This is about the second half of the trip and our first day back home. The first part, the one with the photos, will appear in a day or two. I had some odd adventures, documented photographically.
About half that 7 1/2 hour drive was spent driving. The rest was sitting-around time. First, we stopped at my wife's sister's greenhouse and talked with her for about 1 1/2 hours. One topic was her recent trip to Las Vegas with a brother of hers.
They showed all the photos they took and souvenirs of some of the shows. They saw the Blue Man Group and the Cirque de Soleil. The prices printed on the tickets were $80 and $75, respectively. Just think, I said to myself.
We finally got out of there, but then my son had to get some stuff at a superstore we passed (three guesses which one). There went another hour. Then, supper. About a 45-minute layover. We left my father-in-law's place at about 2:45 p.m. Got home at 10 p.m. So that's 7+ hours to cover 175 miles. Good gas mileage, true, but not much speed.
One big surprise when we arrived home: a population explosion of dandelions in the back yard. They had only been mown on Tuesday. It was way too dark to mow lawns by then, and I had to tend to a few things for my baseball league. By the time that was sorted out, it was after 12:30. Time to get to bed because ...
At 8 a.m., I was out and about to a local township park for Memorial Day ceremonies. A local soldier who had served in Afghanistan was the main speaker. He talked about some of his experiences. I had covered this kid when he was in high school, on the football and track teams. Just glad he got home safely to tell his story.
Then, home and the lawn. It got to the upper 80s in NW Wisconsin on Sunday, and it was close to 90 on the car thermometer on the way back. The forecast was for 90 Monday, so I got to the lawnmower right away, while the sun was still relatively low in the sky. Hot work, but it would have been hotter later.
My wife spent the morning cutting up some of the asparagus we had picked at her dad's place during our visit. Lots of asparagus. Want some?
Then it was noon, and my son was over, doing his best to drink all the soda we had in the house. We had lunch and then shifted to the living room, under the ceiling fan, to hide out from the heat and relax after the long, long drive on Sunday.
The first movie we saw was "Porco Rosso," one of the Hiyao Miyazaki movies. Folks, if you haven't given his films a chance, do yourself a favor. Animated (by hand) beautifully, and a story enjoyable on many levels. But my wife dozed off and missed most of it. That usually happens when she sits next to me in the afternoon.
Then, David wanted to see a Gamera movie. Gamera, if you haven't been properly introduced, is a gigantic flying turtle from Japanese monster movies. My wife and I often sat together and had a giggle while watching Gamera movies just after we got married. (This was way before cable TV was available, and Milwaukee only had five channels to choose from.) About a year ago, I found a batch of Gamera movies in a ridiculously priced giant monster DVD set ($10 for 12 movies). This one was "Gamera vs. Monster X," who is also known as Jiger (rhymes with tiger--but he looked more like a rhinocerus).
Temperatures got to the low 90s today (quite hot for us, even in summer), but the heat won't stay around for long. There are several lines of storms moving east, crossing from Minnesota into Wisconsin, and there's no telling if we will see thunder and lightning after midnight. I've got my finger crossed for a post-midnight show.
Usually, when the storms move in from Minnesota, they fall apart and lose nearly all their punch by the time they get to the U.P. The county where we live seems to be like a rock in the middle of the brook, with the water passing on one side or the other--that's generally what happens when storms near us. Tonight? We'll see.
OK, got to wrap this up. My wife says the pizza is nearly done, and we're going to eat it in the living room--under the ceiling fan, of course.
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