Monday, August 23, 2010

Final Entry - 8/23

   

Pride of Baltimore
Bounty
Port Washington held its  Maritime Heritage Festival this past weekend . It was the last big event of the summer. In fact in the Ozaukee county guide to summer activities, it is literally the last event listed. It involved the same bands, the same food vendors, and the same arts and crafts vendors we have seen multiple times in multiple locations over the past three months. The fireworks switched things up a bit by having a different launch point, but we still watched them from the same location as always. The unique aspect of this festival was the arrival of the "tall ships". On Thursday four schooners and the HMS Bounty came to port. Two of the schooners had two-hour sailings into Lake Michigan several times a day. The other two schooners and the Bounty were available to board for dockside tours. One of the schooners, the Unicorn, boasted an all-female crew. This conjured up all kinds of images in my head that reality, of course, couldn't match. The Bounty was built in 1960 for the movie and was later seen in Pirates of the Caribbean and, my personal favorite, Spongebob Squarepants. 


Bounty

Captain Bligh

Deck of the Bounty

A Boat We Could Afford










With summer drawing to a close, at least this far north, we leave Friday to start back to Texas. Conclusions reached on this trip include that I like living in a small town. A certain threshold of restaurants, shopping availability, and activities must be reached, but beyond that point I gain very little. Having everything I needed within walking distance was very appealing. Also, I'm always unhappy starting a day's drive, but my mood improves greatly after reaching the half-way point. The total distance for the day doesn't matter. That means I'm happier having 350 miles left on a 700 mile day than I am just starting out on a 200 mile day. It's totally irrational but I find more happiness being on the downhill side of a long day's journey than starting out a short day's drive. The third is when on vacation I begin thinking about going home 2/3 of the way through the trip. The duration is irrelevant. On a three day weekend, I start thinking about heading home on the last day. On this over three month trip I started thinking about going home with about a month left. I began thinking about what I still wanted to do or places I wanted to revisit before we ran out of time. I started planning so I would run out of eggs, bagels, and frozen waffles at the same time. No matter how much I told myself how dumb it was since we still had twice as long as our normal vacations used to be, I couldn't help it. I'll just have to add it to my long and growing list of weird traits.
 
THE END

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Mission Accomplished - 8/11

With visits to Gopher One and Foxy's I completed one of my objectives for the trip. I've had one beer (at least) at every bar in town. Having goals like this gives helps give my life a sense of purpose.


We visited the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc. The WWII era sub, USS Cobia, was the highlight. Interestingly, the SS Badger in the background is a car ferry for crossing Lake Michigan and is only eight years newer than the sub. Our tour guide said the Cobia suffered only one fatality during the war. He didn't mention any fatalities aboard The Badger.


Going through the hatches between water-tight compartments, I felt like I was being checked to see if I qualified as carry-on baggage at the airport. Terry felt at home in the crew's mess.
We went to the Luxembourg Festival in Belgium, WI. The only reason to do this is to try the mustripen, a sausage brought to the area by early settlers from Luxembourg. The primary ingredients are pig snouts and pig blood. After that they add some gross stuff. I think the only place in the world you can still get it is northern Ozaukee county. Even Luxembourg found it too disgusting to eat years ago. I could overhear the locals around me discussing it.
"Are you getting the mustripen?"
"Not me I can't eat that crap."
But to paraphrase the old Life cereal commercial, "Give it to Gary. He'll eat anything."