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