Carly the Kidd



Like the infamous 'Captain Kidd,' Carly turned from companion privateer to pirate

  yesterday and swiped our first geocache out from under my nose before I could find it.

We weren't able to locate our first cache.  We had just left the Onalaska Library and I dialed up on the Iphone the nearest hidden treasure on Geocaches Worldwide.

This one was stowed somewhere deep in the limbs of the big blue pine tree right outside the museum portion of the building.  In and out of two openings under the tree, we had no luck seeing it on the ground, on the trunk itself, or tied up into the insides of the dark overhanging limbs.  Second cache, across the street on the way to Two Brothers Honda, same thing – we landed right on top of the sight, right down to 'zero feet away,' even took the offered hint about a bookworm and a cup of joe – looked at the logged photos from previous finds – but no luck under the twin pines.  At that point, Carly was leery of the idea that a vast network of small treasures lay hidden out of sight all around the city.  We dialed up the next closest cache called 'Row, Row Your Boat,' located somewhere around .1 mile away, at N 043 52.489', W 091 13.583, left our Adventure Galley 

(sparkling booty spilling over the top of the rear bike bag) parked at the library and walked toward the skateboarding park next to Ona High School. We went off of the description, "This is a small, blue cache hidden in a special hiding place that is accessible to everyone."  Easy enough.  We reached the parking area of Rowe Park and found dead-on the supposed treasure sight, but all that was standing there was a giant parking light on a short patch of boulevard grass.  Nothing on the ground or hanging from the light pole.  Either this one was buried somehow or it didn't exist, so I started to walk in the other direction to test the compass.  "Found it."  Where in the world did that come from?  "Well, I tried to twist this square thing on the light and it lifted up."  Now the pirate had a taste for treasure.  At Panerra, after some chicken noodle and a cookie, we dialed up 'Bike and Hike a Little Further,' .1 miles away.  "Found it."

Well we might as well finish off with one more before we get home.  'Sawmills to sunfish tribute to the Ona fire dept. at Oakwood Park, .5 miles away.'  "Found it"  This time we got one in the pine tree.

"This is really fun dad, but they should put actual jewels in those little capsule thingies."

Breukelen

The Hess family will be on 'A Slice of Brooklyn Tour' – a 4 1/2 hour tour of pizza and the city, from Grimaldi's under the Brooklyn Bridge,

to L&B Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst –

but I'm going to also try to keep my eye out along the way for a possible side trip north on Wyeth Avenue to Brooklyn Brewery, or south, to Prospect Park, the sight of the most significant battle in all of the Revolutionary War.

Unlike a lot of other larger 'hip' cities in the U.S., oddly NYC has had a hard time cultivating a wide range of micro brew pub eateries.  Obviously it's a fickle, demanding crowd – lots to choose from, and city fashion, if not brilliant and consistent, can come and go quickly.  Old laws, on top of it, did not promote restaurants to also be brewers. Bottling pioneer craft beer and distributing it is a nearly impossible task in such a large urban area.  Brooklyn Brewery, though, beat the system.

One of the top volume brewers in all of America now, this one was an odd and pioneering start-up.  The owner, Steve Hindy, was a journalist in the Middle East from '79 - '84.  He found then that the problem for many Americans was that Saudi Arabia had been a 'dry' country since 1953.  Hindy and others learned quickly how to home brew beer and wine.  When he returned to the states to his hometown NY, he proposed, with a partner, the business plan concept of a small brewery venture.  Nearly laughed out of the idea by consultants and investors alike, it turns out he was at the early forefront of the small brew movement and was able to make a go of it with some lucky connections and many years of struggle.  Now Brooklyn Brewery finds itself as the most prominent Brewery in New York City, and one of the true defenders of good brew.

Lew Bryson, a beer-traveler, says that one of the brewery's original brews, Brooklyn Lager, has been one of his favorite "beers  from any brewery since long before I started writing about beer.  I was lucky enough to find this beer in 1988, shortly after it came out, and drank it often.  I was terribly impressed by its hoppy nose, solidly medium body and malt heft, and bitter, clean finish – and I still am."  The swordsman in the front, Garrett Oliver, eventually took over as brewmaster and wrote what is considered a definitive book on beer and food pairings, The Brewmaster's Table.

The only place a beer traveler can find Brooklyn Beer here in the coulee region is La Crescent, a short tour across the Cass Bridge and back onto the Minnesota mainland.

Seasons by the Lake



We were on our way to Northern Hills softball field, it was heavy hot, the top of Julia's head already hurt just thinking about putting her softball visor on and that was on top of a sore jaw from brand new braces placed like a construction zone in her mouth the day before.  Her ankle, or achilles, or something down on her lower leg, wasn't working right, and she was walking around with a stiff left leg. Add some post July 4 sun-red faces, later and later morning waking times, a lack of desire to do a single household chore, and you've got a hand full of good indications that you're smack dab in the middle of kid summer.

Right up Troy St. in Onalaska from Northern Hills, set on Hwy. 35, overlooking Lake Onalaska, is a nice place to watch this part of the season go by...from the inside.

Seasons by the Lake is the old Knob Hill and Seven Bridges restaurant that has always seemed a mystery location, sitting as it does on one of the potentially nicest perches of any eating place in the coulee region.  Plenty of traffic whizzing by and as the name indicates, it offers views of Lake Ona changing through the seasons brightly through stacks of high windows, and a bar area that contends with any other in town.

The question always has to come down to the food.  Will the remodel and the gusto put into a restaurant's transformation translate to a rejuvinated menu?  Do you hire a chef or a cook?  Will you charge $12 for an entree or $28? Jan, Carly and I have dropped Julia off at softball twice now and enjoyed a nice booth at Seasons.  So far, very much so good.  I tried the Agave Glazed Salmon last night, served with diced butternut squash and yukon golds, finished with "our Sweet Citrus salad."

This was a fairly complicated dish, glazed and diced, seasoned in a variety of ways, but the key was that the salmon was smooth and not overdone underneath the top crust.  Jan's Caprese salad,

rows of mozzarella and Hothouse Heirloom tomatoes, lightly seasoned with basil and trickled with balsamic, was a nice alternative to big meat on a summer night.  Carly thought her Sprite was perfectly presented and chilled in a red-lidded kids' cup, the ambience 'sweet!'

Seasons combines casual and gourmet.  The place has stayed down to earth – there's no snoot or over-selling in the service whatsoever.  The inside has succeeded in matching the great views outside and it's only two blocks away from the weekly softball field.  When you pick up your summer-wary player in the 90 degree sun and dense humidity, you can offer her two warm boxed cheeseburgers, and you might even get a thumbs-up for your efforts.

NYC 7/4/1776


It would be hard to come up with a more symbolic modern image to celebrate the gifts of freedom associated with the 4th of July than the largest American flag in the country hanging from a night-lit arch of the Washington Bridge, NYC, fireworks exploding in the background.

Travel the bridge back through time to the actual day in 1776, and we know that Washington

was looking out onto the NY harbor as the English mounted what would become the largest battle of the Revolutionary War at Long Island. We also know that he bought a broom.  Another endearing fact you find out about Washington is that he refused to get paid for his services as general. He did, however, take meticulous account of his spending throughout the War. His final total expenditures for the war would have reached somewhere around a million by today's standards.  Upon further review by the financial committee overseeing his final expenses, it turned out Washington undercharged  and was owed something close to 80 dollars.

At the same moment in Philadelphia, an old military friend of Washington's, John Dunlap, was commissioned by John Hancock to print upwards of 200 copies of the recently decided upon Declaration of Independence that night.  These original drafts would later become called the Dunlap Broadsides,

which, like the other drafts before it, written by Jefferson, and checked by the likes of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin,

were hastily completed to the point that the printer had left "watermarks...reversed, some copies look as if they were folded before the ink could dry and bits of punctuation move around from one copy to another...it is romantic to think that Benjamin Franklin, the greatest printer of his day, was there in Dunlap's shop to supervise, and that Jefferson, the nervous author, was also close to hand. John Adams later wrote that 'We were all in haste.'" It wouldn't be until two days later that Washington found a broadside in his own hands to use as a patriotic rallying cry for the battle to come.  The notion of freedom had moved from beyond an idea underlying the fighting and was finally officially articulated and sealed in print.  Across the bay, at Bowling Green NY, a mob of freedom, inspired by the permanence of print, yanked down a statue of George the III and smelted the metal for bullets.