Friday, July 15
Despite all of my good
intentions of starting to pack my clothes as soon as the cleaning ladies were
done on Tuesday, when Friday morning dawned, I had only gotten as far as
setting out my hat. I had, at least, done the garden raid and gotten my share
of the food in a box or where I could find it in the refrigerator.
After I got the chicken chores
done, I started pulling things out of dresser drawers in earnest, crossing
items off the list as I loaded up my duffel bag. I was packed and had all the
old photos downloaded and off the camera card before Jane got to my house at
10:07.
Since our last trip, Jane had
gotten a smaller walker and smaller folding chairs. It wasn’t even hard to find
room for my stuff in the car this time. We were on the road 15 minutes later.
We stopped for lunch at the
A&W north of Madison. We hadn’t had A&W root beer for years, and it
sounded good. We asked for frosty mugs, which is what makes the root beer taste
so good but also constrained us to sit a little longer in the restaurant. I had
a chili cheese dog with fries. The chili was canned; the cheese was liquid—it
completely met my expectations. It was also a mess, but I managed to not end up
wearing any of it.
Jane noticed on the receipt that
we had gotten a 10% senior discount (total savings: $1.20).
“My first one!” I said. Jane was
quick to point out that she was more likely to have been the qualifier.
We made our usual stop at Carr
Valley Cheese in Mauston to get curds. They had Benedictine in stock, so I felt
compelled to get some to take home. It would be well-traveled by the time we
got there, but I knew from experience that the store would be closed by the
time we passed by in a week.
 |
| The Holstein bench at Carr Valley |
We got to Americas [sic] Best
Value Inn (ABVI) in Chetek at 4:45. I’d contacted Julie and Pat, our friends in
Cornell, WI about meeting us for dinner again. Julie was out of town, but Pat
was game. The desk clerk said he’d heard good comments about the newly reopened
Pokegama Inn Supper Club. We love supper clubs. Also, Jane was curious about
Pokegama because in our camp days, people routinely called Pokonokah asking if
we still had the Friday Fish Fry.
 |
| Entrance to Pokegama |
I called Pat, and we agreed on
6:00. After Jane and I settled in, we drove over to check the place out. They
were serving the entire menu, not just the Fish Fry Buffet. We were early, so
we went to the bar in the back of the restaurant for a drink while we waited.
The décor was classic Northern Wisconsin. The bar, furniture, and paneling were
pine. A tar-patched birch bark canoe hung upside down over the bar. The base of
the bar and all the tables were covered with slabs of paper birch, bark still
(mostly) attached.
Pat showed up right at 6:00. The
food was good, but it took almost an hour to get our food. Should have had the
buffet. But we had a nice visit with Pat. Plenty of time to talk. Pat is really retired from teaching now and is
at loose ends about what to do next. Move? Not move? Work? Not work?
We said our goodbyes and went
our separate ways. Jane and I returned to ABVI. I was so sleepy that I went to
bed. Jane was not sleepy at all and was awake until after midnight.
Saturday, July 17
It was a beautiful morning. Not
finding anywhere we wanted to eat in Chetek, we had breakfast at the Norske
Nook in Rice Lake.
We saw a bald eagle shortly
after we got on the highway. Other sightings included an osprey on a telephone
pole and a huge black bird with narrow white stripes running parallel to its
body not quite in the middle of its wings. We both saw these stripes
distinctly, but there was nothing in the bird book that was even close.
Two Harbors was having its
Chalk-A-Lot festival, which was less disruptive to the town that the Pioneer
Days we ran into last year. Two blocks were barricaded so that children could
draw on the streets with sidewalk chalk. There was no line at Louisa’s Place. I
ordered one ham sandwich, which we shared in the car down by the lighthouse.
Really, this was how we should have been eating all along.
We stopped at Zup’s in Silver
Bay to get their legendary bratwurst and Our Family horseradish mustard. Jane
remembered that we had gotten fresh frozen brats before; the only thing we
could find was precooked and shrink wrapped.
When we got to Grand Marais, there
was a line out to the street at Sydney’s. We’d never seen it so busy. “Do you
want to wait?” Jane asked.
“Of course!” I replied in a tone
that questioned her sanity at even asking the question. I waited while Jane
went around front to claim our bench. I ordered a kid cone and a single cone of
Dutch chocolate so we could compare the sizes. The kid cone was really, truly
one scoop, while the single was two. Go figure. In any case, the kid cone was
perfectly adequate.
 |
| Custard at Sydney's! |
We didn’t need anything at
Gene’s Foods except ice and a WondeRoast rotisserie chicken, our traditional first
night meal.
The loons and white-throated
sparrows greeted us immediately on our arrival at Hungry Jack Outfitters. We
unloaded the car and filled up the refrigerator with all the food from our
coolers. I delivered two dozen eggs, fresh garlic, zucchini, and green peppers
to Dave. Nancy was out guiding a plein
aire art class for the weekend.
We had chips and salsa with
margaritas for happy hour on the deck. We don’t make margaritas from scratch
anymore. That much hard liquor sets my stomach on fire. We pour Jose Cuervo Golden
margarita mix from the bottle over ice. We are so old.
We ate some of the WondeRoast
chicken, played Farkel, and went to bed early.
No comments:
Post a Comment