Biking across the USA ~ and my First Couch Surfing Hosting

Finally, my weekend finished up with my first Couch-Surfing hosting. And gosh, the picture below is just terrible!! Sometimes my camera just does not know how to handle bright bright light. I took this as my guests were headed out back on the road.
Gene Floyd and his two sons are biking across the United States. You can read all about their adventure at his website: http://www.rideforfatherhood.org/.

Above father and son are packing up their gear onto their bikes, and making some final adjustments. They spent 3 nights with us, and headed out on Wednesday. It was my first chance to host someone with Couch Surfing.

Good Luck on your journey!

Kimono

One of the shops in Waubasha was a ki mono gallery. As before, when I mentioned this place, I shall not spell out the name, for I fully enjoyed being allowed by the owner of the store to wear a ki mono, and to get my picture taken in it. I would not like to have to take the pictures down. If you really want to know where it is just Google ki monos and Waubasha.

This shop is a gallery, so the items there are objects of art. I saw price tags on some of them well into the five figures. Some were elaborately decorated with thousands of knots, and very small gold beads. These are wedding ki monos. The shop owner indicated that it is now becoming increasingly common for Japanese women to opt for the western wedding with the white wedding dress. What a shame! If I had a choice, I'd choose these gorgeous works of art! You can even rent them. Hmmm . . . there's an idea! Now I just need to find a man! *sigh*

Click on the pictures for a close-up view.

Week-end Family Visitors

On the weekend of August 8 - 10 I hosted my sister and her two daughters at my home. This is the first time any of my family have come to see where I'm living since I sold my home. It was good to have them visit! They all enjoyed the bonus of the hot-tub!
On Saturday we wandered around La Crosse, showing them some of the sites. We went to the farmer's market where they bought some jewelry made out of silverware. We searched out a few of the Herons of La Crosse (of which I have found and photographed all of them!!) We visited the butterfly garden at Hixon, and ate lunch at Fazies. In the afternoon went up to Granddad Bluff. The girls wandered off with me to find a geocache, only to discover once we got there that it had been "muggled". We had pizza and movies that night.

The next day we got up and had breakfast at the co-op. Hackberries above the co-op has a wonderful Sunday morning brunch. We then went on a roadtrip. We travelled up through Winona and on to Waubasha. That little town has the International Eagle Center, where there are several education eagles on permanent display, and lots of educational materials and talks about eagles. I got a couple of pictures. They have a new resident, a Golden Eagle.

On our journey we also stopped by the Lark Toystore. All manner of toys can be purchased at this store, but they specialize in hand carved items. There is also a full-sized carousel inside the store, with animals that have been carved by the artists at Lark. I took pictures of some of the most interesting ones.

Some of them are very colorful!

And here are a couple of the eagles. Note how much larger the beak on the Bald Eagle is compared to the Golden.

Even as captive animals, they are beautiful and majestic!