Movers and shakers and smoked fish!

Since we operate a business here in town, we participate in the Port Wing Area Business Association.  The purpose of the group, of course, is to promote businesses in town and to promote the town.  It's only been operating for a few years, like maybe five, so the group is still working out how best to do what we need to do as a group.

Today there was a tour of the three area towns--Port Wing, Herbster and Cornucopia--organized by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. and the Bayfield County Econ. Dev. Corp.  The tour was meant to familiarize the new state WECD rep with our area, and how they can help us as small towns that could use some economic development!

The lunch was followed by a lunch discussion with those interested at the Village Inn in Cornucopia.  Our county supervisor for our area, "Bucky," provided the appetizers in the form of smoked ciscoes, fresh from the smokehouse!

He even demonstrated how to eat them--take off the head and tail, peel off the skin, and the meat pretty easily falls away from the bones.  Delicious!  Then for lunch a Lake Superior whitefish sandwich was one of the choices.  Again, delicious!

And the discussion was pretty good, too, although it shows the frustrating levels of bureaucracy that exist in this state, and that the things we want to do will all take some work...and working together.  Maybe that last part will be the hardest!

On our way home today we decided to take "the back way" which is on Touve (too-vee...it's Finnish) Road.  It's the first time we've gone on this road since last fall because it can be tricky to navigate sometimes, depending on weather conditions.  Today the road was great and we saw some cool things, like...

...lupines in bloom.  They grow all over up here near the Lake, also lots of them in Duluth.  Leann always collects the seeds in late summer and has planted them around our house, down in our ravine, and along our road.  She also read the book Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney to her students back when she was working, a book about a woman from Maine who wanted to find a way to make the world a more beautiful place.

Then on down the road, sitting on a fence post in an open field, we saw a bobolink!  Leann said she has seen a bobolink here one other time but that was several years ago.  Don't know if this one was just passing through or staying for a while.

And, an update on the picture shelter, the roof is on and it's almost ready for a picnic!

One more picture of beautiful pinkish apple blossoms.  The petals are beginning to fall, rain is predicted for tonight, so they'll be gone soon.

 One more thing, a couple people at the meeting today said that there is still a large iceberg floating over beyond Bayfield somewhere.  Also, there is still more ice over near Michigan.  It's June! It's nuts!