Just got back to civilization a few hours ago after a week up at the Zen Monkey Retreat. The Zen Monkey Retreat is, of course, the resort we go to a couple/few times a summer. It’s out in the middle of the woods within walking distance of the river. Nice and quiet, no wifi, and barely any phone service. The days kind of just ran together all week; I mainly remember fishy chips happened on Friday because that’s the day they have fishy chips at the casino.
Our first destination of note was Stonehinge, a little rock shop in Swiss. It’s one of the coolest little shops I’ve been to. It has lots of rocks, crystals, fossils, etc., but also a lot of antiques, books, and random odds and ends at very reasonable prices. Stacie uses it as a supplier for Rock Solid Mamas, and I always find something cool when I go there. This time it was a beautiful Madagascar agate the size of my fist.
We did a day trip to the Duluth-Superior area. Got some cool stuff at the rock shop in Duluth, including a nice red glass incense boat and cool-looking Egyptian-style obelisk covered in hieroglyphics. My money is on them being random symbols, but it still looks cool next to the Japanese statue on top of my CPU tower.
Also did lunch at Thirsty Pagan Brewing in Superior. The stuffed mushrooms were gorram amazing. I was expecting some stuffed mushrooms, maybe a little sauce. Instead what we got was a plate of sausage-stuffed mushrooms and a nice amount of sauce covered in melted cheese. It looked like a lasagna when it showed up. Plus a little loaf of warm bread. Then we had made-to-order calzones. Delicious and huge. We each ate half of one and had the other half for lunch the next day.
We went to Tommy’s Too-High Winery in Danbury twice. We had gone there last year and missed the owners; they were on a cruise if I recall correctly. They were there this time, and they were really cool. They’re definitely bartenders, walking around taking care of people, telling us how they came up with certain wines, etc. The rest of their staff are solid too. They know their stuff and make you feel right at home. The cool part is that the tastings are free, complete with snacks and about ten different wines in fairly generous tasting portions. I doubt they’re losing money, though – you’ll want to buy something. Yeah, we wound up spending a chunk of cash there on wine and assorted merchandise. Including several bottles of wine and some glasses for an upcoming event.
Did another day trip south of Danbury taking pictures, hanging around by the lake, all that good stuff. At some point we wound up in Grantsburg to make a pilgrimage to Burnett Dairy Cooperative. Don’t ask how much we spent on cheese, BBQ sauce, and ice cream. We barely touched the stockpile while we were at the Zen Monkey Retreat, and now we have several pounds of cheese in the fridge. We wasted an entire day just screwing around and it was Glorious.
Wound up doing fishy chips at the casino in Danbury Friday night. Since they’re not reopening the buffet anytime soon, they moved the main restaurant in there so they could put the tables six feet apart and still have a decent number of customers. As always it was good eatin’ and lots of it even before you remember how little it costs. Dinner for two (with all you can eat fish) wound up running us seventeen whole dollars. Even without getting more fish it was an amazing deal.
Had myself a spa day somewhere in there. Took a big plastic tub out on the porch, and Stacie concoctanated an admixture of hot water, Buddy Ebsen salts, peppermint, and eucalyptus. Soaked my feet out there for an hour or so just zoning out listening to the birds and other critters. I think it did a decent job cleaning the crud out of a wound on my right foot too.
Lessons Learned:
Because we usually go for a long weekend instead of nine days like we did this time, there was a bit of a learning curve.
Bring more shirts. I forgot to bring enough of my “screwing around the house” shirts, which led to a couple instances of not entirely wonderful reuse. Should have brought another pair of sweatpants for hanging around the cabin too. Had plenty of everything else, but the shirts kind of killed me.
Break up meat into a couple/few containers and only take out one small container at a time. We brought hot dogs and ham for sandwiches, both in the Costco packs. Good stuff, but with twelve dogs and enough ham for several sandwiches each we didn’t get to all of it before it started getting weird. Next time we’ll split the ham in half and bring up a couple/few four-packs of dogs, all pre-frozen.
Bring less tea, drink mixes, etc. The water is hit or miss up there, and this time around the water was really funky from all the iron.
Check the gorram road construction reports before going on a day trip. Mothergrabber. Our trip to the Duluth-Superior area was cool, but we spent far too much time trying to get to Canal Park and ultimately abandoning the quest because they had torn up pretty much every way into it. By the time we found a way that was even theoretically possible we were done dealing with the stupid and escaped back to Superior for lunch.
Head up on Friday afternoon like we did but leave Saturnday morning instead of Sunday. The new crop of guests start showing up Thorsday or Friday, and after several days of peace they’re kind of annoying. The weeken we got there, the cul-de-sac was two thirds full; one other cabin and two RVs (the one next to us was inhabited by a gorram Karen who spent half the time screaming). From Sunday to Thorsday it was us and a couple in one of the other cabins with an empty RV site between us. They spent most of their time out and about and were pretty quiet once they got back, so it was great. Then Thorsday or Friday people started coming in. Most of them were pretty cool, but there was another Karen in an RV just outside our little cluster of sites. By the time we left, every site we could see from ours was full, whether it was a cabin or RV site.
Plus leaving Saturnday gives us more time to unpack and get things ready for going back to work.