Wisconsin (Part 1)

(vacation, continued. I'm writing this from St. Ignace, Michigan, which is right across from Mackinac Island. We're going to go there tomorrow for a few hours. I told the kids a little bit about the last time I was there -- 1980, and I only know that because I remember that everyone was wearing "Who Shot J.R.?" T-shirts -- so Cara and Johnny have taken to refer to it as "Fudge Island." Thank God I did not mention the horse dung. I'll add pictures to go with the text later.)


June 19


Father's Day. We had breakfast, and then Johnny presented me with the gifts he'd been manufacturing for the event back at home, placed lovingly in an old carton which in its former application held a dozen boxes of Girl Scout cookies. Several of the items were paper airplanes, plus some hand-drawn cards ("I Love You, Dad" and "You're the best Dad" were featured on them, though I'm fairly sure he has no first-hand criteria to adequately make the second assessment.) Cara had presented me with some hand-made pottery before we left. Great day! We also Skype-ed with Chris for a while. After lunch, we went into Black River Falls to see the Falls Players production of The Wizard of Oz. It was adequate. The kids loved it, so that was good. 


June 20


After breakfast, we got started on the bridge. The design took a few turns on Sunday, as we studied the scale model I'd made. Nothing major, just some adjustments to the beams, a central beam instead of stringers, and 2x6 boards instead of decking. We had all the lumber already, except the decking, so we were all set. Took us all day to get the three beams in place, and mounted to the piers on either side, but it was a really good start.


In the meantime, my sister-in-law Linda took the kids to see Mr. Popper's Penguins, and by all accounts they had a good time. Linda had to go back to Minnesota that night, taking TJ the wonder dog with her.


June 21


With Linda gone, we left the kids at the cabin with a walkie-talkie, their DS games, and a ream of paper with which to fold paper airplanes (which sounds like a lot, but that's maybe three hours worth of Johnny folding airplanes, tops.) Dave and I went back to the bridge, and got everything ready for the decking, which we had yet to procure. Cara called a few times, mostly to ensure that we were still there, which was cute. Oh, Linda had also left some crafts for her, windcatchers and mugs to paint, things like that. We actually hadn't gotten very far from the house in the morning when she called the first time to announce that while getting the crafts out of the drawer, she had bonked her head. A full recovery was made.


After lunch, we loaded up the kids in Dave's car, he hooked up his trailer, and I put down the seats in the vans, and off to get the deck planks we went. 78 6' 2x6s later, and back we go. Now, we had plenty of time to measure the distance from the driveway to the bridge, and it turned out to be about 150 yards. Fortunately, the short boards fit nicely on to a wheelbarrow, so we actually got the all back to the bridge site in 4 trips, which beat the hell out of carrying them a few at a time. We spent the rest of the afternoon installing them, with a few breaks for calls from Cara, who mainly wanted to know when we'd be done. When we were almost done, they both came down to see the progress, which frankly startled me because they don't like to come out and subject themselves to possible tick attacks.


Late that night, my niece Haley drove down, with her friend Alaina, and Haley's dog, Siska. They got in after midnight, which was well past this bridge-builder's bed time.


June 22


In the morning, Dave and I went out to finish the bridge. We only had to put the trusses on the sides, which seemed easy enough. But I wanted to jack the bridge up somehow, so that the trusses were starting off in compression, and the bridge would be more stable from the get-go. So, we broke out Dave's car jack, and assembled a rig under the bridge, and jacked it up. Worked pretty well, and by the end of the day, we had ourselves a bridge.


Bridge Construction Photos
Bridge on the River Dry
Bridge on the River Dry (Director's Cut)


While we were getting dinner ready, everyone was near the kitchen when Haley says to Alaina, "Yeah, and when this one [points to me] shows up, he [points to Dave] turns into a smart-ass, too." So, it's good to know that I bring out the best in people!


Siska, it turns out, would have nothing to do with me. I finally got him to play with me the next day, but it was a lot of work, and frankly I don't have the energy for that. So, when we get a dog, it had better like me from the get-go, is all I'm saying.


June 23


In the morning, I was cleaning up tools, repacking them in the car, when I heard coyotes off in the not-too-far distance. So Cara and I hopped in the car, and went out to investigate. We came across two coyote pups, playing and walking along the road. I tried to drift down a little rise to get closer, but they skittered off before we got too close.


Having completed the main task for the week, we went out for lunch. Haley had to go back for work, so it was just Dave, the kids, and me. After lunch, we went to do a little geocaching in one of the Jackson County Forest areas. The kids and I had done this last year, and the cache we'd gone to then was on a road where someone had now placed about 20 more caches in a rough circle, with a diameter of maybe 2500 feet. So that's a pretty easy haul if you just want to find a few, right? Well, we get there, and first we have to convince the kids that they won't die if they walk through about fifty feet of tall grass (ticks, of course.) Then, we make our way to the nearest cache, which was only about 600 feet off of the road. Having found that one, we find the next closest one, which was about 700 feet to the west, so off we go. Well, more like 'up.' This part of Wisconsin is generally flat, the only terrain features are generally those caused by streams or other drainage. The other thing you should know is that there are almost no rocks, per se. Everything is sand, sand, sand, sand, and when you get tired of that, sand.Productions of repeated glaciation, as I understand it.


Anyway, here we are on our way to the next cache, and up, up, up we go. The hill was only about 100 feet of climb, but (a) it was surprising, and (b) when we got to the top, which was only about 10 feet wide before dropping off rather sharply on both sides, I remembered (was reminded, really) that Cara does not like heights. We still have about 250 feet to go to the cache, but when I realized that would mean climbing down this hill, then back up and down, we opted to find another cache on our side. In the meantime, Dave convinced the kids to walk along the ridge, up to one of the summits. The view was very nice, although I had to beg Cara to smile for a pic.


Walked back down, found another cache, and back to the car. When we got home, the only one with a tick on them was Johnny, and it was a little deer tick, which was only a little odd because up there I've only had the larger wood ticks on me. Came right off.


Hike photos


That night, Dave and I were out on the deck, and heard a pack of coyotes. They seemed pretty close, maybe a few hundred yards, and you could easily hear maybe 5 adults and several pups. They went on, absolutely crazy like, for about a minute, and then nothing. Later we heard another pack, but they were maybe a few miles away. Linda drove back down that night, too, so we were back to five at the cabin (Dave, Linda, Cara, Johnny, me.)


June 24


Usually, when we go to Wisconsin, we take a day to go to Noah's Ark, which is "The country's largest waterpark" and located in the Wisconsin Dells. It is really big. Last year, there happened to have been a tornado warning early that morning for that area, so when we got there under mostly cloudy (but warm) skies, there were very few people there. God, I love tornadoes sometimes.


The big thing last year was "The Scorpion's Tail." Basically, you stand in a tube, legs and arms crossed. Then, they count down from three, and at zero, the floor falls out, and you fall at speeds that seem to exceed that which would otherwise be accomplished through normal gravitational acceleration. You do sort of a sideways (but almost up and down) loop, and you stop at the bottom. No one should do this. I did it twice, and I was looking forward to it this year, too.


But, it was not to be. The weather this week was cool, mid-70s, chance of and/or actual rain every day. Not relishing the idea of being outside in the cool and the wind, we opted instead to go to Kalahari, which has an outdoor portion, but is mainly an indoor facility. The kids loved it. It was fun, but after lunch I wound up on a lounge chair and slept for about two hours. Best waterpark day ever.


Before we left, Johnny suggested that he wanted to try the "surfari" ride, where you boogie-board on a standing wave of water. Now, if you know Johnny, he is not what you would call "adventurous." Or "athletic." Or really "anything non-DS related." So I was happily surprised when he suggested it. Shocked, more like, but still happy. He got in line, and eventually it was his turn. The instructor had to hold him by the ankles to get him going into the wave, but once he was there, he did great. After about a minute, he wiped out (as everyone does), pulled up his pants, and came down to me. He then proceeded to explain that he had hurt his butt a little bit, and pulled his pants down a bit to show me. Johnny has a lot of Forrest Gump in him.


Kalahari photos


Tired. I'll finish Kalahari and Wisconsin later...