Where's the [Quarry] beach??

All winter on our drives down to The Lake we look across to Quarry Beach and see ridges of ice lining the shore.  That's Quarry Beach below over beyond the breakwater.

Quarry Beach is one of the hidden treasures in this area.  It was the site of an actual brownstone quarry operation back in the early days of Port Wing.  It can look different every time you go there depending on weather and wave action.  Sometimes there are large areas of stones for agate searching; other times all you can see is beautiful sand the whole length of the beach.

Since we don't know how well-maintained the road into Quarry Beach is during the winter, we patiently wait until spring to see what all of that ice has done to the beach.  And today was the day.  Boy, were we surprised!  This picture doesn't show the sudden  5 foot drop down to the level of the rocks...and sandy beach.  Really, usually there is at least 10-20 feet of sandy beach.  And it's gone!  What happened?  Is the water level so high that it reclaimed all those feet of beach?  In light of all the water problems out west, I guess I won't complain about a lake with LOTS of water in it!

So, we'll just have to watch it over time and see what happens with spring and summer weather.  If it stays like this, it will change a whole bunch of summer beach plans!

Harvesting onions & celebrating pottery

I celebrated this "first day of school" by signing up online to receive Social Security benefits following my birthday in November when the big 62 comes to pass!  First, cool that you can do it online.  I thought I'd have to make an appointment.  But, some day down the road I'm sure I'll regret not waiting until 65, or 66, or later, but, hey, YOLO!

And then we went out and pulled the BIG onions!  But we screwed up!  We cut off the tops.  Then when I drove downtown to pick up our CSA box, Mike had all his 7 boxes of onions lying there drying...with their tops still on and drying...  So I asked him, "Are we supposed to leave the tops on?"  And, of course, the answer was yes, leave them on until they dry completely.  Oh well, some day we'll get it!

 We ended up with about 60 white, yellow, and red onions about this size (minus the tops).  Our friend who gave us the little onion plants for these last May said today that they have harvested 400 onions like this!

Then it was time for today's kiln-opening at our friends, Gregory & Terese, who do the beautiful pottery (and sell books!).  At least we thought 1:30 was the starting time, but seeing no one, we headed down for a quick trip to check out Twin Falls.  (It started at 3pm, but first the falls.)

No pictures can show the real beauty of this spot because you just can't get high enough or wide enough for a good shot.  But above is the south side of the gorge that has been worn away through the years.   And below are the two falls--one at the top left and the other on the bottom middle.  

 The best way to view this is to walk up the creek from the parking lot and see it from the bottom...but not today!  That is a favorite painting spot for the Plein Air artists when they come to Port Wing.

And here are a couple of the fungi types we saw along the path.

And now, time for the Kiln-Opening!  The firing took place a couple days ago and the celebration and showing happened today.  The kiln is in a building to the right of the picture.  Here's my post from a similar event back in June.

 Here are some of their pieces from the kiln today.   They have added a couple new glazes and techniques so there is always a new tempting piece to add to our collection.

 Today we purchased a new mug and a smaller plate for serving breakfast items.  They always have yummy snacks to go with the celebration.

(I think it's time for some tea in my new cup!)

And below is today's produce from the CSA box.  Quite a selection this time!  We already had the beans and cucumber for dinner, but I feel the need for some vegetable soup so I can use that celery on the left.  And tomorrow...basil pesto for sure!

A foggy day in Bayfield County

After an errand-filled trip to Ashland today, we played tourist on our way home, driving through Washburn and on up to Bayfield on the peninsula.  Besides seeing what we could see, we had one intentional stop in Bayfield--going to the Apostle Island Booksellers book store.  They had a 20% off coupon in the summer issue of Grapevine, the newspaper for the Chequamegon Food Co-op in Ashland.  Leann bought the newest Nevada Barr mystery, Destroyer Angel.  Her books usually take place in a U.S. national park since Anna Pigeon, main character, is a U.S. Park ranger.  This time, though, she is on vacation in the Minnesota Iron Range!

We knew there would be a detour on the road back to Cornucopia going around some construction sites, so we went up the hill to all the apple orchards on our way to our favorite backroad tour back through the woods.

The warm front to the south of our area, which was causing some dangerous weather near the town of Siren, was meeting up with the still-chilly temps coming off Lake Superior, creating some really cool fog around the edges.  Lots of lupines everywhere!

The sign below is located at a key intersection up on the top of the hill.  We especially like the bottom sign, "Still lost? Consider letting someone else drive."  Imagine hundreds of cars of people in and around Apple Festival weekend in Bayfield (first weekend in October), all driving this maze of roads going to all the apple orchards.  I'm sure there are a LOT of lost people up on those roads!

Go left and you go back to Bayfield; go right and where you end up depends on how many turns you take.  And that was our problem the first time we chose the right turn.  Our blacktop road became gravel which became a dirt road, but about 20 miles later we found ourselves right outside of Cornucopia!  Since that first trip, it's become a favorite drive of ours - Star Route Drive.

 When we got back home, we realized this was the first delivery day for our Chequamegon CSA.  We drove to the pickup point and retrieved our box for this week which included: Swiss chard, rhubarb, Bibb lettuce, chives, and a jar of mixed berry jam.  They always include a newsletter with recipes so we already tried the recipe for chive vinaigrette.

Swiss chard and CSAs have become a joke for us.  Younger Daughter was just telling me that she belonged to a CSA when she lived in South Bend and got tired of all the Swiss chard every week.  We'll see if this becomes an every week thing!

By the way, lots of things around here have taken the Chequamegon name, probably because of the huge Chequamegon-Nicollet National Forest here in this area.  It's pronounced as "she-wa-me-gon."  Q is silent.  Took me YEARS to learn how to spell it!

A post-winter check on Quarry Beach - jackets, not sunscreen, needed!

 Quarry Beach is one of the hidden gems in our little town of Port Wing.  When the town was first founded in the late 1800's, this was the site of a sandstone quarry where stone workers quarried out large pieces of Port Wing brownstone that was destined to be building materials for many structures.  The passage below lists some of the buildings where the brownstone was used, and I copied it from this website detailing the history of the Port Wing Quarry:

Stone from Port Wing was used in the Wisconsin Building at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. It was also used in William Jennings Bryan's home in Lincoln, Nebraska; George Crosby's home in Duluth; and the Martin Patterson Mansion in Superior. The Department of Interior Building in Washington D.C. was constructed of Port Wing Brownstone. These are only a few examples of well-known structures in which our stone was used.

Locally, the basement floor of the Port Wing School, the foundation of the Lutheran Parsonage, and the O.T. Bagstad warehouse were constructed of Brownstone.

Now today, the old quarry is a favorite place to hang out at the beach and look at Lake Superior.  The pictures above and below show how it looks on a typical, beautiful summer day.  Those of us living on the "South Shore" like to promote our long, sandy beaches, compared with the rocky shores on the Minnesota and Canadian "North Shore."

View looking toward the town of Port Wing

Since today is NOT a summer day, the view is a little different.  The north wind was blowing like crazy, so the nice blue sky makes it looks more comfortable than we felt.

This was what we found today:

Again, we are looking east toward town, but the first 100+ feet of beach out to where the waves are crashing is lots of ice in layers and piles.  And the extent of the "sandy beach" is quite narrow right now.  We will need to make frequent trips to see how it changes as the ice melts.

This is the view looking northwest, same view as the first picture above.  Over toward the trees is usually a good place to hunt for "pretty rocks" (I have never found an agate in my life!) but it looked too treacherous to check for rocks today!

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And finally, I just have to share something I saw posted by Bayfield County Tourism on Facebook today, and I'm just kicking myself that I didn't think of it first!  I'm going to put the link here because the YouTube page didn't give me the option to embed it.  

Seven months in a minute and a half!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM1uVevri7c