Summer Squash Soup

This is not a local food.  I just had a hankering for this soup.  I picked up a bunch of squash from the Farmers Market in Eau Claire and knew exactly what it wanted to do with it.  Mom used to make it from memory and would never write down the recipe.  Audrey finally got it on paper after making it with her.  It’s a great way to use yellow squash or zucchini or both.    

Gram’s Squash Soup

3 cups sliced yellow squash - 1 1/2 inch slices

1-2 tablespoons butter

1 cup chopped onion

1 cup chicken broth

1 1/2 cups milk

2 cups grated cheddar cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Seasoned croutons to garnish

Melt butter in large pot.  Add chopped onion and cook until onions are clear.  Add squash and broth.  Cook until tender (about 15 minutes).  After squash is tender, mash slightly.  Add milk and stir.  Add grated cheese.  Stir until cheese is melted.  Serve with croutons or extra cheese.  

SO...MUCH...CORN!

August 17 - 21 - Sister Bay to Bowler, WI (133 miles) - stayed 4 nights at Mohican North Star Campground
August 21 - 28 - Bowler to Eau Claire, WI (139 miles) - stayed 7 nights at Eagle Ridge Campground
August 28 - September 9 - Eau Claire, WI to Welcome, MN (233 miles) - stayed 7 nights at Checkers Welcome Campground

Labor Day, last Summer Holiday, whew!

When we left Door County, we knew we were up against a holiday.  It’s very hard to find a place to stay on a holiday weekend.  And, we spent quite a bit on our last RV park, so we were looking to tighten our belt and stay closer to budget.  We are able to do that in two ways.  First, we joined Passport America for $40.  There are many campgrounds that offer stays at up to half price if you are a member.  Some are very strict about which and how many days you can get it, but it’s worth working with the restrictions.  Second, we slowed down and started staying a week at a time.  Weekly rates are also much more affordable than nightly.  Once we secure our spot for Labor Day weekend, we started looking toward getting across the Plain States to the Pacific Northwest before the weather gets cold and we go back to San Antonio for Thanksgiving.  But let’s take a moment and look back.

Wisconsin is lovely. We stayed at our second casino.  They usually have nice, inexpensive campgrounds and offer enticements to get you to gamble.  Bill enjoyed that.  Each day, we got $10 of free play on the slots, and Tuesday was Senior Day (50 years old and older).  Eek!  We qualified for Senior Day!  We actually made money, believe it or not, on the Wheel of Fortune slot machine that was enough to pay for our stay.  Score!

Our second stay in Wisconsin was between Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls, home of Leinenkugel brewery.  I’m not a beer drinker, and Bill doesn’t drink at all, but I do like their summer shandy. And for the $10 admission, you got to sample 5 of their beers. So, we took the tour and established that, I don’t like most beer, but I do like the flavored ones.  I really enjoyed the Berry Weiss and Grapefruit Shandy.  They even mixed the berry Weiss and summer shandy to make a berry lemonade.  Yum! I worked hard to drink both our samples, but didn’t quite make it.  I bought some summer squash at Eau Claire’s farmers market and made some summer squash soup.  Thanks, Christina, for the recipe.  I’ll put it in the next post.

But mostly, I was struck by the farms.  Everywhere you could fit a field, there was corn!  I did a little research and learned that farmhouses are painted white because it’s a symbol of purity and cleanliness.  The barns are traditionally painted red because orange-ish linseed oil was mixed with rust to preserve the wood and protect against mold and fungus.

In this area, there are about 50 Amish communities.  Every once in a while we’d spot an Amish family shopping at Walmart, or visiting the city park.  It was a little surreal. You could tell which farms were Amish by the colorful shirts and black trousers drying in the clothesline’s outside.  And almost all the barns had barn quilts (hex signs), an Amish tradition that originally was a 6 (sects) -pointed star to promote fertility and prosperity.  All the farmers and shop keepers picked up on the tradition and made their own. They even have a fundraiser bike ride around the area to view them all - their version of street art!  If I had more space, I’d be making my own, I’m so taken with them.  They’re beautiful bright-colored spots in an otherwise very green space.

Life is a 7-pound Bowl of Cherries

It was hard to narrow down favorite local cuisine in Door County.  They are famous for their fish boil, a dinner theater of sorts, where the boil the fish, onion and potatoes outside, with a big flourish of fire at the end, before you go in to eat it.  Many places had this dinner available, but none of the reviews was outstanding.  I imagine it’s like a shrimp or crawfish boil.  But we didn’t try it.

So many restaurants offered a Friday night fish fry.  I did try this one.  Th fish is fresh from the lake - sturgeon or trout, perch or whitefish.  It was very good, but I’ve had fried fish before.

There is a huge Swedish influence in the area, so we headed to Al Johnson’s the first night. Gotta have Swedish meatballs and see the goats grazing on the roof.  I only saw one goat the entire week we were there.  The meatballs were good, but heavy and salty.

And don’t get me started on the ice cream!

The real attraction to the area is the orchards, both cherry and apple.  Since they’d had cool weather, the cherries were about two weeks late, and we arrived just in time to pick our own, literally, with days to spare before the shakers moved into shake the trees.  There were two pick-your-own farms near us, along with Seaquist Farms, one of the largest producers in the area.  These are tart cherries, Montmorency and Balaton, the kind used in cherry pie fillings and juices.  And oh, what pies they make!  We bought a cherry pie from Seaquist the first day, and munched on it all week.  There were SO MANY cherries! I had to pick some.

When we arrived, we were given a bucket and told to head to the back of the orchard.  We were a little discouraged by the amount of cherries in the front trees.  They were high and hard to reach.  But as we got lost in the orchard, we found trees so heavy with fruit, the branches dropped towards the ground.  We only picked one pound the first day, thinking that would be enough.  But the late season fruit was so sweet, I needed more.

We went back the next day to find the orchard was closed, expecting the shaking machines to arrive any time.  So we headed down the road to the next one, and picked six more pounds of cherries.  It’s hard to stop.  They are so bright, gorgeous red, and the next tree has even more!  I think we controlled ourselves pretty well considering.

I kept the very best, choice cherries for my morning oatmeal, which is like eating cherry crisp for breakfast, and got the rest pitted and in the freezer quickly.  Now I have a problem.  How will I use these precious fruits?  Anyone have a favorite recipe?  I want it to be special, the best cherries dessert ever, so I can make room in the freezer for apple season!

Door County, WI

8/6 - 8/10/19 St. Ignace to Iron Mountain, MI - 190 miles ( 3 hours, 18 min) Summer Breeze Campground, stayed 4 nights
8/10 - 8/17/19 Iron Mountain, MI To Ellison Bay, WI - 162 miles (2 hours, 50 min) Hy-Land Court RV Park, stayed 7 nights

The Thrill of Discovery!  

One of the difficulties of living on the road is that everything is always new.  You can’t put yourself on autopilot, because you don’t know where the Walmart or grocery store, or drugstore, or salon is already. You always have to be on alert and searching for what you need.  There is no routine.  But one of the great thrills of living on the road is everything is new, and you get to discover places you didn’t know existed - like Door County.  Bill just happened upon it when he was watching a YouTube video from another traveling couple’s vlog.  We bypassed Traverse City, where I wanted to go for cherries, so was excited to learn about this place.

Door County, WI  is the thumb of Wisconsin, a peninsula that sticks out into Lake Michigan.  We had to take a detour from our planned route across the plains to come here, but it was so worth it.  Each small village that you pass through - Sturgeon Bay, Bailey’s Harbor, Egg Harbor, Ephraim, Sister Bay - have a thriving art scene with shops, galleries, open air concerts and dramas - all set against the backdrop of a lake or bay.  Since their season is short, they make the best of it.

I knew we would have a good stay when we finally arrived at our park (a whole story within itself) and were immediately greeted by other Open Roaders (its kind of a Tiffin cult). They introduced us to others and invited us to an evening concert in Egg Harbor to hear Skerryvore, a band from Scotland.  With a beautiful sunset, good food and company, and this amazing band that had guitars, flutes, violins, an accordion and two rocking bagpipes, I was hooked!  Check them out on YouTube or Spotify.  They are GOOD.  I love pub-style folk music that rocks.

The rest of the week, we explored the villages, went to scenic overlooks, enjoyed sunsets, picked tart cherries, ate out with our new friends, saw another concert, and just soaked in the beauty.  When the sun went down, the nights got cool.  The humidity and the bugs were not bad, though locals claimed they could be awful.

We drove to the tip of the peninsula to watch the ferries go across Devil’s Door to Washington Island.  This treacherous strait gave the county its name.  There are several lighthouses on the island.  We tried to visit Cana Lighthouse.  There used to be a narrow walking path to the island it sits on, but the lake level has risen by 5 feet, so the only way to get across was on a wagon, pulled by a tractor, through crashing waves.  When we arrived, the “big” tractor had gotten stuck halfway across, almost dumping the passengers into the lake.  They had to be rescued and pulled the rest of the way across by the “little” tractor while the first tractor’s driver waded through waist-deep water, trying to fix the problem.  They decided to cut their losses for the day, and concentrate on bringing the remaining people from the island, so we didn’t get across.  I think we made out well, but no lighthouse.

Wisconsin is know as America’s dairy land, so we had to indulge in some ice cream at Wilson’s, more than once. And our park was just across the street from the largest cherry farm on the island.  We bought a pie, and ate as many cherry-filled things as possible. Bill got tired of it.  I still haven’t (see the next post).

This is one place we want to come back to.  There’s so much more to see and do.  Next time we’ll stay a month!

Pasties with a short “a”

The regional food we discovered for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are “Pasties”!  They are meat-filled hand pies surrounded by a flaky crust, similar to chicken pot pie.  I had mine at the Driftwood overlooking the Harbor in St. Ignace with a side of gravy for dunking.  They only had beef and potato.  But I have seen advertised chicken, fish, and veggie pasties.  Some of them are larger than a child’s head. Comfort food on the go!

Mackinac island and Mini Heaven

7/31/19 - 8/1/19 - Monroe, MI to West Branch, MI (190 miles) 2 hours 48 min, stay one night
8/1/19 - 8/6/19 - West Branch, MI to St. Ignace, MI (132 miles) 1 hour 56 min, stayed 5 nights at Tiki RV Park - nice view of Lake Huron!



Yooper! (The nickname for a person who lives in the Upper Peninsula.)

Just across the Mackinac bridge, on the shores of Lake Huron, lies a summer village called St. Ignace.  Their tourist season is only 6 months long.  The rest of the year is too cold!  But what a beautiful town!  This is what I had hoped to find in Harbortown.  There was always a cool breeze off the water and there were so many varieties of gorgeous flowers planted in every tiny flower bed and median.  They have a picturesque harbor and light house.  They make good use of their time in the sun with farmers markets, live music and fireworks every week.  AND we accidentally stumbled on the weekend when they were trying to break the world record for largest Mini rally in the world, called “Mini on the Mack”.  They estimated there were over 1300 minis in town.  Unfortunately, we heard in a local shop, that they didn’t make it.  “If only everyone who showed up had registered!”  Maybe next year.  I’m a HUGE fan (I had one in England).  Here are a few stand outs...

 

Knowing that the weekend was going to be packed, we took a ferry to Mackinac island on Friday.  There are no motorized vehicles allowed on the island, only horse-drawn wagons and bicycles. We dared not step off the sidewalk in fear of getting run over or stepping in manure.  Again, beautiful flowers, ones that don’t grow in Texas, and I’m not familiar with.  This place is like Disneyland for adults.  The island is only eight miles around, so it’s easy to bike, but we didn’t.  We strolled along the streets, looking at the houses and stopping in to taste samples at every fudge shop.  We sat outside, by the bay and had a lovely lunch, then found a spot on the beach to collect stones.

One thing we didn’t do is go to the Grand Hotel.  Last time we were here, we walked up and sat on the porch in rocking chairs and enjoyed the view.  Now, they charge $10 to get on the grounds, even if you want to have a meal at the hotel.  This is a disheartening, recurring theme that we’re finding wherever we go - many more tourist, and EVERYTHING costs money.  It’s kind of sad really.  But it reminds me of how we used to avoid weekend crowds, especially in summer, because things were just too crowded.  We’ll have to get used to doing things mid week in the off seasons.