Journey up the river

Last night Anita pointed out a 4×10 ft canvas of mussels and other shells in the area that she had on the wall. This morning as we prepared to leave she gave us a beautiful mussel shell with both side attached by a strip of ribbon so that it falls open easily in your hand. What a special parting gift!

We stopped at Pikes Peak, a state park, for what turned out to be a brief hike. Scenery was gorgeous but we decided to skip the longer trail and head for a Mississippi river boat tour.

We spent an hour and a half on the Mississippi with an excellent captain who shared a lot of information about history, commerce, and wildlife on the river. There were very few people on the boat so it was easy to move around and take pictures. It was interesting to hear about a joint project between US Fish and Wildlife, Wisconsin DCR, and Army Corp of Engineers to dredge parts of the river and restore one of the islands. I like it when my tax $$s do good stuff like that! We saw a 15 barge chain of grain containers being pushed down the river. It’s something like 900 semi trucks worth of grain! We also saw a lot of recreational traffic from jet boats to fisherman in quiet coves. There is some private property in the wildlife refuge on the banks of the river that dates back to the homesteading era; now accessible only by boat. Most people sold when the government bought the land to establish the refuge. The menu is from a boat-in supper club when there were many more residences on the river.

There was a serious photographer on the tour. He apparently does boat tours along this area of the Mississippi on a frequent basis since the captain welcomed him back and asked if he was headed to another tour downstream later in the afternoon. As we were getting off the boat he told the captain that he would see him next month. This info is all in aid of telling the story of the bald eagles and their nest which the photographer and the captain had quite a long discussion about – and which they kindly pointed out to the non-birders aboard. You can see one of the two eagle chicks (non-fledglings, since they are still too young to fly) above the very large nest in the tree. There was a second chick further down the tree. The average number of chicks hatched by bald eagles is 1.8. They had seen only one chick at first, but about a week later they saw the second one. They have decided to name the first chick “one” and the second one “point eight”. (Hey, it seemed quite funny at the time, but now that I’m writing this it may have been the heat that made it seem humorous.)

We had a very nice lunch in McGregor. The Main Street is only 3 or 4 blocks long, but all of the buildings are quite old but well maintained, with a lot of small shops and restaurants.

We did a quick stop at Effigy Mounds National Monument and made it down a boardwalk trail for as long as we had shade. It is really, really hot today! This is the bench where we sat in the shade and opted not to continue on the unshaded path and over the bridge; although Tom did walk far enough to take a picture of the bridge. On the walk back a doe walked across the path in front of us and then bolted up into the woods as we pulled out our phones to take a picture. As we continued along the trail we saw two fawns looking for their mother – but they headed for cover in some tall grass when they spotted us.

We pulled in to La Crosse around 5 and stopped at a great coop grocery store. We’re finally at that point when we can resume standard road rhythm with big salads at home for dinner, our own coffee and steel cut oats in the morning. We’re still traveling with plenty of kitchen supplies and we’ll use them all! We have 3 nights here in a great airbnb. The host who we will probably not meet seems to have a lot in common with us: much coffee making equipment, some of the same cookbooks, a dryer ball in the dryer and a biking enthusiast. Tomorrow we hit the trails!