Sunday was by no means sunny, but at least it wasn’t raining. Instead of breakfast out, we decided to just eat a little something at the cabin and try to catch the 10:00 ferry to Rock Island. We had two bananas that needed to be eaten, anyways. I had mine with peanut butter and Mark had his with a glass of milk.
We packed a couple of wedges of the peach cake, and our water bottles, and headed out. Rock Island is the former playground of some crazy Icelandic guy, Chester H. Thordarson, who invented the “world’s first million volt transformer”, and built all kinds of beautiful stone buildings (dolomite cobble – it looks like the rocks from the beach mortar into walls) on the Island. His history is pretty typical of Scandinavian immigrants – came to the US in the 1870s and settled in Milwaukee, ended up on a farm in North Dakota, which he left when he was 18, and moved to Chicago to try to get more schooling.
We started at the Great Viking Hall Boathouse, which has lots of carved wooden furniture made by another Icelandic immigrant in Chicago, Halldor Einarsson. I think the chair backs are Norse tales, and I think this book explains them.
Then we walked up to the Pottawatomie Lighthouse. As we went up, a ranger in an ATV with a couple and a lot of stuff was coming down – Mark was pretty sure it was lighthouse docents coming down, and when we got to the lighthouse, he was proved right. The couple who lead the tour had been on the ferry with us. Seems like a kind of a cool way to get to sleep in a lighthouse – I guess you might have to join some kind of lighthouse preservation society and pay dues.
We took the stairs down to the beach, and watched the waves roll in for a bit. The water is so clear – I wanted to capture the moment that the water magnifies the rocks on the bottom of the lake as the wave curls – not sure I really got it though.
We walked back down to the Boathouse and had time to sit on a bench for a few minutes and eat our cake before catching the ferry back. It never really got sunny, and it was sort of misting, so we drove to the Red Cup for coffee. Either the book store lady is getting smarter about her wifi – maybe she took Mark’s advice to get her tech guy to set it up so her connection takes precedence – or else there were just too many people trying to get on – but we couldn’t catch a connection at all. So we went and hung out in front of the library, to check in with kids, and Mark wanted Arsenal scores. I forgot to check if Bucky won, and I don’t know what’s happening with the Packers, either.
We still had time to go out for a little loop on our bikes, making today about the best for exercise since we’ve been here – about an hour and a half hiking around on Rock Island and about a 45 minute bike ride. I picked apples, that I think I will fry for dessert for dinner – have to counteract all that exercise somehow. I’ve also been munching on the Triscuits.
We made our leftover Sailors Pub fish into fish tacos, with the fresh and jarred salsas and some cheese. Heads up Wisconsinites – best use of your leftover fish fry I’ve ever tasted. The crunchy perch, that was extra crunchy since I re-heated it in the oven, soft flour tortillas, salsa with fresh tomatoes and cilantro, a little cheese – and Mark had the bright idea of putting a little of the leftover tarter sauce on the tortillas, too – was a dynamite combination!
Tomorrow we’re going to try to get the 8:00 AM ferry back to the mainland – and of course, since the bikes are all locked up on the car, the sun’s out for real, in time to set.
We made the 8:00AM ferry on Monday – and it rained the whole drive home – not much fun to drive in, but still satisfying
