I thought about some of the things we saw in small town Wisconsin. Almost every town featured a Friday night fish fry. Car shows seemed to pop up here and there. Huge, modern-style bare-blade windmills were common. Horicon is the home of the John Deere lawn tractor factory, so it was not a huge surprise to see the little green lawn tractors in abundance. I found my mild southern accent and the rural Wisconsin accent do not always permit perfect ease of communication, though the issue was slight. I thought the folks we met were all great.
Most of the bird life I knew from seeing it here in Texas. Some birds, like the sparrows and American Goldfinch, winter where I live but Summer up there. I saw some Wisconsin birds we rarely see in Texas, like Gray Catbird, Tree Swallow and Sandhill Crane. Some of our birds do not live up there, like Scissortail Flycatcher and Northern Mockingbird. I enjoyed seeing all the variety of animals at the marsh. I always like seeing Bald Eagles, who are more rare in my part of Texas. The abundance of Wild Parsnip, a toxic-to-touch invasive plant, served to keep people on the trails. The whole terrain was post-glacial.
During our trip, I had with me my "travel" laptop. I like that its screen is a bit less than 12". When I travel, I read different ebooks. This trip, I finished Mrs. Oliphaunt's "Last of the Mortimers". I began Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "Paul Clifford". "Paul Clifford" is the fabled "It was a dark and lonely night" opening passage, to which a contest is now devoted. I knocked out the first 50 of its 1,000 epages, and look forward to the rest.
I read an appraisal of the Modi administration in India in an issue of The Economist. I went to Weight Watchers tonight. I gained two-tenths of a pound on vacation, which was a good result. I walked the Chisholm Trail on the way home.
Breakfast: toasted wheatfuls and skim milk
Lunch: turkey sandwich, vegetable soup and baked chips
Dinner: cube steak, sweet potato, salad
(cross-posted to DW because life is silly)
