Hey, there! Long time no see!
We got back from our long, long trip to southern Wisconsin Saturday night, about 9:40 p.m. Tired and a little worn out, but it was a great trip. I'll give you the basics:
--Weather: Absolutely first-class, every day. Not too hot. Not too cool. Not very humid. Not too cloudy. No rain. Just beautiful. This is the weather that we'll look back and say, "If only we had the weather like we did during our 2005 vacation ..."
--Day 1: We left at 9:45 a.m., about an hour after I had hoped, but that's OK. First major stop was in Wausau, where we hit the Barnes & Noble bookstore (bought an early Heinlein novel, a new book by/about R.Crumb and a third book that I can't remember at the moment). Then we searched around for two used bookstores in town. Found one. Didn't get anything (prices were high). Then doubled back to the B&N in search of a book I forgot about earlier. They didn't have it. Back on the road. Crossed the free ferry over the Wisconsin River at Merrimac. We had crossed it going to the other way many, many years ago. Various stops for pictures along the way. I wanted to stop at the nude beach along the river, but it was just getting too late, so we moved on to Spring Green and got a motel room there.
--Day 2: Slept a bit late, then got breakfast and made our way to the main stop of the vacation: the House on the Rock. Fantastic scenery. Camera was busy. Finally got to the House about 10:30. Vast. Bizarre. Very large. Self-guided foot tour that covers about 3 miles--we took about 5 hours, even after rushing through the later parts. (My wife's feet were getting tired. Mine, too, for that matter.) Many fabulous collections. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought about "Citizen Kane" and all the stuff he collected.
Oh, was I busy with the pictures! I had the luxury of three sets of camera batteries in my bag, and after I got the "weak battery" signal in the viewfinder, I sat down to replace them with a fresh set. Guess what? The fresh set was dead!!! Not even a weak battery signal! I tried the other reserve set. Same thing! For a while I thought my camera was malfunctioning. Then I put the old set back in, and it worked--with the weak battery signal. So after that, I drastically cut down the number of photos I took. Even so, I wound up virtually filling up a 64meg memory card.
As for the House, it just got to be sensory overload after a while. Just so much to take in. So many collections. We opted to get a DVD set in the gift shop to show my mom, who has never been there.
We were bushed. We went back to the motel and lay down for a nap. Then up and got some supper at a nearby Culver's. Unlike our motel, the Culver's had wireless internet, so we went back to the motel and retured about an hour and a half later for "dessert" and a very welcome chance to catch up on things on the internet. My "unread blogs" number was about 23 by then. Then back to the motel. I was very tired, and I thought my wife was, too. But she wanted to play. So we played. I don't do that well when I'm really tired. I did well enough, at least, to make her happy. We slept like dead people.
Day 3: The thing is, I can get to sleep, but I wake up in the middle of the night and doze on and off after that. We got going and went off to a used bookstore my wife saw in a tourist paper. It proved to be closed, but she spotted a fabric shop next door, and as the saying goes, I think, You can never be too young or have too much fabric. She got a piece or two.
From there, off into the hills of southwestern Wisconsin and to a small neopagan gathering taking place that day. Seven people, including us. It was celebrating the summer solstice, the growth all around us and our personal growth as people. It was the first time I had been with this group, so there was a lot of learning. We celebrated the day and ourselves. Then a little feast--we contributed grapes and potato chips.
My wife wasn't ready to take part in the ritual (she would have been welcome), but she joined with everyone as we were munching together afterwards and didn't seem to bat an eye at the nudity. We were all naked during the ritual; the women partly covered up after, but the men (myself included) didn't.
It was nice. Very peaceful. Sunny day. Birds singing. The bugs apparently were busy elsewhere. Conversation about this and that--for my sake, a large part of it was about the history of the group and how they all got together. It didn't strike me at the time, but--with the exception of an 8-year-old girl--all of us were middle-aged/getting up there. The group is having a multi-day event at the end of June, and I'm attending that one by myself.
We were there until about 3:45 and then had to leave for the trip home, which lasted about six hours. My wife got her second meal at Arby's in three days (a rare treat for her, since there aren't any Arby's around where we live). We talked in the car. Listened to the radio. Held hands.
It was a nice way to end three very, very good days.
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