Short night last night, as I was up late working on the blog, and then Lucky decided to get up about 4:00 am. After some yelling on my part, she went back to sleep for one whole hour when I final gave up and took her for a walk. After the walk, she fell right back asleep, while I was up long enough to see the sunrise about 5:08 am. Finally I got back to sleep for a couple of hours, but I only got 6 hours and 10 minutes of sleep according to my Fit Bit.
We set off for town around Noon in search of food, but we just happened to pass an Alpaca fiber and apparel store. In fact, the owner has raised Alpacas for their fiber since he was 14 years old. At age 15 he started selling yarn at local craft fairs, and he has parlayed that into a store today. He still makes the fiber into yarn and sells it. The clothing in the store was almost all made of Alpaca, and some of the clothing was actually made by his mother who happened to be tending the store today. The Admiral fell in love with this unique hooded long coat, which if it had fit better would be sitting somewhere on Lucky Us at this very moment. For my part I purchased her a much more modest item made of Alpaca as a Christmas gift. Wish me luck in trying to "hide" it on the boat for the next 4 months or so...
This morning I worked on the blog while the admiral did wash and cleaned the head (bathroom). Not a very exciting morning, but then we set off in search of food about Noon, and things quickly looked up. We settled on Summertime Restaurant and Loft. The building is one of the oldest and most architecturally unique buildings in Fish Creek (photo at right). We had our choice and picked eating outside. It was warm and sunny plus we had not just finished spending hours outside on the boat travelling. Usually after a travel day, I want to eat inside in air conditioned comfort, but today was different.
Here we are just having been served our lunches. I chose perch that were lightly battered and fried along with french fries and cole slaw. In my own modest opinion I made an excellent choice as the perch were very moist and tender. In fact it was the best perch that I have had on the trip so far. A lot of the perch that I have had so far were heavily battered, and the fish taste was minimal. In fact in one restaurant I actually scraped the batter off of one side of each fillet to get a little more of the fish taste... The Admiral had a lobster and crab salad that not only looked great, but she shared a bite with me to prove that it was as good as it looked.
After lunch it was back to the boat, but not before we stopped at one of the local ice cream stores. As we were headed to the store, I suddenly heard the Admiral say "Are you an Aggie". Sure enough headed toward her was a member of the Aggie Corps of Cadets in his full uniform, including his senior (leather riding) boots. We stopped and chatted briefly, and it turns out that he is spending the summer here doing recruiting for the Corps. What a "tough" assignment. Anyway, it was fun to see a representative of Texas A & M University where we both retired from about 5 years ago. Shortly, we wished him luck and continued to the ice cream store where we both had the best ice cream of the trip so far.
Then we headed back to the boat for more chores. I worked on re-caulking the front window of the lower helm station. The boat is 32 years old, and the old rubber gasket has shrunk leaving gaps at all four corners of each of the four windows. Several weeks ago when the admiral was on her trip back to Texas, I had done about half of the job with positive results. The photo at the right shows me finishing off one corner with a putty knife. I will have to come back and do some cleaning with a razor blade in a couple of days when the caulk has set up.
The caulking is an easy but very messy job, including digging out the old caulk from a repair by some previous owner. I had a disposable surgical glove on my left hand so it was perfectly clean, but you can see the thick layer of black caulk on my right hand. I had put hand lotion on both hands before I started so that made it harder for the caulk to stick, and I keep a good supply of acetone on board for just such difficult clean ups. Thus, in just a few minutes my hands were probably cleaner than when I started the job.
Every job seems to have some observer/critic, and here is my faithful helper Lucky. She seems to be able to lie down around my feet when I am standing, and when I was sitting on the fore deck doing one of the front windows, she managed to get between me and the window. Well, at least it helps keep her awake so she will (hopefully) sleep longer at night.
For dinner we headed back into town to try our fourth new restaurant in two days. We had been in the Fish Creek market, Deli and Spirits Store yesterday and had bought some sundries. However, at that time we had failed to note the sign for the Mr. Helsinki Restaurant. The food was pricey, but the Admiral started with a cup of green curry cauliflower soup followed by Kimchi Korean Beef with Jasmine rice. I had a 12 Oz. ribeye steak that was very tender along with corn fritters and asparagus. It was great food, but it was also easily the most expensive meal on our trip so far. I must say that 4 out of 4 restaurants were all among the best so far. I am afraid that I would be putting on lots of weight if we stayed here much longer...
However, I do not have to worry since we are taking off in the morning and heading north up to Washington Island. The island sits just off the north end of the peninsula between Green Bay and Lake Michigan. It has ferry service, but it is not heavily populated so it will be a change of pace for us.
Oops! The Admiral just developed a craving for one more scoop of the wonderful, rich, local ice cream. I graciously gave in and volunteered to accompany her.
See ya!
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