Saturday, April 30, 2005

Nukes, duct tape, woodchuck April 30 Tell me you've never left something on top of a vehicle and driven off.  Duct tape story... Woke up to a chorus of geese, mallards and gulls in a big cattail marsh, two rows of dunes removed from Lake Michigan. Spent an hour this morning walking the beach about a quarter mile from the Zion nuclear power plant, which is sandwiched between the northern and southern units of Illinois Dunes State Park. Would make a great setting for a movie: the nuclear plant, a 50's-vintage concrete bathhouse and a deserted beach, with sand-blow dunes and wispy pods of wiregrass. Cricket frogs in a small roadside pond near the park visitor's center where we parked to walk down to the beach. Noticed the trailer lights were flickering on and off, so I pulled over south of Wadsworth Crossing and duct-taped the plug to the hitch. I set the roll of tape on the trailer's propane tanks while working on the hitch, then drove off and forgot it was there. The lights kept flickering, so I called Roskopf's in Menomonee Falls, where I just had the wiring repaired a week ago. Frank suggested I pinch the contacts on the plug closer together. I did, using a hemostat I carry for emergencies like that, and it worked! It cost me a roll of camouflage duct tape, but it was cheaper than finding an RV store, hoping they had time to look at it and then getting gouged because they knew where to kick. Not much in the way of wildlife on I-90. I know there must be turkeys in northern Indiana and Ohio, but I have looked for them in vain on nearly every trip on 80/90 and I don't ever recall seeing one. Coyotes, yes. A raccoon in a cornfield this afternoon, but no turkeys. Not many crows, either. Saw a few, although I didn't count them. A couple years ago, at the height of the first West Nile virus epidemic, ornithologist Noel Cutright said he counted seven crows between Chicago and Cleveland. I wonder if they've bounced back from that. I'll ahve to pay more attention tomorrow and on the return trip. Spending the night in Geneva State Park on Lake Erie, where it is at least 10 degrees warmer than where we spent last night on Lake Michigan. We made the decision early this afternoon that we would spend another night on the road, which means I won't be hunting turkeys in New York tomorrow morning after all. This has become a pattern. I've missed opening day for the past two years, but still managed to get a bird. 10:49:56 PM    comment []

Zion whippoorwill April 30 We didn't get very far last night because by the time we left Milwaukee after our last errand, it was already 9:00 p.m. Shivani perused the Woodall's guide as we headed south toward Chicago. Illinois Dunes State Park sounded about right for our first stop. Better to get a decent night's sleep and try to make up time the next day. As we drove in, I noticed the southern unit of the park is named after Bill Cullerton, Sr., a well-known outdoor writer and broadcaster from the Chicago area. I wonder if Bill ever visits his park? Exploring an unfamiliar campground at night is always an adventure, so when we came upon a gated road, we backtracked to the resort that is part of this park and I went in to ask for directions. When I stepped out of the truck, I heard a whippoorwill singing off in the woods. Peter, the helpful clerk at the reception desk, informed me that I had missed the turn for the campground and that we could probably have any site we wanted. I thanked him and said, "You know you have whippoorwills?" "What's a whippoorwill?" he asked. "It's a bird," I said. "If you go out into your courtyard you can hear it singing in the woods." He wanted to know how big they are and what they look like, so I did my best to describe one. I didn't bother to explain that you never see them, but that their song fills a void in a summer evening you didn't know was there until you hear it. I did see one once, resting on a gravel road on the White River. It looked just like the pictures in the bird guides. A member of the goatsucker family, which name is a story in itself, whippoorwills feed by flying around at night with their mouths agape, snapping up insects. Another relative, the Chuck Will's widow, has a little different song. I've never heard it, but I assume it's "chuck" is louder than that of its cousin, hence the name. If you're lucky, you might be close enough to a whippoorwill to hear the "chuck," a sharp sound like you might make by clucking your tongue against the roof of your mouth, which precedes the song itself. I often heard whippoorwills singing at dusk on the White. The late Bob Sneed, who showed me how and where to fish that river, used to say it was time to start fishing when the whippoorwills sing. That's about when the evening Brown Drake hatch would start to come off the river. No doubt the whippoorwills feasted on them just as the trout did. Anyway, we found the campground, set up and crashed, leaving the trailer hitched to the truck. We'll explore it in the morning. Later... 9:03:10 AM    comment []

Not quite Lewis & Clark April 30 We're on the road again, so until further notice, I'll be posting on my "On the Road" page over to the right. ---> Meanwhile, if you haven't yet voted for your favorite blog, just click on the link over to the right to go to the mkeonline.com page, where you can check out the competition for this week's "Blog of the Week." ---> I'll also be dating each post in the post itself, since I may not be able to get online every day. With our vintage Hi-Lo camper in tow, we left home a little after 7:00 p.m. and had a chuckle at our first stop while gassing up at the BP station in Saukville. A young lady said to me, "My little sister thought that was for midgets," pointing to our Hi-Lo. A lot of people stare at the Hi-Lo as they pass us on the road. Maybe that's what they're thinking! If you don't get it, go to the Hi-Lo website. A Hi-Lo is a hard-shell pop-up camper that does look like a chopped unit when in its tow mode. So now, go to "On the Road" to continue... 8:37:58 AM    comment []