Happy Birthday

Who cares about Easter when the iris are 3+ inches tall a solid week before the first day of spring? He was found in a Hallmark store in Rhinelander, WI, as part of a typical Easter display. Pastel bunnies, stuffed chicks, plastic eggs. We'll call Easter his "birthday". Happy birthday (a little early) Pudgy, from all your friends.

Virgin Gorda

i hate you, new Blogger interface. i can't figure anything out!!!!! grrrr until i do....nothing.
click on the red words "virgin gorda" and you "might" get proper page

The Lake Harriet Elf

Once upon a time an elf moved into a tree on the southern shoreline of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, MN. And that tiny elf still lives there today. He does not live in the tree in the winter. He is probably up in one of those mansions that line the shores of this lake, a well-dressed grasshopper fetching him bourbon and crumpets as the sun sinks low every evening. He is very popular and receives many presents from the hordes of people walking around the lake in the nicer months. Apparently if you leave him a note, he will answer it. The children who surround this tree are wide-eyed with curiousity and refer to him as "Mr. Little Guy." They leave him notes. He responds a day or two later. As you can imagine this goes over really well with the children. Pudgy wondered if he was back from his winter residence yet. Pudgy wondered if he was up for a game of bowling. Pudgy also is real curious about these "notes" as he has never received a piece of mail, not even so much as a Cub Foods flyer. He wants to know how he can get in the business of correspondence. It sounds fun. Alas, nobody home.

Thee Mostest Boringer Post Evers

Minneapolis. Why is this city here? The answer to that lies at the base of the gorge that divides the city. The Mississippi River flows through this gorge.
The only naturally occurring waterfall on the whole of the Mississippi is located here and it is because of this 50' vertical drop that the city of Minneapolis exists today. Early settlers took advantage of the power of falling water to run the early industries in Minneapolis. Sawmills came first, and were eventually crowded out by:

The ruins of Gold Medal on one side of the river, Pillsbury on the other.

Minneapolis used to be referred to as "Mill City".

If you blow this picture up a hundred times you can see Pudgy sitting on the fence corner.
I prefer the Pillsbury mill. It is pretty in its crumbling defiance.

more Pilsbury

A few blocks away is the Flour Exchange building. A homely structure, except for the entrance.

Gay, Michigan

Gay is on the east shore of the Keweenaw. A lonely place.
Pudgy goes to Gay to check up on the schoolhouse. I am happy to report it is hanging in there, despite it all. It's looking grim up there.

ahhh, there she is. my dream.

We heart roadside trivia. (and have high suspicions this is on the WRONG highway)

Mycological Outing

My car knows the road to this place well. Giant White Pine Grove features one of the best examples of mature hemlock hardwoods in northern Wisconsin. Located in the Headwaters Wilderness Area, hemlock, sugar maple, and yellow birch dominate the forest with taller white pines up to 3 feet in diameter adding a supercanopy stratum. We have been here before several times,

but this time we concentrate on mushrooms.
The following picture is a mature Amanita muscaria or "Peach-Colored Fly Agaric". I don't know how to identify mushrooms. This is a thought-out guess, at best. Please correct me if you know better!

Coprinus comatus, the shaggy ink cap. This looks ferocious, and imposing. If you look at it just so it has a blue sheen to it. Run!

The purpose of the mushroom is to give off spores (microscopic seeds) and it is entirely built around this purpose.
Do not eat wild mushrooms. It is not a hobby for the careless or uninformed!

What is a mushroom? Mushrooms are the fruits of fungus. The fungus itself is a net of threadlike fibers, called a mycelium, growing in soil, wood or decaying matter. Mushrooms on a mycelium are like apples on an apple tree.

The toadstools and mushrooms we see are the fruit bodies of underground fungi often growing as expanding discs that form a mycelium. There are species that commonly live to be several hundred years old, some estimated to date back more than 2000 years.

To the person responsible for this: I hope you die, painfully. Shame on you. And lastly, another shot from early winter. I just can't resist. Such a beautiful beautiful place. My soul sings.

Seen from Highway 8, WI

Pudgy is going to take on this outing, as Piglet has gone missing. It is time to get OUT of Minnesota! When I saw these I knew I was close to Wisconsin.
Cheese!

Bison!

A little further down Highway 8 you can see this beautiful gem.

This is a tamarack. A lovely tree, with wispy featherlike branches shooting every which way.
By the by, irrelevant trivia coming. In Michigan, it's a Roadside Park. In Wisconsin, Wayside.

Nicolet National Forest

This river runs through the Nicolet National Forest. The Nicolet was established in 1933 and now comprises over 661,000 acres in northeastern Wisconsin. I grew up not far from here on Deerskin Lake, which this river flows out of.

Looking over the siderail at Deerskin below. Kari likes to play poohsticks when she comes here.

Continue down the dirt road through the forest and you

come to an beautiful overlook, down below is the the 3rd most lovely lake I know. It is top notch.

It isn't easy getting near this lake. It is surrounded by wet boggish ground and feels like the epicenter for the Northwoods mosquito population. It is worth every trouble. The soft hushy sort of silence you encounter far out, the kind that holds your ears in suspense. It smells wild here. You will not see anyone. There is no way to know what century you are in. I love it when I end up somewhere I can say that!!!

A Non-Stormy

This beach near Ironwood will have to fit the ticket for my rock picking excursion this weekend. September, barely a cloud in the sky, about 77 degrees, barely any wind. In Michigan this qualifies as a miracle. The water is actually warm enough to stand in without losing feeling in your feet. The rocks on this beach are surprising. I find tiny agates here, meaning so small it is hard to hold onto them. Considering how hard and how long I have spent searching for agates, finding one, no matter what size, always gets me super-excited. On this beach you can expect to find many. Keep looking. They are there. Today I found one big enough to see if held at arm distance away! There is hope for this beach yet... It is a pain in the ass to park in the overflowing parking lot, walk way down the beach past the crowd, but once you get down the beach a block or two everyone is left behind and the place is yours alone. Keep walking. All those tiny agates are just waiting for you to find them.
Black River Beach. It's no Big Rocky Oven, but we can't be that lucky all the time, now can we. . . .
Leaving, you get to drive thru the downright depressing grimness of Ironwood, and look, it's Stormy Kromer!


The Stormy Kromer cap became popular among locomotive engineers and then among all the hard-working folks in the upper Midwest. In 1919 Stormy created the Kromer Cap Company.

Big Rocky Oven

So much weird shit went down on this beach I don't know where to start. A 20 degree temperature change within one mile, shorelines disappearing and changing shape before my eyes, wind almost to hot to breathe, agates the size of softballs, eye agates, no wind, hot wind, cold wind, fierce wind, hot wind, no wind, aayyyyyyy! The meteorological anomalies alone were enough to fry a large brain, ours, had no chance. My eyes and head were so confused I almost started to believe I had died and landed in Hell, leaving me eager to thank the Boss for depositing me in the Big Rocky Oven. And with my two favorite people: Kari & Laura! And Sundrop chilling in the car! Oooooooo La La.

This is a great beach. Agate Beach, south of Houghton, Michigan. There is a lazy stream to ford, and lots of different rock communities if you keep walking. It was very very warm (85 degrees, UNHEARD of in May) and in no time the water did not feel cold. Either my feet were numb or it wasn't that cold in the first place, either way, I had more important things to worry about such as disappearing/appearing smokestacks on the horizon, fog anomalies, and whether I was standing on any more agates. Agates are elusive little buggers on the southern shores of Lake Superior. The striped marvels do not jump into your lap here like they do on the North Shore.

(Sidenote: why is the western shore referred to as the "North Shore"? This really irks me)

When seeking a break from the Big Windy Rocky Oven, seek no further than this. Even laced with sand it is the most refreshing thing on earth. Properly chilled, of course. An icy Sundrop on the Hot Shores, it simply does not get any better!

Some trillium are nearly a foot tall this year. Trillium is one of many plants whose seeds are spread by ants and mice.

flying blind in Forest County

I heard of a pine tree in Forest County, Wisconsin. The MacArthur Pine, named in honor of General Douglas MacArthur. At one time it was the largest white pine of its kind at over 400 years old. With a diameter of 68 inches, it stood 148 feet in height. Information on the internet was not very definite as to if the tree was still there, so it was time for a proper look-see. I have not been to this area of the state before and was surprised by how remote it is. Miles and miles of thin roads, no houses to be seen. When driving around in Northern Wisconsin one rarely gets on a road where there isn't a house at least every 15 minutes or so. Not here. A fine late winter day with snow/slush on the roads, nearly 40 degrees. I was wondering if I was headed the right way when all of the sudden I was looking out of my car window at the road from the perspective of the ditch. It was about 12 miles back to the last house I saw and I was not feeling particulary inclined for a walk of that magnitude. I was also pretty certain I was the only one who had driven on, or would drive on, that road for days.

"Just for the record the tree is NO LONGER STANDING", twitchy frightening man pulling my car out of the ditch informed me, with a delightful smirk on his face, after he took ALL my money.
4 hours later I finally laid eyes on the "monster" pine:

It was the Eastern White Pine National champion, 1948-1971.
And also for the record, I still have no measure stick, although it did enter my mind briefly on the way out to my car. I used pieces of paper in a creative fashion to "measure" this "tree" and measured my papers with a REAL measure device upon arriving home. The piece of tree on the stand is 43" in diameter.

round & round the Keweenaw

I don't go to Lake Superior enough in winter. I wonder when I will learn that winter here is always more amazing than I recall. Kari, Laura & I went round & round the Keweenaw Peninsula, it is a hard place to leave. Even harder to leave when the snow is flying, the ice is barking blue at you, and everywhere we saw we wanted to stay. The ice was amazing, every color of blue and green, and Kari got see her first ice volcano. There was not enough daylight to satisfy us & reports of an impending icestorm, unhappily we took our leave. The Keeweenaw Peninsula is on the southern shores of Lake Superior, jutting up into the middle of it.



Gay has a stoplight. Stop the madness! A town of around 50 people, each one stranger than the next.




Ice volcano.

It is things like the Yooper Barrow that can cause accidents on these forgotten roads. Backseat drivers screaming stop stop. Further down the road it was reassuring to see the forsaken schoolhouse in Gay, and comforting to know that someone is making an effort to slow the demise of my dream home.

A grand day out, as Wallace & Gromit would tag it.