it rained and rained and thundered and lightninged really early on saturday morning, but it stopped by the time we got up.
this is what the camper looked like by saturday morning; we’re not the neatest campers in the world, i know. it’s easier to keep things out than tuck it in one of the cabinets which are all so low to the ground. that’s my story, anyway.
mollie, of course, wanted to sleep in her bed on top of our bed. because she’s a special princess.
i think i took this with my phone on friday night; it’s before the guy with the enormous pull-behind camper showed up and spent hours fixing up his place.
saturday morning, kevin and garrick coming back from the wash house.
this is the level of muddiness on saturday morning.
driving into grafton; we had to take a detour through part of the town because the main street was closed. that would suck for the businesses in the flooded part.
we stopped at the Piasa winery, and this is the view from their back deck.
it’s cool the way the tree is growing through the building. we sampled some wine at ELEVEN IN THE MORNING. the piasa red wine was kind of awful, i thought, but they had some delicious malbec from argentina. i bought amy a bottle, for all the hard work doing the kitty-wrangling while we were gone.
a pirate ship out on the river. it was kind of chilly saturday morning, and i bet it was brisk out there on the ship. i wonder if captain jack ever makes an appearance?
i realize this is the only picture i have of max, who had a very good time, except whenever anybody left his side, and then he’d howl and wine and make lots of very distressed noises. he has severe separation anxiety and is much more vocal about it than mollie.
public park and rest rooms, that way, except you have to swim out to them.
mollie really wanted some food and beer.
janice didn’t buy this giant turkey, although it would look good in her front yard.
here’s the front of the piasa winery; their wine bottles do have cool labels, a big graphic of the piasa bird, which is up there on the sign. we drank a bottle of some kind of piasa white wine and it was pretty good.
this used to be the grafton bank, but now it’s a bike shop. it’s funnier to think of it as a bank with a pirate flag. pirates need to do banking too, don’t they?
after walking around in grafton, we took a hike at pere marquette. here’s the river and the flooding from a lookout.
when we got to the top, a guy and two little kids were up there. the girl chirped, “I’M DEAD!” she said that a few more times; clearly not a hiker.
kevin took this panorama using the panorama function on his camera. it turned out really well, and i bet my camera has one of these functions, too. i’ll have to look into that, when i’m not looking after my new kitty.
i walked up this second lookout even though there was LOTS OF POISON IVY EVERYWHERE. i was a little bit freaked out about it because I CANNOT STAND ANYMORE POISON IVY IN MY LIFETIME. huge vines of it were growing up the trees, and i was basically suspicious of everything green, even though i am pretty good at identifying the PI by now.
it was a nice hike, but at some point i realized I LOST MY NEW MAGNETIC SUNGLASSES which are custom-made for my new glasses. i’ve had nothing but trouble with the glasses; they’d had to send them back three times, cause they had scratches, then cause they forgot to put the magnets in the glasses.
i had a mollie water backpack thing around my waist, and it had a little place big enough for a couple other things, and i’d stuffed my phone and my silver sunglasses case in there, plus a trail map. as we hiked i kept pulling out the map, and i don’t think i had the sunglasses on very long because it was mostly shady. I WISH I’D LEFT THEM IN THE CAR.
at some point i looked down and the pack was wide open, but i said to myself, “whew, my phone is still there.” i think the sunglasses IN THEIR BRIGHT SILVER CASE were gone.
when i realized they were missing, we were back on a road after climbing down a very steep trail that was in serious need of some rehab. it had big muddy grooves in it that were full of leaves, branches, and debris. we walked down the road, then kevin and i drove back up it and i started walking back up the trail, starting where we’d ended.
i looked, and looked, and looked some more. i walked quickly and jogged a little and i figured surely i’d see them because they were in the BRIGHT SILVER CASE. i finally got up to the first lookout and still nothing.
i walked all the way back to the start of our hike, and kevin met me there with the car.
i tried not to BEAT MYSELF UP ABOUT LOSING MY NEW SUNGLASSES, as we sat on the back deck of the lodge eating our takeout dinner. it was very lovely.
on the left there is the bottle of bug spray which i sprayed on myself and took with me wherever we went. there were a surprisingly small amount of mosquitoes for some reason.
saturday night i woke up and thought WHAT IF THEY FELL AND LANDED VERTICALLY, STUCK BETWEEN SOME DEBRIS? because that way they’d be much harder if not impossible to see. i decided we should go hike the trail one more time just to see.
we did, and there were nowhere to be seen. we never saw any other hikers besides the man and the two kids, and i asked at the lodge front desk and at the visitor’s center a couple of times.
i feel now that the little girl must have found them on her way down. she wouldn’t have any use for the magnetic sunglasses, but maybe she tossed them out and kept the silver case.
janice thought that maybe a squirrel got ahold of them. that could be, too; maybe right now there’s a squirrel sitting up in a tree. he’s fashioned some stems for the glasses from an old coat hanger, and is enjoying catching some rays.
ok then,
mrs. friday morning hughes.