In Your Own Backyard

Blogging has kind of taken a backseat lately.  As I said before, I don't have a lot of new stuff to blog about.  I pretty much do and make the same things over and over again.  I still make boiled eggs in my pressure cooker twice a week, I make bone broth at least once a month, I make a pitcher of decaf iced tea every other day, I make bread when needed and prepare anything else we want or need, I knit and read books.   Life is pretty darn good, and I have written about most of it.  The only thing that really disturbs me is the news and the lack of respect I see wherever I look.  A lot of people are mean and self serving but they can't even see it in themselves, so I won't go into that.  It won't change things.

Being retired allows us to do most anything we feel like.  Every now and then we take a little ride.  We are so fortunate to be able to see some wild Whooping Cranes in our area.  We have seen adult cranes who spend their summers nearby and some young ones who are learning the ropes and will hopefully learn to migrate to Florida soon.

There are 7 young cranes and 2 adults eating from a harvested corn field.

These are two young birds.  They still have some brown coloring.

One of these cranes is Henry.  He is 5 years old and comes back every year.  He has taken a year old bird under his wing.

The past weekend was cold and rainy, but today we had gorgeous weather.  We decided to take a little ride to see if the rain had destroyed the fall color.  We headed north toward Stevens Point, WI.  Since we live 45 to 60 minutes in any direction from a nice sized town, we decided to go this direction today.  The fall color map for Wisconsin said the color in that area was at 75%.  As we traveled along, we saw a tree now and then that was pretty, but nothing spectacular.  We crossed the Wisconsin River and saw some slightly pretty views, but the trees looked like a lot of leaves had already fallen.

Slightly past this railroad trestle we decided that the trees were getting past peak color, and we decided to head back home.  We could see a large factory in the distance so we headed in that direction.  When we got there we saw the factory was a cheese factory and it had a retail store attached.  We got out to see what they had.  They had a lot of merchandise plus all kinds of cheese.  The name was Mullins Cheese.  It was near the town of Knowlton, Wisconsin.  We bought some brick cheese which was on special and fresh white cheese curds.  Needless to say, we opened the curds in the parking lot.  They were super squeaky.    http://www.mullinscheese.com/about-us-66445

From here we continued back to Stevens Point.  Even though we had plenty of cheese curds, we felt we needed to eat lunch.  It was already 2:00 so we stopped at a Panera Bread.   It was delicious.  We changed our route home slightly because we were still hoping for some beautiful colors.  No such luck.  It is still quite green in our area.  Maybe we will have our chance yet.

Just as the sun was going down, I saw the best view of the day.  It was right outside our window.  The marsh was already in the shadows, but the sun was shining on the trees on the horizon.   The trees looked golden, and they reflected in the water.  I traveled 100 miles today, and the best view was in my own backyard.