Hogarty, Wisconsin
August 30 -- Sept 4, 2001
Thursday, August 30, 2001
Manly took a cab to O'Hare Airport with the duffel bag and I took the subway out after
work with my carry-on bag. With the help of our "Talk About" radios, we had no trouble
finding each other in the United Terminal. Our 7:50 United Express flight no longer
leaves from Gate 22 in the main United Terminal 1, but from a gate in the old adjacent
Terminal 2 building.
After an uneventful flight to Central Wisconsin, we rented a car and checked into the
local motel which is about the mile down the highway from the airport (this year it
seems to be named the AmeriHost Inn in Mosinee). The check-in woman informed us
that we had been "upgraded" to the a floor suite.
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This was an odd shaped room with two
windows, plus a sliding glass door to a balcony overlooking the enclosed swimming pool.
We kept this door shut because of the chlorine smell. There was also a huge whirlpool
tub surrounded by mirrors, complete with moppers and really big towels, a refrigerator
with complimentary soft drinks, and a microwave oven. We just had a nice glass of our
own whiskey and water and went to bed.
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Friday, August 31, 2001
After checking out of the motel we drove partway down the hill to the Wagon Wheel
restaurant for breakfast. While waiting for Manly, I was looking at the flyers for local
attractions (including one for "The Hideout, Al Capone's Northwoods Retreat") and found
one for a
"Mullins Cheese" about 5 miles south of the airport. (Exit #175 off I-39, and
then following the signs for downtown Knowlton and Mullins Cheese). The "retail store"
is a very minor part of the operation in a poorly identified concrete block addition to the
factory, but they have about 50 kinds of cheese, including Cheddar aged 1-1/2 years as
well as 4 years. We have had a hard time getting truly aged Cheddar, so this is a real
find for us! We were told that the difference between the yellow cheese and the white
cheese is that artificial coloring has been added to the yellow/orange cheese. They don't
mail, so we bought a bunch of cheese.
We continued on to Wausau, doing the grocery shopping at the huge "29 Super Foods"
market. This time we got all of our meat at the specialty meat department which has the
advantage of better meat as well as no nasty styrofoam packaging. The store had a
special sale on Lindeman's Australian Merlot and Shiraz wines for $6.99 per bottle; we
bought one bottle of each. We also bought some Braeburn apples that turned out to be very
good, and some nectarines.
We arrived at our house in time to open up the house, unpack, eat lunch, take naps, walk
around, eat dinner, and go to bed. Manly reported hearing a great horned owl during the
night, but I missed it.
Saturday, September 1, 2001
Our morning walk included an inspection of our neighboring farmer Jeff's "landing strip"
in the middle of the cornfield east of the road into our place. It appears to be 30-40 feet
wide and about a quarter of a mile long. Now that the corn is about six feet tall, I really
wouldn't want to try to land a plane on it, but if the crop is beans or potatoes the width
shouldn't be a problem. We understand that Jeff wants to do the crop dusting off this
landing strip.
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