Pork's - climb or stand?

July 14, 2006 (12:03pm).
78º F, Cloudy, SW wind 2 mph.

Good afternoon,

The temperature above really belies the feel of the weather. It feels very hot and humid. Sounds like this will be about the lowest high temperature for the next week. There is a band of rain to our west, heading north. We don’t expect to be wet from it, other than the associated humidity covering us. If the wind would switch to the SE, the temperature and humidity should drop, but I don’t think the wind will shift. We could use some rain however. Nice and slow.

We had a real event north of us in Door County, Ellison Bay, on Monday. Apparently there was a gas explosion in a tourist cabin, literally blowing it to pieces. Two parents from lower Michigan on vacation were killed and three of their four children very seriously injured. A maintenance building also was damaged by a separate explosion, as was a historic grocery store, nearly a block away, totally destroyed. There also were 10 other seriously injured and hospitalized. At first the explosions were blamed on a natural gas line leak, since the store was about a block from the cabin and the maintenance building in between. WPS, the natural gas supplier for this part of the state, said otherwise, as their pipelines end at Sturgeon Bay, about 40 miles south of Ellison Bay. I kind of knew there was no natural gas up there, so thought it might have been a sewer gas explosion, traveling down the sewer line. Yesterday, they found a LP gas line that had been cut during some construction about a week ago that no one knew about. They, at this point, know how or if that is the reason for the other two explosions. Most of the town has been evacuated for most of the time since the explosions and fires. The main highway, #42, is also closed until further notice until they remove the grocery store and figure out how this happened.

The Porcupine Mountain State Park has a unique way of identifying various things in the park. A very heavy duty, silhouette of a porcupine climbing a slanted log, on which the necessary information is posted. I really thought it was a cool idea! I guess Margriet had a bit of a problem with the second picture - she couldn’t figure out if the porcupine was on the log or standing next to it!

For what ever reason, we left our park maps in the restaurant after eating breakfast. We did manage to find our way to the park entrance by guess and by gosh, then picked up new, better, ones at the registration office. Also parted with the $8.00 entrance fee. The park is very well taken care of and really in good shape. Of course I would like to see it more natural, but with the number of folks visiting, they need to control them.

We really had good meals along the way. We are finding that it works best for us to grab a pretty good breakfast and then supper from a restaurant. Most of the "continental breakfasts" served in most of the motels, chain or Mom and Pop, are usually not worth it. If the motel has a good one, we are not about to pass up a free meal! Breakfast is also the cheapest meal of the day. One morning I had some Italian sausage with my eggs and hash-browns, which were excellent. I haven’t had sausage that good in a very long time if ever. Usually they make them rather spicy, but these were just right. For some reason, our suppers turned out to be a "Mexican" theme. Not sure why, but we both had a similar craving, All were good. Our noon "meal" is more of a reason to get out and move around some. Usually we will have some kind of cracker or bread product with sausage, hard-cooked eggs, or cheese. Nothing fancy and not too filling as we are doing mostly sitting. More like fulfilling a habit!

In the cupboard we keep some of our linens in, I found a pile of mouse poison in among the dish towels. It must have been there for some time, as we hadn’t put much out since October I think. It must have really been stocking up for winter! So Margriet got a bit of exercise cleaning the cabinet and washing the linens. Since she had been so busy the day before doing the laundry, &c. I told her to take yesterday off and I would prepare the meals, &c. I did that, but had not expected the mouse poison episode. I did build breakfast, lunch, and dinner though, even washing the dishes afterwards. Bacon and eggs for breakfast; avocado salad for lunch, and a macaroni/Kielbasa salad for dinner. And I have clean hand to boot! We have found that splitting an avocado for lunch is about right for us old folks. They were on sale at the store, so for about 25¢ is the cost of a meal for each of us. Not too many dishes either.

With the humidity today, there will not be a bunch accomplished, other than Margriet has taken the bedding off and washed it. Sure do hope it dries before we try to sleep! I have been playing with cutting lawn too, but that is in short spurts.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><