Upsettingly, we were VERY on time this morning as far as getting out of the condo and on the road. We left pretty much RIGHT when we needed to...until we realized we had to stop for gas and cheese curds. So we should have left an hour and a half EARLIER. That would have set our day perfectly, but alas. We are poor planners.
Well.
We made our way to Woodman's, and hunted out our glorious cheeses. And glorious cheese is exactly what we got.
CHEESE.
A true embarrassment of cheesy riches, what are we supposed to do with all of these choices???? BUY ALL OF THE CHEESE??? Oh. Yeah. Yes. That's the obvious answer. My mistake.
Oh, America.
When your husband wants a snacking cheese, you get a block of muenster. We snack in ways that defy god and nature, taunting the laws of common decency and decorum. Those rules are not for us, we cry as we tear off chunks of cheese with our teeth, the crumbs of lesser bits tumbling off onto our shirts. We eat cheese as gods of old, without reservation, fear, or fork.
I wanted this to be MY snacking cheese, but I cannot recall if I got it or not. It sounds fucking delightful.
HEY.
In our defense...
So we normally do a big charcuterie board for NYE. Tradition every year. I never ask for presents for myself, I ask for gift cards so I can go balls out on cheeses every year. Last year we spent an impressive 600 dollars on our NYE charcuterie board, and it was EPIC.
Being in Wisconsin...the cheese state of the midwest...we had easy access to all of the yummiest cheeses at ridiculous prices. We ended up buying several pounds of cheese and amish butter for 100 bucks, and all of this would normally cost us at least 300. Straight from the source for the win!
On to our bigger aim:
Milwaukee. Which is Algonquin for "the good land".
Our first stop was at Klode Park. It wasn't as cold out as I thought it was going to be, but it was fairly nippy. And I was a little upset, because I had to pee, and there wasn't a restroom in sight. Well. Not a "civilized" bathroom. I ended up popping a squat in a rock formation. You'll see!
The first little place I went looking for rocks, and I didn't turn up much, but the waves really reinforced how much I had to fucking pee.
I met up with Derek at this little rock bunch. While he was wandering the shoreline, I was climbing around the rocks. Until he told me I wasn't supposed to do that. Oops! But I also am guilty of needing to pee REALLY fucking bad. Like, I deeply had to pee. Urgent. Emergency.
So here is a shot of my husband, inside of the rock hole I pissed in not two minutes after this photo. Turns out we're both disrespectful heathens.
Derek, seen here ignoring my calls to move on to the next beach spot.
It took an additional twenty minutes for him to stop hunching over and to get in the car so we could move on to our next location.
All of my rocks so far!!
We drove over to Doctor's Park, and it ended up being our last rock hounding spot for this trip.
It was really pretty! And still pretty cold, but at Klode I made the bold choice to take off my flippies and walk around in the water, which wasn't as cold as I assumed it was going to be, but also wasn't even close to fuckin' decent. It was pretty fucking cold. And I wanted to wade out for better rocks, so I had to put on my wellies.
Derek and I wandered up the first path for about a quarter mile until I realized we weren't really making our way to the beach, we were just...moseying AROUND. We walked back the way we came, and discovered that we needed to take the path that went down and away from the parking lot. So we toddled downwards like the old fuddy duddies we are.
This shit sucked going back up to the car. It LOOKS flat, but it's actually a pretty steep uphill climb. I was breathing embarrassingly harder than I would have assumed, given how much cardio I do every day, but there I was, huffing and puffing. But that's not this part of the beach adventure. That's a later Drea problem.
Well. It certainly isn't as pretty as Klode at the waterfront, but the water was also cloudier and choppier, so it also has those things counting against it.
We had a really great time looking for rocks, though!! Derek was all about the yooperlites on Lake Superior, and here he was all about crinoids and fossils. I was just after rocks that I thought looked pretty. And I found a glut.
I found TWO death plates and a big ass crinoid clump, and so many other pretty little rocks. A very successful rock adventure, if I do say so myself! And I do.
I had to pee again, and because it's winter, the facilities here for pottying were closed for the season. As if bladders give a shit. Anyway the moral of the story is, I walked all the way to the bathrooms, found them to be locked until spring, and then pissed all over the walls like a feral cat. I showed them!
Derek and I decided we actually wanted to go to Kimchi Pop 2 for lunch in Chicago, so we looked up the hours....closed until 5:30. We found another place with a reportedly delicious kimchi pancake, put it in the GPS, and were dismayed to see it was an almost three hour drive to Chicago. So we switched course, found a grocery store, bought snacks, and drove immediately home.
In some very dense fog. Again.
But we made it in one piece! And we had so much fun rockhounding, and we were so sad to not get to spend more time on Lake Superior that we have been planning a trip back out there before we leave Missouri. We ALMOST booked a trip for the end of December, but thought better against it because the weather would probably be ass.
So there we go! Our ten year anniversary trip was an all around success.
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