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.

Jalapeno Jelly!

I used up some of the smaller jalapenos today. Nancy and I made a batch of jalapeno jelly. It turned out very nice, with a good amount of heat! Except now the whole house smells like jalapenos.

So far this fall we've made

6 quarts of tomato juice.
6 half pint jars of chokecherry jelly
6 half pint jars of blackberry jelly
6 half pint jars of jalapeno jelly
5 pounds of frozen tomatillos
5 two cup, bags of frozen, shredded zucchini. Enough for 10 loaves of bread!
several bags of dried herbs, parsley, dill, and chives.

There's a lot more to go. I think I have over 40 pounds of tomatoes to can, many, many pounds of tomatillos to freeze, lots of onions yet to harvest, green beans to pick, sunflowers to feed to the birds.....

I won't be canning tomorrow, I go in for cataract surgery on my left eye. I should be home before noon... I'll just supervise Nancy!

A Pre Frost Harvest...

The weather forecasters keep changing the expected low temp for tonight, and now the projected low is 32 deg F. Not quite the 14" of snow Richard's expecting.

A little too cold for our tomatoes and tomatillos, so I just did a small pre-frost harvest.

This is about 1/4 of the tomatoes, the rest are still green...

This pile of tomatillos doesn't look that big, but it's more than any of the local grocery stores ever keep on hand. It's had to tell, but I think this is maybe maybe 1/4 of what's left in the garden, plus there's 5 pounds of them in the freezer already. This is my first time ever growing them and I can't believe what an aggressive spreader they are.

My jalapenos. I'm disappointed, not in the quantity, but ain their size. I'll have to do some tree removal this winter and try to get more day light and eliminate some of the shadows in the garden...

I'm happy with the monofilament fishing line deer fence! I've had a trail cam pointed on the garden for a while now and the deer never try to enter it, just walk around it.

Nancy's not home yet and the temp keeps dropping. I'll have everything ready and we'll get things covered up as soon as she's home!
I think we'll be busy canning and freezing for the next few days.

I Went Searching for Fall Color...

... and found some nice motorcycle roads. I left home at noon and headed east on CR-M, a few miles later I was riding through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Just a few hundred feet before the town of Clam Lake, I turned north on CR-GG. The county has chip sealed and painted it recently and it's in great shape as motorcycle roads go.

Along the way I found some nice colors and got the required motorcycle picture...

Two miles from the town of Mellen...

Town of Mellen Memorial Park...

From Mellen I went south on WI-13 to the town of Glidden. The town has the title of "The Black Bear Capital of the World" because of a record setting bear killed near there in 1963. A mount of the bear is on public display just off the main street in a rock and glass enclosure.

Established 1876.

I left Glidden and back tracked 3 miles to the junction of WI-13 and WI-77. WI-77 is also known as the National Forest Great Divide Scenic Byway. I took 77 west through Clam Lake. There's an experimental heard of elk in the area that are part of a University of Wisconsin program to re-introduce elk to the area...

I turned left onto CR-S. The 10 mile section of county road S has the potential to be an awesome motorcycle road, it just needs to be totally resurfaced. It's been patched and repaired but it will pound you to pieces if you travel it at the 45 MPH speed limit. In the few sections that aren't too bad, there are tar snakes everywhere, both the kind that run parallel to the road and perpendicular. They make cornering a challenge.

County Road S...

When CR-S ended at CR-B, I turned right onto B. I stayed on that until I went left on CR-CC. County road CC is a very nice road that takes you through the Chippewa Flowage. In several places the road is running right along side the water...

One side of the road...

The other...

CR-CC took me to CR-N and on to CR-E. E is A very nice road, running right past and up close to both Grindstone and Spring Lakes. All of the area is part of the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation.

Spring Lake...

From there, it was a short ride out to CR-K, then north up to US-63, to Cable and back home. 151 miles and 3.5 hours

There are several more roads I want to ride... as long as the weather holds out!