May 20, 2012. Peninsula State Park and Fish Creek, WI. We're sitting in Harvey watching a thunderstorm roll in over the Green Bay. Distant thunder is followed by a light shower. The rain will dissipate tonight and we'll awake to blue skies again. The weather here in Door County has been perfect, seventy-degree days and cool nights. It could not have been better.
Today has been a slow day. We slept late, then went into Fish Creek, another harbor town, for lunch. We walked the waterfront and found the real-life Malachi and Annie sitting on a bench. After, we walked the length of Main Street and found beautiful flowers planted everywhere. There are three times the number of pictures shown on this page. I thought you might get tired of seeing them, so I selected just a few.
We have had some problems with the house batteries aboard Harvey. You will recall that we replaced the batteries on the way to Alaska last summer and again, in New Hampshire, last fall. I am beginning to wonder if the problem has been something other than the batteries all along. You'd think that might have occurred to me $650 ago.
When Annie and I set up the screen tent pictured in an earlier post, we had a tussle getting the post to extend. It isn't supposed to be hard. The instructions say that it should go up in 60 seconds or less. It took us about ten minutes. After it was up, the tent seemed extremely taut. We worried that the poles might tear the fabric.
The second night, while dinner was cooking on the grill, I went back into the tent and began to really look at it. The poles had loops midway down, as if to hold the tent from the outside, rather than the inside. They served no purpose on the inside. I then noticed ropes hanging from the poles two-thirds of the way down. It was as if the ropes were designed to stake the tent from the outside. What were they doing on the inside?
I called to Annie. "Do you see what I see in here?"
She studied the interior - that looked a lot like the exterior should look. She had two words for me, "You Doofus."
Under my supreme leadership, we - I emphasize "we" - had erected the tent inside out. The posts go on the outside and we had them on the inside. It should have been a clue when the name "Coleman" was readable from the inside of the tent and reversed on the outside.
So, that's how it hasn't occurred to me that our electrical problems might be something other than the batteries. I am a doofus.
May 19, 2012. Bucolic and beautiful is Door County, WI. This is our second trip. There will likely be more. Dairies and cherry orchards and shipping form the backbone of the ecoonomy here. Oops, I left out tourism.
We are in Peninsula State Park, on Green Bay. Yep, that's the same Green Bay which sports the town of Green Bay, Wisconsin. You know, the one with a National Football League team.
We cooked out last night and the chef did a fair job. We had ribeye steaks, potatoes and onions and fresh veggies with Ranch dressing. There has been no shorage of food on this trip and last night was no exception.
Today, we ferried over to Washington Island, about three miles out into the Bay. Annie asked if she should take a sweatshirt. No. It is supposed to be in the mid-70s today, no need for a sweatshirt I told her. I did not know that it is 20 degrees cooler on the island. It is even cooler when you are zipping around on a scooter at about 30 MPH.
The scooters were advertised at $50 per hour. Annie balked at the price until I reminded her that we had just bought a $50 Hula Hoop. $50 for a Hula Hoop makes the same price for an hour of fun on a scooter sound cheap to me. Eventually, it sounded cheaper to Annie.
Annie was not comfortable on the scooter. More than once she passed me saying, "Whoa, whoa, how do you stop this thing?"
Later, she asked me to slow down because she couldn't go fast. Couldn't go fast? She was on the same kind of scooter I was on. Maybe she didn't want to go fast, but there was nothing preventing her.
The second hour on the scooter was half-price. I was thinking that was a deal. But, turns out there was no second hour. Annie decided an hour on the death machine was enough.
May 17, 2012. It has been a good day. We ferried across the straits to Mackinac Island this morning. The ferry threw up a roostertail as we left the harbor for the 15-minute trip. Mackinac was all we remembered. There were no cars, no trucks, no motorized vehicles of any sort unless you count the two electric scooters we saw some old people riding. The sounds, other than the voices of visitors, consisted of the clippity-clop of iron horse shoes on the many horse-drawn carriages and wagons. There are no traffic lights, though bikers are cautioned not to speed. There are a few stop signs. I don't know why. Nothing on the island goes fast enough to require traffic controls.
There is still fudge. There are many places for lunch. There is ice cream and candy. We partook of three of the four. Surprisingly, there are no recumbent bikes available to rent. There are single-speed bikes, three-speed bikes, seven-speed bikes and twenty-one-speed bikes. There are kids' bikes and giant bikes for giants, I suppose. But there are no recumbent bikes.
We got our recumbents because Annie's knees won't flex past 90 degrees. That means that when the peddle is at the top of its cycle, her foot pops off the peddle. She tried one of the regular bikes, but was unable to make it work safely.
The college student on the summer job of a lifetime said, "Well, we do have some tandem bikes. You - meaning me - could peddle and your girlfriend could just ride along behind." That was the stupidest idea I've ever heard. We tried that in college, when Annie's knees worked just fine. I hauled her all over Columbia while she sat on the rear seat gazing about, singing, whistling, chewing gum and anything else she could think of other than peddling. I told him that.
"How long have you been together?" he asked.
"Nearly fifty years," I answered.
"Well, this isn't something that's going to break up a long-term relationship, is it?"
No, I guessed not. So we paid twenty dollars to rent a tandem bike for two hours so I could haul Annie around the island. There was one payback. She prepared baked beans last night for dinner. Of course she was on the downwind side as I trucked us both around the island. If she had it to do again, she might have insisted on a horsedrawn carriage to get about.
I hope you enjoy the pictures. The picture of us on the tandem bike - with just one of us peddling, I might add - took some effort. The camera has a ten-second timer, so I set it up on a picnic table, pushed the shutter and raced back to the bike where Annie was poised to shove off. The first try, the camera captured only the front of the bike and me, peddling. The second try, we were almost out of the frame when the light on the camera began to flash more quickly. I turned the bike toward the camera to avoid riding out of the picture. That created an akward picture of us sorta riding toward the camera.
The third time was the charm. We timed our - my - peddling just right and the picture shows us in the center of the frame. Well, after some cropping on the computer, we were in the center of the frame.
Annie asked me if I wanted to go back tomorrow or go on to Door County. "What would we do tomorrow?" I asked.
"The same thing we did today, eat lunch, eat fudge, eat ice cream and ride a bike around the island."
We'll leave for Door County in the morning.
May 16, 2012. From Ludington to Saint Ignace, along the lake shore the scenery was beautiful. Lighthouses, deer, old barns, the cystal blue shimmer of the lake, covered bridges, sand dunes and church steeples caught the eye and formented a deep appreciation for the beauty of Michigan. Every state has its strong points. Michigan has its fair share. We are in Saint Ignace State Park tonight and will cross the straits to Mackinac Island in the morning.
Mackinac is one of our favorite places. It is the place we went after my final interview for my current position. I was worn down by the anxiety and the interminable waiting. With the final interview laid by, we flew north and discovered the island where there is history and fudge, but no motor vehicles. There, under a cloudless Colorado-blue sky, I laid in the grass, on my back in front of the old fort and fell asleep. I had not fallen asleep in the grass since I was a very young boy. Such was the relaxation we experienced on our first trip to Mackinac.
This will be our fourth trip. We may spend a day, we may spend two. It depends. However long we are there, we will enjoy it. And, we'll have a piece of Mackinac fudge for you.
Oh, the one inconsistent photo above is of the Curves for Women in Traverse City. Annie has worked out each day this week at one Curves after another halfway across America. She is so dedicated! While she works out, I take a nap in the back of Harvey. She works hard enough for both of us.
And, today, she was introduced to the big, soft Hula Hoop at the Curves featured above. It is a special oversized hula hoop designed for women who want to reduce their waistline. We could not leave Traverse City without one. So, we backtracked ten miles and bought one at the home of the inventor. Fifty dollars and fifty minutes later, she was a happy woman. Giddy woman may be a better description. When Annie is happy, Malachi is happy.
May14,2012. On the road again. After Mother's Day breakfast with Sue and BJ, we hit the road again. After a night in Peoria, we made the shores of Lake Michigan today. Here are a few pictures of the trip.
Harvey is doing just fine. We averaged 14.5 MPG over the last two days. We filled up at Quick Trip and paid $3.31 per gallon. The gas prices I am seeing here are nearly 60 cents more per gallon. I wonder what causes that wide a variance? Maybe you can explain it to me.
We will be in Michigan, along Lake Michigan this week. Saturday or Sunday, we'll cross over to the west side of the lake and revisit Door County, WI. We should be back in Kansas City for a couple of days about May 25, before going west. I have a couple of days of meetings in Estes Park at the end of the month. Then, we'll go where the wind blows us. Life is good.
