Home again
We’re back, after a truly terrific trip. I’ll tell you all about it, but it’ll take me a while. Days, probably.
David came to the house late Saturday morning with an earnestly cute little red snub-nosed car (beware grotty popups). This little critter behaved like a champ the whole trip, despite some pretty horrible things we did to it because David hasn’t driven a car in years, and I haven’t in… um, rather more years. Bravo, Snub-Nose, and if I ever break down and buy a car I hope it’s half as pleasant.
Travelling by car is sinfully luxurious to one accustomed to business travel by airline. No worries about packing tight; if the trunk isn’t big enough (it was, and then some), the back seat will do and is more convenient anyway. No metal detectors, no security personnel with wands ordering me to take off my shoes and turn over my waistband, no crowds, no lines at the gate, no narrow airplane aisles, no safety spiels, no—
Ahem.
We dropped a housekey with two friends who graciously (at the absolute last minute) agreed to look in on the Goth-kitties. (Who were well-fed, clean, and healthy when we got home. A mite freaked out, but that’s only to be expected.) Then we headed out East Washington Avenue toward Horicon Marsh. After a bit of getting lost (we did a lot of this), we found the DNR Field Office at the south end. A kindly volunteer in the office gave us maps and advice, and we set off down the trails into the marsh.
This walk was where I burnt my hands. No one to blame for it but myself; should have thought to sunscreen them but didn’t. They still hurt, and the stress to them seems to have caused a minor attack of pompholyx, but damp cotton gloves quiet their complaining.
But, oh, what a walk! Red-winged blackbirds everywhere, of course (why Wisconsin’s state bird is not the red-winged blackbird I am sure I don’t know; there’s plenty more of them than there are robins, and they’re sure more dramatic-looking). But also bobolinks, more yellow warblers than I knew existed, goldfinches, scarlet tanagers, a flycatcher of some variety (yes, we’re very amateur birders), blue-winged teals, Canada geese, and—but let me tell the story.
Over a ridge to our left we saw a big white bird flying heavily. “Hm. Osprey? No, wrong shape. An egret, maybe?”
“Pelican,” David suggested.
“No bloody way. There aren’t any pelicans in Wisconsin. Must be an egret. Drat, it’s gone below the treeline. There’s a trail up to that ridge.”
We climbed it, and got a look into a series of pools. Not one white bird, but four.
“Egrets. Told you.”
“No, they’re not. They’re swimming. Egrets stalk. And look at that one throwing back its head! Did you see the pouch under its beak?”
“Be damned. You’re right. They are pelicans.”
Sure enough. We checked the bird book when we got back, and they were white pelicans. Wisconsin is an unlikely spot for them to migrate through, but apparently not out of the question.
After our walk we drove up the east side of the marsh to the Marsh Haven Nature Center. David’s mom has been bugging us for years about a ground squirrel that she once saw in Governor Dodge State Park. We’d never managed to see one. But there in the Marsh Haven lawn it was, standing up to look us over. Handsome little bugger, about the size of a chipmunk but longer and leaner.
We stayed the night in Fond du Lac, eating in a nice Mexican place. Across from us was a family with two children whom I did not even notice until David pointed them out, they were so quiet—well-behaved children, something one does not see in Madison. We drove out to Lakefront Park near sunset to climb the lighthouse and look at the lake.