Author Archives: admin

Devil’s Lake State Park

Posted on by

Over the weekend we visited Devil’s Lake State Park in Sauk County, Wisconsin. We drove up one evening, spent the night at a motel in Madison, and then the next morning continued on to the park, which is about 45 minutes to the northwest of the capital. After spending most of the day in the park, we drove home from there.

The closest town is Baraboo, which we last saw in 2007 — home of the delightful Circus World Museum. This time we drove by the museum. Even if we’d wanted to go again, which we didn’t, that wouldn’t have been possible. At least it’s still there. I hope Circus World manages to reopen sometime.

Devil’s Lake is a pleasant-looking, 360-acre lake with a couple of beaches and other lakeshore amenities, but those aren’t the main draw. What makes it the most popular Wisconsin state park are the Quartzite bluffs on two sides of the lake, east and west, relics of the most recent ice age. Rising to as high as 500 feet, they offer quite a view.

First, of course, you have to follow a trail that takes you up to those views. We picked the one on the east side of the lake, the fittingly named East Bluff Trail.
Devil's Lake State ParkUp it goes.
Devil's Lake State ParkI wondered what the people ahead of us were carrying on their backs — note the black and green rectangular packs. They turned out to be crash pads. For the sport, or activity, of bouldering. That is, climbing boulders. I knew people climb rock faces, but that was a variation I’d never heard of. Guess the people ahead of us were out for a day of bouldering. Takes all kinds.

I’ll bet Devil’s Lake SP is a good place for that. There are many, many boulders.Devil's Lake State ParkDevil's Lake State Park

Devil's Lake State Park

Like some other recent uphill hikes, it took me longer than the rest of the family. Rests were necessary. But I made it to various vistas.Devil's Lake State Park

Devil's Lake State Park

Devil's Lake State Park
There are a couple of named rock formations near the East Bluff Trail. One is the impressive Devil’s Doorway.
Devil's Lake State Park - Devil's Door
Looks solid, but surely the formation doesn’t have long to exist in geologic terms. Fleeting as a firefly on that scale. So is the whole bluff, come to think of it.

To provide a sense of scale.Devil's Lake State Park - Devil's Door

Near Devil’s Door, the East Bluff Trail meets the East Bluff Woods Trail, which has a much gentler slope. We returned via that trail.
Devil's Lake State Park
In June, the trail passes through a lush forest in the first flush of a septentrional summer. Past occasional fern fields.
Devil's Lake State Park
Do ferns consider flowering plants a pack of johnny-come-latelies? That’s the kind of deep-time thing I wonder about when wandering through a forest, dog-tired from climbing a Holocene-vintage bluff.

The National Museum of Denmark

Posted on by

Another example of somewhere I visited but don’t really remember: The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet). You could say that’s because I was there 37 years ago this month, which is a long time ago, but at roughly the same time, I visited the Carlsburg Brewery and Tivoli — the same day in the case of Tivoli — and I remember those fairly well.

Memory’s a slippery character. Here’s what I wrote at the time.

June 18, 1983

Walked [after breakfast] to the National Museum and spent a lot of time in the early Danish collections, a fine assortment of artifacts from pre-farmers (4000 BC) to the Vikings. They had a lot — tools, weapons, pots, clothes, ornaments, more. I noticed that much of the collection — seemed like nearly all of it — survived because it was buried with people.

Then I spent a long time ogling the coin collection, mostly the Roman ones. The museum had at least one example of every emperor and plenty of usurpers and others. I didn’t take as much time in the rest of the museum, but walked through. It is vast. Rooms and rooms and rooms of exhibits.

I left to eat lunch at a Chinese place, spring rolls with sauce and a heap of rice. After lunch I bought chocolate: Toblerone and Ritter Sport.

Those sound like ordinary chocolate purchases, and maybe they are now, but in those days Toblerone wasn’t available in every shop from here to East Jesus and my traveling companions and I had never heard of Ritter Sport. It was an important discovery for us that summer, somewhere in Germany a few weeks earlier. If you’re walking around all day, chocolate’s a good thing to have. Even better, it’s good to snack on high-quality choco like Ritter Sport. Best of all, it’s chocolate that I’ve enjoyed ever since it became available in the U.S. sometime in the late ’80s.

A Summer Thursday

Posted on by

Tomorrow is Juneteenth, which I’ve thought should be a holiday for years. I still do. Odds are it might be in some soon year.

Summer pic: a trumpeter swan family, who can be found at a pond near where I live.

Dame Vera Lynn has died at 103. I didn’t know she was still alive. I might not have known about her before I first saw this, many years ago, but I certainly did afterward.

Cherry Pickers for Rent

Posted on by

While walking the dog yesterday, we noticed a cherry picker parked on a neighboring street. A rental cherry picker. Big letters on the side said RENT ME, and provided an 800 number to call.

If I’d thought about it beforehand, I would have realized that rental cherry pickers existed. Of course they do. All kinds of equipment is for rent. Still, I thought it was a little funny. I’d only ever seen them in official use, such as by a city or town for needful repairs or tree-trimming along roads.

How about renting a cherry picker, not to do anything useful with it, but just to ride up and down and get a look around from treetop level? I mused out loud. Have your cousin Bob drive you around while you’re up top.

Lilly suggested that might be illegal. I allowed that it probably would be, besides being exceptionally dangerous. Something Florida Man might do, I continued, while good and drunk. And naked.

Cadillac Ranch Update &c.

Posted on by

How about that. I assume the top picture is more current than the bottom one, but not by much, despite the posting dates.


This is what the Cadillac Ranch looked like about two years ago.

As long as I’m posting tweets, which I might never do again, I might as well post this one.

Cleese continues to amuse.

Dundee Township East Cemetery

Posted on by

At the intersection of Dundee Ave. and Higgins Road (Illinois 25 and 72) is the 48-acre Dundee Township East Cemetery, owned by the township of that name, but also entirely within the village of West Dundee in Kane County. There’s no fencing or anything else to separate it from those fairly busy roads.
Dundee Township East Cemetery

We — that is, Ann and I — visited briefly on Saturday when we were out that way, which is northwest from where we live.

The cemetery dates from the 1890s, no doubt long before those adjacent roads were paved, though it’s possible that part of the future Illinois 72 had planks, since I understand much of its route follows the old Galena-Chicago Stagecoach Trail. These enthusiasts drove the trail’s modern-equivalent roads on a motorcycle. Not for me, but I’d consider using a car.

It’s a pleasant cemetery in the summer.Dundee Township East Cemetery
Dundee Township East Cemetery
Dundee Township East CemeteryIn an older section, there were a fair number of German names, and some German-language script on the stones. Here’s a fine German name: Schneidewendt, whose stone memorializes burials in the early 20th century.
Dundee Township East Cemetery
Not many mausoleums that I noticed, but there were a few. I expect a lot of the population in Dundee Township a century and some years ago were prosperous farmers, but not that prosperous.
Dundee Township East CemeteryWhoever The Family of Theodore Kunke were — that’s the text over the door — they had the scratch for a simple edifice.

Wat Phra That Hariphunchai

Posted on by

You’d think I’d remember Wat Phra That Hariphunchai in northern Thailand, near Chang Mai, better than I do. But after a quarter-century and then some, I don’t remember much, not like I recall the Wat Phra Kaew, home of the Emerald Buddha, in Bangkok.

But we were there in June ’94, during the few days when we stayed in Chang Mai, and took a few pictures. Such as of me, dwarfed by the main chedi.
Wat Phra That HariphunchaiBelow, the part of the temple known as Viharn Phra Chao Thunjai, according to this site, which has much more about the temple grounds, whose original stupa goes back to the 9th century, with a major expansions in the 11th and later centuries.Wat Phra That HariphunchaiThe bell tower.
Wat Phra That Hariphunchai
For whatever reason, we didn’t make an image of the temple’s distinctive, pyramid-shaped Pathumvadi Chedi, or the Ho Trai, which houses Buddhist scriptures.

Thursday Jumble

Posted on by

Intermittent rain and thunder on Tuesday and Wednesday, and some vigorous warm winds. Enough to randomize the arrangement of our deck chairs but not, fortunately, to move the cast iron deck table. Mostly, though, recent days have been clear and agreeably summerlike.

They’ve aged remarkably well.

Last weekend, we made it back to Spring Valley to see the Peony Field, now in full bloom.


Also noticed a Little Lending Library at Spring Valley. I think that’s new. It encourages one and all to Be a Good Human Today.Spring Valley Little Lending LibraryNot as full as the one on my street, but it had a few items, including a stack of booklets whose subject is Baha’i prayers. I took one for a look-see. In each are prayers for various occasions and situations, such as Aid and Assistance, Children, The Departed, Healing, Morning, Parents, Tests and Difficulties, and so on.

Later in the week, we got takeout from an Indian restaurant we visited, and liked, a few years ago. Been buying takeout locally ever other week or so since sit-down restaurants closed.
New Delhi Restaurant Schaumburg
We feasted on sang paneer, malai kofta, paneer bhurji, lamb bhoona — that was mine — along with garlic naanm, roti and jeera rice. All good.

Half-Assed Journey to Babel

Posted on by

Our most recent Star Trek episode was “Journey to Babel,” in which the Enterprise ferries a number of Federation delegates to a meeting, with murder and other danger in the offing. How long had it been since I’d seen that particular episode? More than 40 years? Probably. In this case, it was worse than I remembered.

Sure, we’re talking about a weekly TV show slapped together and broadcast without a care about anything beyond a rerun or two. The wonder is that some of them are as good as they are.

Still, I feel like grousing. Sometimes you should run with that feeling.

How is it that Kirk didn’t know his first officer’s father was an important figure in the Vulcan government? What kind of personnel records does Starfleet keep?

There’s no kind of surveillance on the Enterprise. During this episode at least. Do I remember right that the ship’s computer can, on request, find the location of a specific person on the ship? So how come there’s no record of a murder committed in one of the corridors?

How could the suicide mission ship be fooled so easily by the Enterprise playing possum? Also: a suicide mission. Man, that’s Al-Qaeda-level devotion to a cause that really boils down to facilitating smuggling and arms dealing. Well, that’s alien psychology for you.

Why wasn’t the blue alien with faux antennae who attacked Kirk in shackles when they brought him to the bridge? Aside from his known murderous tendencies, as a rule aliens on the bridge have an unfortunate habit of taking over the ship or otherwise causing trouble.

What was the point of his attacking Kirk anyway? We got to see Kirk going mano-a-mano against a knife-carrying blue alien — guess that was the point.

In sick bay, Spock had something important to communicate to the captain, but McCoy rudely knocks him out instead of, you know, giving him a communicator —

Why didn’t Sarak seek treatment on Vulcan in the first place? Turns out it wasn’t a surprise medical condition (except to his wife) so he left on an important diplomatic mission knowing full well he could fall deathly ill in a place where treatment was no certain thing — where’s the logic in that?

When Spock has his dramatic confrontation with his mother, he goes on at length about needing to be in command right now, this very moment, something he’s manifestly not doing. Why wasn’t he on the bridge?

What’s the deal with Vulcan-human mating anyway? How could that possibly work, even within the not-very-consistent confines of the show?

I wanted to see more quarreling among the delegates. Kirk made a big deal about how they were at each other’s throats, but mostly they seemed pretty mellow at that cocktail party. The belligerent pig-men mixing it up with the gold-skinned dwarfs would have been a thing to see.

Social Zoom

Posted on by

A first on Sunday afternoon: social Zoom. Old friends of mine and I gathered together, remotely. I’d only ever used it for work.

Lilly dropped in for a few minutes. The spouses of my friends, who are also friends of mine, were on hand most of the time as well; I didn’t do a screen capture until just before we signed off. Not as much fun as a visit in person, but enjoyable anyway.