Last days in the USA for 2016

Dwight Peck's personal website

Scenes from northern Wisconsin, summer 2016

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 in the USA for 2016

"The boys" on their hydrobikes, Oscar, Rob, and Dwight, 1 September 2016 (photo by Cathy)

Our once-a-year "suite" in the Jefferson Street Inn in Wausau, Wisconsin. The annual Birds in Art exhibition, featuring winners of each year's global competition, at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in town and the festive mass dinner for hundreds of boosters, as well as the winning artists themselves, right here in the hotel.

And after the crowded exhibition of fabulous paintings and sculptures at the Museum, and whilst one of us is enjoying the mass dinner on an upper floor of the hotel with friends and relatives, the other of us is enjoying an enormous hamburger with trimmings in the City Grill on the ground floor (where every previous year there's been an American football game on over the lovely bar (this year he got people buying up disused houses at auction in Texas and renovating them for resale!)). All very convenient.

The line-up at the Woodson Museum -- when the doors open, there's a rush to line up to buy postcard size works by the participating artists, a work of charity for the museum.

Naturally, the "insiders" are already in there, picking out the best stuff in a leisurely manner; but never mind.

Bird sculptures while we wait

It's for the acoustics.

Every year, in coordination with the Birds in Art festival, the town of Wausau suits up for a city-wide arts and crafts market on the following day. This photo is from 2014, as we skipped it this year for the first time.

Back to the lake for the last few days, and then . . .

Squirrel in Minneapolis (where the next day, United Airlines decided to skip the flight to D.C. after we were already cosily nestled into our seats, with the Squirrel snoozing in her carrier pack at our feet, and we fetched up in Chicago instead).

A bracing walk around the retirement village

"Village" in the loosest sense of the word

That's a purple martin (Progne subis) birdhouse, as we know from our recent lessons at Goose Pond.

More of the village

We're just stopping in to pick up a few items.

Items not easily located at first, until you catch on to the organizing principles.

A working lunch in downtown Leesburg, Virginia, along the Potomac River

The Lightfoot Restaurant, named after Francis Lightfoot Lee, who signed the US Declaration of Independence and who passed a colonial bill in 1757 renaming the town from George Town (after King George III) to Leesburgh after his own dad Thomas Lee.

Elegantly established in the former Peoples National Bank, built in 1888.

All of the Loudoun County courthouses are roundabout, but that is apparently now the Loudoun County Humane Society headquarters, with a fond memorial to the Confederate soldiers who fell patriotically in the numerous Civil War battles found round here in their war against the USA. Erected in 1908.

-- The drivers are approaching the starting line now.

Overcome by a sudden craving for an organic green apple . . .

Prayers for Victory in Spiritual Warfare ("It's Not Too Late", oh thank goodness!) [And "30 days to Taming Your Tongue" -- huh?]

And so we're off from the USA for another year, 15 September 2016.

(Not exactly 15 September 2016 -- at Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., United Airlines decided to skip the flight to Geneva after we were already cosily nestled into our seats, with the Squirrel snoozing in her carrier pack at our feet, and we fetched up back at Marbeth's again at about midnight. So, in the end, we're off from the USA for another year, 16 September 2016.)