Off the road, that is. We toured ourselves around Marquette, seeing the historic dow
ntown, the ore docks and hills of iron ore, an actual ore carrier being loaded (it's a very noisy process, those little pellets make quite a racket sliding down the chutes), and a YARN SHOP. I exhibited admirable restraint in the yarn shop, only buying 4 skeins of yarn and a much-needed set of US 17 Double-Pointed Needles. I am control personnified. After watching the carrier load we drove down the shore road stopping at a park where I flew my kite. It fairly leaped into the air; it was a lovely fly. I need to name my poison dart frog kite. What's the Spanish word for purple? Red? After a non-pasty lunch (gasp!) we went back to the motel where we loafed around, Durwood snoozed, I sat at an outdoor table at the back of the motel and blogged. We went to supper at Villa Capri, a vision of of black and red Italian-ness with excellent food. They had a 2' X 4' 
montage of The Godfather. It was, um, breathtaking. The salad dressing was very mild but tasty with a tiny bit of salami, pepperoni, and cheese; and came witgh lovely garlic bread. We both ordered the Italian Festa--1 chicken cacciatori, 1 meatball, 1 Italian sausage. Durwood had the lasagna on the side; I had the 1/2 spinach fettucini alfredo-1/2 gnocci with meat sauce. The lasagna was the better choice. We made quite a bit of it go away, but there was just too much to eat it all. It was elastic waists all around when we got to the room.
October 6--Egypt, Statuette of Isis 
and Horus. It wasn't supposed to be this hard, Isis though as she held her screaming son. The baby's cries had gone beyond hunger to frantic in no time. Baby Horus was red and dry-eyed, his arms flailed and his legs were stiff. No amount of soothing helped calm him down enough to let him nurse. If only they didn't have an audience. The people around the room murmured but no one dared step up and help her. She felt her let-down relex and milk began to leak from both of her breasts, the relief brought tears to her eyes. White drops of milk spattered the baby's face and a drop of two of the sweetish liquid must have fallen in his mouth. He closed his mouth as he inhaled and rooted into her breast, his red lips questing for her nipple. He latched on and began to gulp the life-giving fluid. His tiny limbs relaxed and gradually she began to relax too. It was too much pressure for a girl with a new baby to have to nurse him in front of the entire court, let alone have them all ogling her bare breasts.
Okay, that's it for you today. I'm hungry and ready to go find some fresh whitefish for supper. Mmm.
--Barbara
...but still on Hwy. 41, in fact if I ran 50 yards I'd be right in the middle of it. Yesterday was a driving day. We drove all the way from
Copper Harbor to Marquette, 149 miles. We 
stopped in Calumet, just north of Hancock for "brunch" at a fair trade, sprouts-serving cafe where Durwood actually found something he could eat--an omelet with bacon and veggies. I had an herbed breakfast biscuit with a scrambled egg, cheese, tomatoes, and sprouts, and Fair Trade coffee of course. It was all yummy. They had wi-fi so I blogged from there. Then we headed out toward Marquette. W
e stopped in Baraga to see the Bishop Baraga shrine. It was very impressive. (I said a few Hail Marys for all you heathens.) He was a Catholic priest who ministered to the tribes up here in the late 1850s, snowshoeing about 700 miles in the winter, sleeping outdoors without a tent. (That alone earned him a shrine in my book.) His Ojibwa grammar book is still in use. We stopped at Henry Ford's model sawmill village in... in, oh carp I can't remember and we didn't take any pictures. Oh, well, he had bought up acres and acres of timber up here to make frames for Model Ts and Model As and then the Woodie wagons, and he set up this sawmill to be safe for public access. It was also an experiment in living a self-sustaining life but the soil's too acid and rocky and the growing season's too short, plus the local critters liked to eat all the veggies before they were fit for human consumption. Pesky critters. In Ishpeming we stopped at Da Yoopers Tourist Trap and Rock Knockers S
hop. There were lots of crazy 
machines in the yard all around the place, big cool mineral rocks along the path, and cheesy, Made in Taiwan junk in the shop. I did take my bag o'rocks into the Rock Knockers Shop only to find that none of the rocks I picked up are agates, they're minerals (I think one's Bleu Cheese-ite) all right but none are agates. I bought one to put in my bag. (Don't call me on it if you hear me say I found it, okay?) We found our hotel (right along 41), checked in, and I sent Durwood off to scout a local 
place for supper. I don't know how he put up with all that driving all those years, I was starting to get car sick and I was tired of being in the car most of the day. I lobbied to stay in Marquette 2 nights and to have this afternoon off.
October 5--Louis Comfort Tiffany, Magnolias and Irises. Tally concentrated as hard as she could, wishing herself into the world in the stained glass window across from her seat at the table. Around her Nana, Aunt Julia, Uncle Sid, Mama, and Zero argued. They thought they were hiding it by being polite to each other. Tally might be young but she wasn't stupid. She hadn't grown up in this volatile family for nothing. She might be only ten years old but she knew that words could hurt no matter how nicely they were said. She'd listened to supper conversations since she could remember and each one had eventually come down to Nana trying to tell everyone what to do "for your own good, Dear." No one, not even Tally when she was very small, was fooled into believing that Nana meant what she said. Tally heard Mama and the others cry at night or out in the garden. Maybe Tally could figure out how to take Mama along if she escaped into that magical world in the glowing valley in the stained glass.
There's nothing like a toxic family to make a kid run away. I wish you were here with me right now. I'm sitting at a patio table in the dapple sun with the scent of pine filling the air. I'm ignoring the highway noise in favor of birdsong.
--Barbara
We took the scenic route up toward Copper Harbor, stopping at every place that interested us. We took lots of pictures. At Sand Bay I climbed down to the beach and had fun chasing waves to pick up stones, some of them might even be agates. It was a gorgeous sandy beach, we should have stayed there since all the other beaches we saw were rocky and in harbors so the water was still. The scenery along the state highway was beautiful but not as lake-y as I'd hoped. We only got glimpses of the lake and we stopped wherever we, well, I could get close to it. Our motel looked like a low rent version of the Bates Motel but the room was very clean and comfy. (They had the best Wi-Fi connection 
of anyplace we'd been before but no 3-prong outlets. Drat.) After hauling in the luggage we took off to explore. We needed to buy an $8 day pass to visit Fort Wilken State Park and we weren't interested in seeing it eight dollars worth, so we moved on up Hwy. 41. In a very short time the highway made a loop--we were at the end, or rather the beginning of the highway! From there it was all south all the way to Miami, 1990 miles to the other end of Hwy. 41. I just realized something, I have lived my entire life along US Highway 41. I was born in Evansville, Indiana, Hwy. 41 goes through there. I live in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Hwy. 41 is so close to my house that I could spit on it (if I could spit without drooling on my shirt). We found a bench to sit on just across the road from our motel that overlooked the harbor. The bell buoy in the harbor entrance was clanging and tiny wavelets were lapping on the rocks at our feet. It was so soothing that we both nearly fell asleep. After supper we went back down to watch the night fall. Glorious. Sleeping was good at the Bates Motel North.
October 4--Southern Netherlands, The Unicorn Defends Itself. I hated that tapestry when I was a kid. It hung in Grandma and Grandpa's stairway so there was no avoiding it since we lived there. We walked up and down those stairs at least twice a day and every day my eyes were drawn to the sight of the men with spears charging at a unicorn and the unicorn goring one of the dogs. Dogs bit the unicorn making it bleed. Why were they trying to kill it? I wanted to know. No one could give me an answer. No one believed in unicorns, they said there were no such things and when I said that they were extinct because men like the ones in the tapestry set dogs on them. Grandpa said it was an allegory, that the unicorn stood for purity. I said that was bunk and spent an hour in the corner for my sass.
We're coming to you from the Cafe Rosetta in beautiful downtown Calumet, MI. Adios.
--Barbara
I thought that each place we'd be in Upper Michigan would be on Lake Superior but I was wrong. Ironwood wasn't, Houghton/Hancock's on Portage Lake but not Lake Superior, the rest will be. But I was thinking we'd drive along with sweeping views of sky and lake and that ain't happening. We are driving through beautiful forests of colored leaves and dark green pines under blue and sunny skies. Totally good enough. Today we press on to the t
ippy-top of the Keweenaw Peninsula to spend a night in Copper Harbor. More pasties for lunch. Lake Superior shoreline to walk along. A copper mine to tour perhaps but I'll be happy with a big lake to look at. I have come to realize that I feel calmest when I have water to look at; a creek will do, a river is okay, a lake is good, a Great Lake is better, and an ocean is best. I love the movement of it and the ever-present wind around big water. I wonder if I'm a Water Rabbit? Probably not, probably an Earth Rabbit (nope, that's Durwood) or a Metal Rabbit (yep, I looked it up). Yesterday we toured around Houghton, visiting some of Durwood's old girlfriends at Walmart, eating another lunch pasty (in the lead after 2 lunches), stopped at a fabric/yarn shop where I left a bit of my vacation play money, drove the hilly streets of Hancock, and changed motels to one with 2 beds so neither of us had to sleep on the floor. Ahh. We're having fun with nothing to do.
October 3--Salvador Dali, The Accommodations of Desire. "Ants," she said, her voice rising like a siren. She stood transfixed by the teeming black and red mass. The insects swarmed over the white boulder in a neverending stream, the center of it like a long, many-legged chain with a few scouts and stragglers off to the sides. Rain had turned the ground to a thick brown soup and our tour group had stopped to rest. Angie had leaned on the boulder and been swarmed by the ants. Sal had been scraping caked mud off his boots and used his stick to try and fend them off but only succeeded in smearing chocolaty mud all over himself. Erik, the tour leader, calmly took a plum from his pack, crushed it in his meaty hand and dripped pulp and juice in a trail away from Angie. The ants obediently followed the sweet treat and left her alone to dab antiseptic on all her tiny red bites.
Okay, kids, that's it for today. Behave yourselves and I'll be back with another episode of Durwood and Babbums in the north. (If there's Wi-Fi in Copper Harbor, that is.)
--Barbara
I worked on the MeWarmer on the long (149 mi.) drive from Copper Harbor. I thought I'd need it this week but it has been so warm that even long sleeves are too warm.
