Fall Clean up and a Road Trip...

Last Tuesday, the 13th, was our anniversary... 14 years and yet it seems like only yesterday. To celebrate, we took the truck on a road trip to the eastern edge of northern Wisconsin, almost to the Michigan border. We spent the day exploring the towns of Manitowish Waters, Mercer and Presque Isle. Just to keep this motorcycle related, I was also looking for possible motorcycle routes to ride next spring.

A caboose and a big loon in Mercer...

Manitowish Waters is a cool small town with interesting shops, and it's the starting area of 47 miles of paved bicycle trails. At Rest Lake, the big lake right in the middle of town, there were bicycle racks with free loaner bikes and a nice city park.

Bike/walking trail...

When dinner time approached, we headed to the Little Bohemia Lodge to eat.

I had a very nice chicken parmesan and Nancy had a thick boneless pork chop. The lodge has a great history including a shoot out between the John Dillinger gang and the FBI led by Melvin Purvis. The lodge has newspapers from the 1930's hanging on the walls telling the story of the shoot out. Check out the Little Bohemia Lodge's web site history page. It's a great read.

Bullet holes in the dinning room wall...

I made another batch of jalapeno jelly and we made 2 batches of salsa using my old recipe from the 1990's when I had my last garden...

Today has been the coolest so far this fall. The high was only 41 and it's expected to get down to 25 tonight.

I spent most of the day outside. I made a compost bin out some large pallets and started to load it with garden debris.

The Last of the Great Color for 2015...

From here on out the color in our area will be past it's prime. The wind today is knocking a heck of a lot of leaves off the trees!

The weather forecasters are predicting upper 70's for tomorrow, but by the middle of the week the highs will be in the mid 40's with over night lows well into the freezing range.

So, to give us something to remember when the howling winds of winter are piling the snow drifts taller than my truck, Nancy and I went for a ride in the woods. We found lots of fall color, and had a great time doing it...

Out in the Chequamegon National Forest we came across a bridge over a small stream...

We were having such a good time, I snapped a dorky selfie... We both got a good laugh over this.

One last fall picture...

I'll ride when I can but tomorrow we're going to try and go kayaking one last time.

Still Searching for Fall Color...

I was out riding a little the last week, looking for color. But no matter where I rode to try and find it, I couldn't beat the colors in my own yard!

Last week, Drummond Lake, north of me about 15 minutes...

I also followed a couple of the "fall color tour routes" that are shown on the local Cable area web site, but the color just wasn't there yet...

We've had frosty temps just about every night for a week now and that has really brought out the color!

This morning in my yard...

By the garden... The tomatoes covered to protect from last night's 29 degree temps.

At the end of the driveway, looking left and right...

The Travel Wisconsin web site has their Fall Color Report page up and running. They say that next week will probably be peak color for the local area. I'll be sure to do some riding and some bike and color pictures. Stand by.