Lake Geneva in August

I forgot to post in the last blog that we had enjoyed a visit from one of Jo's colleagues from our Pfizer days.  He was over from England and is motorcycling across America.  He purchased a bike in Ohio, where his brother is currently living, and made a stop in Milwaukee to catch up with Jo.  It was interesting to hear his plans for a nine week bike trip and Jo certainly was a little jealous to have the freedom to take that much time for a vacation.  It was also interesting to hear his views of America after spending a couple of weeks on the road so far.

Then after a busy week, we got to spend a weekend relaxing with our good friends, John and Linda, at their Lake Geneva digs.  The weather cooperated nicely by being hot without too much humidity so being out on the boat on the lake was really enjoyable (our last visit to the lake required us to be bundled up due to the cool weather).  We arrived Friday night and headed out quickly to the boat to enjoy dinner on the lake and then an evening cruise around while there wasn't a lot of other boat traffic. 

Saturday morning after our run along the path the encircles the entire lake, we donned our swimming suits, packed a picnic lunch, and got the boat into the water.  We spent most of the day anchored at Big Foot beach enjoying naps, playing in the water, talking, or just reading.  In the afternoon, once the beach area started getting crowded, we pulled up the anchor and headed to downtown Lake Geneva to sample some frozen yogurt (notice the theme today, relax and eat too much food, especially dessert).  After a nice stroll around town we took the boat out into the middle of the lake and then just floated for a while.  Then all too soon it was time to head back and prepare dinner.  We enjoyed hamburgers/veggie burgers along with some of our home grown beans and delicious sweet corn before finishing everything up with two different berry crisps from the Elegant Farmer.

Sunday Jo and I decided to get another run in, mostly to help counter-act everything we ate the day before, and then we all had brunch at Daddy Maxwell's.  Afterwards it was time for another boat cruise which consisted mostly of just stopping in the middle of the lake and floating.  Several of us braved jumping in which was refreshing given the air temperature but with a lake temperature somewhere in the 70's was bit bracing.  After a light afternoon snack, it was time for Jo and I to head back to Milwaukee to prepare for another work week.

Hiking Milwaukee

I'm a week behind since last week was busy and the one day I had time available to write my blog, I just wasn't in the writing mood.  So I'll post twice today to make up for the gap last week.  The cause for not having time last week was I wanted to finish up this year's outdoor painting.  So I put in a little extra effort and can now enjoy, until next summer, not needing to go outside and scrape, sand, or paint some exterior piece of wood.

We had a busy weekend two weeks ago.  It was our nephew Drew's birthday and Kathy came over from Madison to help him and his girlfriend, Amy, to celebrate.  We started the festivities with a stop at our favorite beer garden in Estabrook park.  We were joined by our other Milwaukee based nephew and his wife, Chris and Angela.  Jo and I enjoyed our usual pretzel with cheese sauce along with some great Hofbrau house beer.  Afterwards we came back to our house for a pizza dinner and the obligatory birthday cake and song.  Then all the young folks headed out for their evening celebrations while those over 50 sat around and caught up on life.

Sunday morning Kathy joined Jo and I for a hike in Grant Park.  We did a portion of the Seven Bridges hike (even though as mentioned before, we have counted way over seven bridges).  It was a nice morning to hike through the woods along Lake Michigan and try out our new safari hats.  The highlight of the morning was seeing a hummingbird moth (we at first thought we saw a baby hummingbird or some sort of midget hummingbird, but a little searching on the ole internet explained what it was) which I never new existed until this hike.  After our hike we joined Drew and Amy for brunch at Café Hollander before everyone heading their separate ways.

On the garden front, we are finally having some of our crops come in.  We have enjoyed picking beans for several weeks and now have a healthy supply frozen for our winter meals.  Our cucumbers have also started arriving and we canned 2 batches of pickles so far.  We have also enjoyed several meals of fresh tomatoes along with sun drying the extras to enjoy on future pizzas and pastas.  This year we actually had success with our onions and harvested several that actually look like onions and not just big garlic clove sized bulbs.  The yellow squash is starting to ripen up and our acorn squash is looking promising so far.  So the good news is there is still hope for our garden and we have harvested enough to make me start dreaming of what to plant next year.

Hiking in Colorado

We spent last week in Colorado seeing family and getting in a week of vacation.  We started in Boulder for several days where we took advantage of our downtown location to enjoy the many of the fine restaurants on the Pearl Street mall.  Our days were spent out on the local hiking trails, we tackled Mount Sanitas our first full day there (not the brightest move on our part since we certainly weren't used to a low oxygen environment and anything with mount in the hike title usually implies going up a lot of hill) and then the next day did a 8-9 mile hike through the Chautauqua Park.  We stopped at the National Center for Atmospheric Research along the way to check out their museum and learn about the research going into weather predictions - according to one of their displays, weather forecasting is getting more accurate, contrary to what our local forecasters seem to be able to do. 

These two hikes got us a little toughened up for our hikes to come later in the week.  When we weren't hiking, we stopped in for a visit with Jo's brother and family who lives nearby to Boulder.  It was great catching up with everyone and enjoying a great Italian meal (Pat is wonderful with pasta!).  That evening, to settle our dinner, we played bocce and then sat and watched the hummingbirds that visit their backyard.  A couple of days later, Pat took us to one of her favorite spots.  It is a local restaurant that has 20-30 hummingbirds all flitting around.  I managed to get one to land on my finger but only briefly.  It was amazing to stand there with five to ten hummingbirds zipping around you.

We finished up our stay in Boulder with walking around the University of Colorado campus and touring their natural history museum.  Then later getting a massage to ease our aching hiking muscles before heading up to Estes Park to meet up with my family.  My entire family gathered in Estes Park to celebrate my parents' sixty wedding anniversary, which in my mind is a tremendous accomplishment (especially getting through the 70's and 80's when everyone seemed to be getting divorced).  We spent our time there enjoying Rocky Mountain National Park and numerous games of cards. 

For hiking, one day we hiked from the Fern Lake trailhead over to Bear Lake trailhead with my brother and his family.  It was a great day for a hike and we enjoyed a lunch break at Odessa Lake along the way which had great vistas of the surrounding mountains.  It always amazes me to see snow banks in August.  The next day Jo and I did a short hike to Gem Lake and then everyone piled into cars to drive Trail Ridge Road to the Alpine Visitor Center.  Along the way we got to see a little bit of everything that the park has to offer:  elk, grand vistas, scary drop offs from the road, bighorn sheep, and snow.  The snow wasn't only on the ground from the winter, we actually were in the middle of a snow/hail storm for about 20 minutes.  When they say the weather can change quickly up there, they mean it.

Our last full day there, Jo and I tackled a 13-14 mile hike where we did a long loop hike from the Lumpy Ridge trailhead.  This was probably our favorite of all the hikes this week, since we went from meadows to pine forests to rock climbs and for the majority of the hike we didn't see another soul.  We took one of the side hikes into see Bridal Falls which involved Jo having to climb a few rocks - which she always loves...not.  But she made it up and more importantly back down although she had a little help from a nice gentleman from Texas on one of the rock climbs.  We were somewhat disappointed that we didn't come across any elk on our hike since it seemed like a perfect place for elk to be grazing.  But we did manage to see a doe and her fawn along with the usual mix of ground squirrels and several different types of birds - although no hawks or eagles that, according to the hiking guide, can be seen in the cliffs along the hike.

While in Estes Park we celebrated my birthday with a cake and some wonderful gifts.  But the big celebration for my parents was held at the Stanley Hotel.  We enjoyed a great dinner there, although the ambiance was less than we had hoped for - the restaurant is adjacent to the bar area without any wall to break the noise or the viewing of the three big screen TVs.  Everyone also did their bit to help the local economy by doing some shopping in Estes Park.

For us, we had a really relaxing week off getting to catch up with our families and enjoying the outdoors.  But all good things must end, so it is back to the routine, at least until we are off to somewhere else.