VACATION – Shaky Knees Sunday

(In a  bit I will tell you why I titled that on today’s blog)

 

We woke up to sunshine, (again) but quite chilly…. the dogs let us sleep in till 8 am and it was only 41 degrees out there, so I imagine it was a lot colder during the night.  I laid around in my jammies this morning till almost noon!  Steve was putzing with things, and I was catching up on emails and posting yesterday’s blog.

We made a treat of a breakfast with eggs, ham and hashbrowns… not  too often  that we do that, but for once a month I guess we can splurge for Steve’s sake.  We sat around outside in the sun for a while, warming up and enjoying the crispness of the day. 

 

I wanted to post a picture of the great entrance sign to this park.. part of the park is in Indian Reservation lands… and they made this great sign for the park entrance to resemble arrowheads.  This sign is very large and eye catching.  About 8-10 ft. tall.

In this large state park is an observation tower… let me preface this next part by saying

 I HATE HEIGHTS!!!  I repeat --  I HATE HEIGHTS!!!  

When I was painting my house in Green Bay or staining the house in Oconto, no matter how much I tried to convince myself that I was only one step higher on the ladder, once I reached the second story windows, I could not convince myself to go one step further!  My knees would shake and that was that. 

Sooooooo guess what I did?

 

YES! 

I made it all 100 steps to the top!!! 

That is open air behind us, not panes of glass.  So you can reach out with a camera and take pics down below.  (I couldn’t look down, but the camera did it for me)

This would have been a great time for a panoramic camera!  

I did video tape it all around, and Steveio ducked as I panned it past his head. 

 

A father and his daughter came up behind us…

she wasn’t scared, she was just pooped and sat down for a bit.

 

Now, the way down was wayyyyy worse! 

Because when you go up, you can look up and ahead.  But when you go DOWN--- well, you have to look at your feet and then you must see beyond them to the ground below!

Here is the First Step Down……

  

With each step you take, the ground seems to move in the background, especially in your peripheral vision even if you are trying to not look at it.  Then the vertigo sets in... waves of dizziness and shaking knees is NOT a good combination.  I slowly came back down, step by step, with Steveio ahead of me in case I tumbled.  The stairs were steeper than household stair treads, so coming down, they were even more narrow --- To clear your heel, you had to put some of your toe more forward off the next step to go down.  So your foot was not planted firmly on each step down, just the back half of the foot.  Not a reassuring feeling.  But I did it!  

Once we reached the bottom, I had to sit a while as the adrenaline rush ran it’s course.  Here is the path back to the parking lot.  Such a lovely view---  and much nicer because both of my feet were on terra firma!

Once we were down, and the father and his daughter came down too, then two young college aged boys raced up the stairs… oh to have that energy!   As we were walking down the path in the woods back to the Tracker, we could hear them whooping it up big time up there.  Do you think they were peeing off the top?  I bet most young men and boys (and maybe a few older ones) can’t resist that urge when left un-observed.  Geeeesh!

It was a blessing to set back into the seat in the Tracker, and try to stop the shaking knees.

So now you know why I titled today’s post as such.   Did anyone notice my cute daily blog names this past week?

Sunday on Superior

Monday Monday

Tuesday Tourings

Wednesday Wanderings Weaving Windshield and Wanoka

Thursday Thunderstorms

Friday Fruitless and Fruitful

Sunshiny Saturday

 

We drove down to the equestrian campground area… there were quite a few rigs with horses tied up all over… some had feed bags, some had water buckets.  Many of the rigs were long trailers with campers in the front portions and horse trailers in the back half.  Some were motorhomes towing long horse trailers with 4 horses and gear.  Quite the setup for horseycamping.  We had seen the palomino earlier on a trail, what a lovely horse!

After that adventure, we came back to the campsite to start up some late lunch / early dinner. 

First we took out my Easy Bake Oven (really a Coleman Instastart Oven)  and I whipped up a pan of brownies – that is why we bought those $4 eggs yesterday.  Haha.   Baked them nicely and set aside to cool off for dessert later.

For my new readers, just so you know, our motorhome came without any propane oven.  There is only a micro/convection combo unit.  Not only does it bake unevenly, but it requires 50 amp power to work correctly, if at all.  Seems when on 30 amp it bakes worse and makes a funny noise.    And since we are in a rustic site in the State Park,  I am not about to run my generator for hours on end to bake brownies and then a turkey, and then biscuits.  So we *adapt* and bought this cute Coleman Instastart Oven.  It works GREAT!!!

This morning I had thawed out a frozen turkey breast, and plopped it in the pressure cooker for 20 minutes.  Then we put it in the Easy Bake Oven to brown up…followed by a pan of biscuits.  Added a nice salad, some mashed potatoes and the rest of our bottle of wine.  We feasted like kings, I tell ya!

 

Letting that settle for a bit, I finished knitting my dish cloth…. now Steveio can do the dishes!    (I packed along enough underwear for 2 weeks, but not enough dishcloths!)

I took out my spinning wheel and worked on some lovely alpaca/llama/wool blend and spun for a while in the gorgeous sunshine.  I asked Steve to snap a few pics so you know what I mean.

 

See the lovely grey and brown natural fibers as they slip through my fingers and twist into yarn… they are ultra soft and sooooo pretty!   You have to be a Fiberholic to understand.

It was sooo peaceful.   Spinning wheels are so relaxing and comforting.  The easing of the fibers through the fingers is mesmerizing.  It can almost put you to sleep. The folks next to us had moved out, as did the couple across the way with the barking dog.  I would say about 1/3 of campsites are now empty.  All in all, this has been one of the quietest and cleanest state parks we have been in.  Very relaxing.

 

We took a lap around the park with the dogs one more time, and came across the momma and two fawns again.  This time they were about 20 feet away and saw us standing there with 2 dogs!  The momma snorted and both babies dashed into the bushes and laid down, and she stood nearby as we slowly walked around on the road.  Then they all flicked their tails and dashed off into the woods.  Of course, no camera~!

I did snap this one earlier in the day of a female when we were going to the tower…

 

We made two laps to wear off the tryptophan effect of the turkey, but we came right back to the campsite to chow down on a chocolate brownie!  LOL

Time to download the pics from the camera and get them posted on the blog.  Still working on the weaving museum shots from Wednesday. That is going to be a three part blog post when I get it all done!

 

 

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