Road trip to Virginia, 2015

Dwight Peck's personal website

Scenes from northern Wisconsin, summer 2015

More annual lakeside fun in the Northwoods

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

Last days on the lake, and on to Virginia

Tracy Hames, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, joins Kristin for a short study tour across the lake to assess the environmental effects of some wetland infilling in progress.

There had been an open channel along the lakeshore here, sealed off at both ends over the years and, to the A-frame's new owners, unsightly.

So they've filled it in . . .

. . . their end of it anyway, and clearcut the hillside behind the house for a parking area.

So there's been some interest in the neighborhood about the potential environmental effects of these improvements, and since Tracy was in the area anyway, he agreed to join us for a brief tour of the site . . .

. . . with a diagnostic circuit round the whole lake for some free conservation advice from an expert.

The last few days on the lake, another look at the eagles' nest of the Adjidaumo island . . .

. . . no less impressive this time.

The back bay by the boathouse, with what's left of a huge tree that fell in off the shore five years ago

The fateful day, 23 August 2010, when this was all (at that time) dry land

Not much left of it now

We're off tomorrow for Birds in Art at the Yawkey-Woodson Art Museum in Wausau.

Road Trip to the East Coast

After an edifying Birds in Art exhibition in Wausau and a beatific solo pub dinner downstairs in the Jefferson Street Inn, watching an American football game on the TV (a once-a-year treat), whilst all of the other Bird/Art celebrants were getting through a state dinner upstairs, we're all packed up and ready to set off in a hired car for Points East.

Chicago, Illinois, which need not detain us. We're looking for the La Quinta inn south of Indianapolis, Indiana -- they take pets there.

Even pets like The Squirrel, who, in unfamiliar places, runs and hides, and who thinks this is hiding.

The next day, we're in Summersville, West Virginia, about 95km east of Charleston

On the Muddlety Creek trail

Summersville has a huge and beautiful lake nearby and has become a popular resort, but we've only got time for an hour's stroll down . . . The Muddlety Creek, near our La Quinta inn on the highway.

This long part of the creek is privately owned by a proud and amiable gentleman operating a sawmill as we passed, who was pleased to pass on the history and virtues of the creek (e.g., produced the first electrification in the region) at great length.

Back past the sawmill towards the La Quinta

Beautiful Summersville (actually just the part of it out by Highway 19) from the La Quinta

Now we're taking scenic back roads, Highway 50 near the Monongahela National Forest, looking eastward at the Appalachian and Allegheny mountains, towards Winchester, Virginia . . .

. . . to our friend Marbeth's condo in Leesburg.

We're out for a walk around the perimeter (inside the fence) of this huge gated community, setting out under the gaze of another nature enthusiast similarly stuck inside the fence.

A pleasant walk around the perimeter of this condo farm is not quickly done.

The community called Lansdowne Woods lies just east of Leesburg, poised for easy access to Dulles International Airport, which was probably named for the aggressive Cold War freakish hawk under Eisenhower rather than for his kid brother, Allen, who destroyed democracy in Iran under Mossadeq in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954, but was sacked after his Bay of Pigs invasion gang all agley.

Condos sprouting up even as we speak

We're three quarters of the way around, whew.

A family of little tick-bearing friends, similarly prevented like us from disturbing the patrons of

The Golf Club at Lansdowne

Gazing wistfully at the golfers and other sportsmen

And signaling farewell, subtly, as tomorrow we tacitly honor Mr Dulles by passing through his airport to come home -- but which is at least less embarrassing than having to pass through the "Ronald Reagan National Airport" nearby.