Summer Trip

---

Being on a vacation, a true vacation is a wonderful thing. This time it is Mark who has obligations and things to do. I just am along for the ride and having a great time. We spent one night in Seattle with my cousin, Kelsey. He took us to a great place for brunch. The coffee was good and the food excellent. Then a quick stop to get a few snacks for the plane and we were off to Minneapolis. This flight offered free wifi on the plane. It will cost after July 31 and I am not sure that we’ll pay for it on the way home but it was fun to try out. I think that I would consider it if I had nothing else to do, like getting the digiplayer one time for fun!

After arriving in Minneapolis, Mark’s daughter met us to take us to Stevens Point where his Mother lives. We all piled in the car, Scott drove, Aqua in the front seat and Mark, Jalisco and I in the back seat. Jalisco is a young pit bull who I found to be quite a wonderful dog! She was very playful and exceedingly well trained. She likes to cuddle and be petted. A lot of fun even if it were a bit crowded. We stopped along the way for a bite to eat at Arby’s. After we arrived in Stevens Point 4 hours later I got to meet Mark’s Mother. A very nice welcome and we talked and chatted for a long time before heading to bed. In the morning Scott, Aqua and Jalisco took off and Mark and I followed in his Mom’s car up to Ashland for the first part of our trip. Wisconsin is very lovely, a bit flat but not as flat as Saskatchewan was! Greener too, especially up north. The woods were great to see. We stopped along the way to stretch our legs and arrived in Ashland by 7pm…good thing too as we had reservations for dinner at 8!

Ashland is a small town, a tourist destination and college town right on Lake Superior. A few stores, great architecture and lots of paths and places to walk. We went to dinner in a nearby town, a French place that is in an old home. The food was very good, the company even better! After dinner we drove home and went out for a walk in the warm evening air with Jalisco. We walked to a friend’s of Aqua & Scott’s who has a small Yorkshire/Chihuaua mix that was very cute, especially next to Jalisco! It was fun to be outside in the dark while it was warm outside.

The next day we went swimming in Lake Superior and played with Jalisco on the beach. Jalisco loved to dig and would dig wherever you asked her too anytime. Beachcombing for rocks was fabulous and I have many more rocks to add to my growning collection. It was even more fun as Scott is studying geology and could identify and tell me about my finds. Dinner was a wonderful tortilla soup Aqua made for us and homemade churros for dessert! I really enjoyed the cardamom she used instead of cinnamon with the sugar on the churros. Very tasty! We also went to the animal shelter she works at and stopped at the lake to meet her boss who runs the shelter. Her boss and some other girls were riding horses in the lake so Aqua jumped up on one and rode too! That was fun to see even if it was a bit wet out from the rain.
Saturday we all got up and went to a local coffee shop that not only has great coffee but had some good breakfast food too. Parmesan cheese biscuits and portabella mushroom gravy! I had a granola and yogurt parfait while Mark and Scott had the biscuits and gravy. We stopped at the bakery to get some goodies before saying goodbye and heading south to Racine.

Through the National Education Association I found an educators’ travel network B&B. We found a couple in Racine who have a place by Lake Michigan that we booked for three nights. They are right on Lake Michigan, in fact I’m out on their porch as I type this up! It is warm out though not as warm as I thought it would be. We chose to stay here as she is from Fairbanks and taught there for many years and he is from Israel originally! A marvelous couple and so very welcoming to us. Sunday we drove to Bristol for the Renaissance Faire. Mark looked very dashing in his cavalier costume and it was great fun to wander around with him. We did eventually buy some mugs as they went so much better with the outfits than the plastic cups we were drinking from. They sold sassafras soda which was very refreshing, I had a fair number of cups…mugs of it! We also tried the sauteed mushrooms which we plan to make on our next camping trip. They simmer all day in white wine, garlic, parsley and butter and are served with tasty rolls to sop up the juices and skewers to pick up the mushrooms. The live jousting was entertaining even if it was choreographed. One thing I really enjoyed was seeing the different people dressed up as fairies and nymphs. They had fabulous make up and costumes on and could be found in the trees and bushes. There were also mimes, one was dressed as a marble statue! This Ren Faire makes me want to find more to go to every time I travel Outside! I have to get a costume though to match Mark’s! At the end of the fair there was a drumming circle and I think anyone who played a drum or had one there went to join the jam session. Many who did not have a drum danced, clapped and whistled… One man was balancing on a large ball while snapping a couple of fans in time to the drum beats! A medieval mash pit!

I spent today wandering around Racine while Mark took care of some things in Milwaukee. Racine is a nice place but few people were out, between it being Monday and many places were closed and all the weekend boaters who had gone back home it was rather empty. A childhood friend drove here to meet me for lunch and we had a very long lunch, taking time to catch up on many years of life. Lunch was at Sticky Rice, a Thai place, with good food. A little 2 year old crawled up to a chair next to me from under the table and sat down with us. The owner’s daughter maybe? She was quite cute and talked a bit to us till her Father? came to find her. I found a nice little consignment shop with good prices and left with a few more scarves that I just could not resist, they are different from what I already have! My sister gets yarn and bags… I get scarves! Racine is having an auction in September for some charity… they are auctioning off clocks! Big clocks, similar idea to the decorated salmon sculptures in Anchorage or the cows in other cities that I’ve seen. I took quite a few pictures of them along the way to Sticky Rice and after lunch Dara and I wandered around some and were stopped by two of Racine’s ambassadors. They asked if we’d checked out the clocks and proceeded to give me a t-shirt, “Got Clocks?” Now Molly has a new t-shirt! How wonderful to be given something just for walking around the street! After Dara left to go back home I continued to wander, it was getting later so I did not have time to go to the zoo as I had originally planned. A coffee place looked inviting so I stopped there for a bit to check email and text a bit on my iPhone… More wandering and stopped again at a wine store. They had a wine tasting so I sat at the bar and learned something about a few wines. Enough to know that I’d like to go to more wine tastings and to know that I like a variety of wines and not all the sweet ones I used to drink!

I came back to the B&B to sit on the porch to relax…tomorrow we head to Stevens Point for one night then to Milwaukee to continue our trip!

---

Comments

[Da]

I wished I could have stayed longer!
What a pretty downtown! I wish I could have stayed longer. We might have scored some "Got wine?" t-shirts.