. We took her advice, and indeed, they had a very tasty buffet lunch that included good pizza, potato soup, and salad bar. The town also has a very pretty old Methodist Church that now houses the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, since she lived in Spring Valley.
We got home to Oshkosh in the afternoon, and caught up with Mom and Dad by showing them oodles and oodles of pictures. If I haven't mentioned it before, the pictures all of you are getting to see are but a small fraction of those we take. As of today, we have something like thirty-two CDs of pictures burned, with
about six more ready to burn on the laptop. Showing them all as something like a multi-day slideshow.
On Friday (the 12th), we worked on refitting, and ran errands in Oshkosh. We got rid of a lot of stuff we don't need with us, and got a better set of winter clothes and some other miscellaneous gear. We also worked a bit on rigging up a system of pulleys to suspend our food pack above bear-level. If you've never tried hoisting a heavy pack with 550 cord, well, all you need to know is that 550 cord is really thin. It's great stuff, since it's light and strong, but it's very thin, and so it's hard to grip, and it cuts into your hands. With some creative pulley work, suspending the gear will be a lot easier. Late in the evening, we drove down to Madison to meet up with friends there.
On Saturday, we drove to Chicago for our cousin P's wedding, which was great fun. We got to see lots of family, and we got to decorate his car during the reception, which is always entertaining. Post wedding, Onaxthiel returned to Oshkosh, and I to Madison.
After a couple of days of hanging out with family and friends, including a very successful testing of Zombopoly, a game we've been developing, it was time to hit the road once more.
Our first stop on Wednesday (the 17th) was Washington Island, WI. Onaxthiel and I were both born there, but we moved away when we were both very young. The Island is about 700 some odd people now, and our friend J still lives there sometimes, so we crashed at his place. It was nice to visit, and we got to see many places from our childhood, including Schoolhouse Beach, which is a beautiful rocky beach with countless smooth rocks. We used to skip them out into Washington Harbor, but J has now had so many more years at practicing this than us, that we can simply no longer compete. While Onaxthiel or I were lucky to get three skips, J can now get a stone to skip along the surface longer and for more skips than I can easily count. We were also able to visit the Island's Stavekirke, which while less ornate than the one we saw in Minot, ND, was still quite interesting. The
Onaxthiel and Obfuscator Guard the Statue
It's of Mary's delight at Joseph's newfound baby juggling skills. land around the Stavekirke was also home to the first live snake we've seen our trip. The little brown fellow didn't seem to like us much, but was much too small to do anything about it. A lot on the Island seems to have changed. For instance Sand Dunes Beach, which was always a bit shallow, has basically receded to the point of being unusable. Most things have stayed the same though, including all the family names on the Island.
Onaxthiel adds: This was also the first time we have been back to the island since we were old enough to legally drink. We did the island Bar crawl, which can be literally crawled it you choose, as there are only four open bars right now and they are all about 50 meters apart. It is handy to have such a short main drag. We ran into a few old friends of our fathers, and a few kids that did early parts of their school with our older brother. Then it hailed on us, because the great lakes are odd.
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