Price of gas: $3.79
Bayfield, WI to Stillwater, MN
This morning it’s time for apples and other assorted harvest stuff. As in Washington, it’s been late to warm up in this area and early to cool down, so a lot of apples that normally would be in already aren’t yet. My bigger disappointment is that this means there’s no fresh cider. But one spot does have apple cider donuts… despite having just finished breakfast, I have to have one…
One of the farms also has a winery, which makes a couple of pretty good cider wines – a colonial recipe that I like very much. I get some apples for saucing at my aunt’s house. The dog barks at me when I arrive, and the man tells me it’s my sunglasses, that the dog is an alien and he doesn’t like people who look too much like the CIA. Hmm.
I also manage some cucumbers and tomatoes, apple butter and pumpkin butter. Time to stock up for the harvest! En route around the farms, I encounter the following road sign:
Someone has a point.
I get to the winery – White Winter – in Iron River that has mead and cider. I walk in and the lady says, “How are you?” I reply, “I’ll be better after I have some mead!” She asks if I want to drink some or buy some and I say, I’d like to drink some and then buy some!
We get down to business – I try 5 or 6 of their options – they have a cyser, which is an apple/honey mix, and then a sweet (traditional) mead that’s fabulous. They also have t-shirts which say, variously, “Mead Goddess/God” or “Mead Wench”. I decide I don’t make my own mead, so I’m not a mead goddess, and go with the mead wench shirt. They got a pretty cool logo as well:
From here, it’s about 2 ½ hours to my aunt’s house in Stillwater. Other highlights of this stretch of road include a gas station sign that reads, “Cheap Gas, Happy Help, Frisky Minnows,” a choice between going to Turtle Lake or Luck; 21 ½ Ave. along with 14 ¼ Ave.; and finally, a barbed wire fence that had a single boot on every fence post. I also successfully manage to confuse my GPS unit, which doesn’t know about recent changes to the highway, and as such has me driving in no man’s land and doesn’t know how to tell me where to go. Eventually it catches up to the prior road, and we’re all good.
Stillwater is the oldest town in Minnesota, just on the other side of the Minnesota/Wisconsin border. Like Port Townsend, and like Bayfield, it’s got lots of old stately houses that are quite picturesque and rise on the hillside above the river. My Aunt Kathy & Uncle John live just at the top of the hill above this part of the old town. Stillwater itself is still quite small, but the development to the other side of it is pretty stunning, and not in a good way.
View of Stillwater and the St. Croix river from my aunt's house.
Kathy is home and making me a home-cooked meal, as she’s feared for how I’ve been eating on the road. I’ve eaten well enough, but it’s true, none of it has involved my cooking! She makes a pot roast and sweet corn on the cob and fresh rolls from Brine’s downtown… they even crack open a bottle of wine in my honor. It’s good to catch up and we all seem perhaps a bit more accommodating of one another, or perhaps I’m just older and not quite so saucy as my younger days.
Kathy and I head for the stores after dinner, as my cousin Dan’s son Max is turning 2 on Saturday and we are going to the birthday party! Dan does not know I’m in town and so it will be a good surprise. I’ve never met Max, and I think the last time I saw his older sister Megan she was 2. I hear there will be brats (as in sausage, not ill-behaved children)! I love sausage. I didn’t grow up in the Midwest, but I do have some decidedly Midwestern leanings.
And then I’m pretty wiped out and we’ve got an early call go to the St. Paul farmer’s market, so it’s off to bed with me. My room used to be where the cat slept, but Katie, at 17, has moved to a basket on a ping-pong table in the basement, so I’ve got it to myself.
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