Beef-A-Rama, 2012 (A Guest Post by Mommy)

Normally this is a busy but not horribly crowded event in Minocqua, Wisconsin, but this year, thanks to someone getting the UW brass band to open the parade the event was full of "outsiders".  It was so busy they sold out of official t-shirts and I had to get the unofficial one (which frankly was cuter than the official one).  Also there is usually an unpublished theme to the event such as "1960s and 70s TV Shows" or "Through the Eras" which makes it fun for the attendees in the know to try to figure out.  I couldn't find a theme this year, although I suspect it may have been "More Cowbell" since there were an awful lot of them out there and the unofficial t-shirt says, "I got my bell rung at Beef-A-Rama".

Originally this event was "Fish-A-Rama" and it was held right before tourist season started.  They cooked fish on the street and it sounded absolutely horrific, but someone got the clever idea to change it to something that actually smelled good, and that people wanted to eat, and Beef-A-Rama was born.  Then they moved it to the end of the tourist season to try to attract some of the leaf peepers.  The "Rump Roast Run" and the "Calf Mile" (kids' race) start the day's events with the winners being awarded huge raw rump roasts, but the big thing is the main street being taken over for businesses and organizations to cook large rump roasts.  The judges drift through the event and are served samples of the roasts.  The various businesses participating set up elaborate tasting tables for the judges and provide extra entertainment when the judges arrive.

One of the chefs at work

The cow hats were a big thing with the visitors this year

But the big event is the Parade of Beef.  This happens at 2:15 in the afternoon.  The chefs take their roasts, and parade them down the street to Torpy Park where they are sliced up and sold as beef sandwiches.

Beef in a wagon on a plastic tub? Really folks, you could have done better

The Min-Aqua-Bats (a ski show team made up of junior high through college kids) carried their beef on a ski disk

Beef on the front of an ATV, a bit lazy there

Diving club guy walked the parade in flippers

Frisbee golf club hit a hole in one with their presentation

Yup, beef in an outhouse. I wonder who got their sandwiches.

Hawaiian themed beef traveling in style

Cows with a wheelbarrow

Mardi Gras themed team had this guy carry the beef on his head the whole way

Minocqua Winter Park reminds everyone what is coming

My favorite, the Men in Black with their beef dressed up as an alien

I had to add this guy.  He wasn't part of the parade.  He had been drinking down at the bar at the end of town and when the Royal Court float for the High School Seniors came past the bar he hopped on the back and rode down to the Beef-A-Rama beer garden in style.  He hopped off as soon as they reached his destination.

And, for those of you who want more, her is the video from last year's Beef-A-Rama

We left after the parade so I don't have pictures of the beef sandwiches or the party that continues until 8 p.m. when they roll up the streets and send everyone home, or to the local bars to continue the fun until closing.

County Hiking Challenge 2012--Hike 7/9

Mommy had the day off today so we did our seventh hike in the challenge.  This one was 3.1 miles long so it counts as two hikes bringing our official total to 9.  Mommy chose a hike that she loves to do, but she doesn't like to do with me. How could Mommy EVER not like doing a hike with me you ask? Well, I agree it is crazy, but Mommy says she doesn't like doing this hike with me because of the coyotes. See, this preserve has had breeding coyotes in it for as long as Mommy has known about it at least. She used to hike it with my predecessor, Boo, and he didn't care about the coyotes, but I think that lady coyotes are really, really interesting. Even when I hiked at a 5 mph pace, at this preserve I was lucky to hike at a 2 mph pace because I have to stop every fifteen steps or so to sniff something or pee on something. Then, since the preserve is woods, what Mommy calls "high scrub" and meadow I usually would get overheated and dehydrated in the meadow part because of my black fur and the fact that I had peed every ounce of liquid out before getting to the meadow part.  So, we do this hike only when it is on the hiking challenge and when the day is cool, overcast and breezy like it was today so that I don't get too hot and dried out. Mommy says it is annoying hiking with a "piss-licking teeth-clacking fool".

 Starting out the hike. "Ladies I'm here!"

 Heading towards the woods

 Taking a water break at the bench in the meadow

 I will pee on some of these flowers for the lady coyotes

Since most of my pictures look like this one I'm going to let Mommy put up two of hers so you can see what this hike looks like if you aren't interested in sniffing the ground

There is a lake in the middle of the preserve.  Usually it is much bigger and full of geese and swans and stuff, but again, the drought has changed things.

This is the high scrub area.  That tree is not a short squat tree, that is a normal sapling being blown sideways by the wind because it wasn't just breezy today, it was very windy.  Wind speeds were up to 25 mph.

Anyway, it took us two and a half hours to hike the 3.1 miles which is very slow even for me these days, I drank about half of the water Mommy carried on the hike and then needed the whole little Igloo water jug full of water when we got to the car, but I left a whole lot of pee behind for those lady coyotes to admire.

County Hiking Challenge 2012--Hike 6/7

Today Mommy and I had a lazy day.  My hip was hurting (Mommy said my hip wouldn't be hurting so much if I hadn't decided to remove the skin tag on it at two a.m., but what can I say, it was bugging me.) and Mommy was still feeling tired from having had a migraine on Friday night so we slept in until 11:00 and then we went outside and Mommy did a little gardening (a very little) and then we took a nap outside on my sleeping bag until 3:00 and then Mommy decided we should take the hike closest to our house.  This preserve is about five miles from our house so up until last year we used to walk to it and then hike around it and then walk home about one Sunday a month.  If Mommy knew I was going to choose the preserve walk she would wear shoes and carry water and we'd do the whole preserve, but if she didn't know she wouldn't wear shoes or carry water and we'd only do this short hike we took today. When it got harder for me to do the whole long walk/hike/walk we would only do the whole preserve if Mommy drove.  Sometimes I still ask to take the walk/hike but Mommy says it is way too far for me now.

Anyway, here is the hike which takes you around a nice little wetland area on the south end of the park.

This preserve has a greenhouse by the parking lot because it is where they grow the wildflowers for the seeds that they need to restore other preserves.

Mommy and I can't figure out what happened to the left side of my jaw in this picture, but this preserve is a savanna meaning it is a mix of prairie and trees

The prairie part has all sorts of nice flowers like these little purple ones

There's also a lot of wetlands so the path has lots of boardwalks.

At least there SHOULD be a lot of wetlands, but due to the drought this summer most of the ponds and swamps are dried up. Mommy took this picture when I was taking the previous one.

Mommy and I are very worried about my friend Musky the Rat and his relatives who usually live here, in what should be a large pond. Where do muskrats go when their water dries up? Do they survive?

 The second boardwalk, this time over the non-existent swamp

Auntie Naomi, don't read the captions for the next two photos!

 Musky may be MIA but the snakes were out

 

 I promise, I saw a snake here

A little solid ground before we get to

 the third boardwalk by the second non-existent pond

Then it is back onto the main path.

If we had turned left we could have continued around the whole preserve, but I told Mommy I wanted to go back to the car, and since the official hike was the short walk anyway, back to the car we went. Now I think it is time for another nap.

Total miles 1.2.

County Hiking Challenge 2012--Hike 5/6

We hiked a new preserve this time.  It was a double points hike because it was 2.4 miles long which is why this makes it hike 5/6. When I say this a a new preserve I don't mean just new to us. It is so new that if you go to Google maps to check out how far you walked, the parking lot and trails aren't there, even in the satellite image!

You can't drive by this preserve because
there is a big bull at the entrance

That is because for many years this land was owned by a man who raised Black Angus cattle

 First things first, I had to check the pee mail

Then we encountered these gems which worried Mommy

Their dog was running wild off leash

and when Mommy called out for them to leash it they ignored her

She was afraid that we were going to run into a bunch of stupid McMansionites like this, but luckily we didn't

Here are their faces bigafied in case you bump into them

Mommy is pretty sure the visor one is looking at the big pile of poop

that their dog left in the middle of the boardwalk that Mommy had to pick up

You can see, that not only was their dog off leash, they weren't even carrying a leash!

What really makes us mad is that about 4 miles farther south there is a 68 acre dog park with trails and woods where they could have gone and legally let their dog run free

But they still would have been required to carry poop bags

Anyway, our worries were unfounded because they were the only ijits that Mommy and I met up with until the end when there was another off leash dog, but that dog's owners saw us in the distance and put his leash on right away. So, even though they were breaking the rules too, they were a tiny bit more responsible about it.

This hike had lots of prairie and some smallish trees

There was a lot of goldenrod, ragweed and Queen Anne's lace

There were a bunch of boardwalks too, which leads us to believe that if we weren't in a drought this year that most of this preserve would be covered in swamp and small ponds.  

 

Mommy says she is going to keep that in mind for the next time we are in a flood year.

We think this hike will be amazingly different then.

 

We came to a mowed path that wasn't on the county's official hike.

I can't resist a mowed path so I asked to go on it.

While Mommy was getting out the map trying to estimate how much extra that would make our hike

I just started up it, so Mommy gave up and let me take it.

By the end of the mowed trail, I was starting to lag behind.

When we hooked back up with the main trail Mommy insisted on backtracking back to where we turned off so that we did the whole marked trail.  Taking the mowed trail and backtracking to the branch wound up adding .6 more miles to our hike.

When we were only about a half mile from the end, 

Mommy noticed that she could see the moon really well so she stopped to take a picture.

 I stopped and took a picture too by lying down on my side in the middle of the trail.

As tired as I was, we made it back to the car for the ride home.

We hiked a total of 3 miles because of adding in the mowed trail.

County Hiking Challenge 2012--Hikes 2, 3 & 4

Mommy and I did two hikes in one day and one the next for the county hiking challenge this weekend.  The double hikes were both short hikes (1.1 miles and 1.2 miles) and the second hike in the pair was kind of on the way home from the first hike.  The second day hike was 1.9 miles long. We used to do all the hikes in four days because Mommy would divide the county into quarters and we do one quarter's worth of hikes in one day, but that is too much for me to do these days.  However, anything around 2 miles is just about right especially if I get to rest in the car in the middle.  So here are the hikes.

The first hike was in a sedge meadow with a creek running through it.  The creek was in really bad shape when the county got the land, so they restored it.  Now they are working on fixing the problems that have made the creek polluted.  So, even though there is a creek, it was a no swimming hike for me.  Mommy and I don't remember being at this preserve before, but we could be wrong.  There is a big playground right off the parking lot, which Mommy doesn't approve of.  She thinks that playgrounds bring in the wrong type of people. People who think their kids need playgrounds tend to not see why they need natural surroundings.  Anyway, it was a nice little hike with lots of good smells.

Heading towards the sedge meadow

The creek is right in the middle of this picture

All the yellow is various sunflowers, ragweed, goldenrod, and cone flowers

Resting up on the way to hike 2

Hike two was at the river and marina.  We've done this hike lots of times before and this hike always has a background sound of Mexican polka music which is actually called conjunto norteño.  This is because every time we have been there there has been a group celebrating a birthday or anniversary or graduation or quinceanera and they are always playing this music.  So here is an example for you to play while you continue with this blog post:

 

This hike goes through the party area, where the music was playing but no guests had arrived yet, then over to the river where I get to swim in the boat launch.  Then the trail goes to a river overlook and then you can go down to the marina or turn around and walk a low trail along the river or you can keep going and go through a little bit of trees and then past the parking lots and back to the party area.  This time I wanted to do both the top and the bottom river walks so that added about a half mile onto the hike.  I didn't want to see the marina though so after looping the river walks we went through the woods and back to the party area where the guests had arrived for what turned out to be a quinceanera, but nobody was dancing.  Mommy says, "How can you play polka music and NOT dance?" and she always does a little polkaing on the way back to the car which is very embarrassing.  Also, I am never invited to these events which is wrong because the food always smells really good and I always try to get Mommy to come crash it with me, but she refuses every time.

Swimming in the boat launch

The lower river walk

I used to be able to climb down to the river here, 

but it is too hard for me these days because it is just big rocks

Look, Mommy a handicap space close to the river walk!

Why didn't we park here? I'm handicapped.

 Falling asleep in the car on the ride home

 Home! Where a big dog biscuit is waiting for me.

My total mileage for the two hikes with the added part was 2.8 miles.

The third hike was along the river trail that we hike a lot.  Once, a few years ago, there was a cougar that was being spotted all over the county and the "experts" were saying it was an imaginary cougar because there are no cougars in Illinois and besides nobody was seeing the cougar get from one place to another.  But Mommy and I walk so many trails and bike paths in our county that we figured out the cougar was following the trails. So we would check the cougar reports before hiking and pick trails where the cougar hadn't been seen lately.  Well, we were on this trail that year when I started sniffing and wuffing and then I spotted some tracks that looked and smelled like great big kitty tracks and Mommy looked at them and started looking around A LOT.  Then she spotted something not far up the trail and we went to check it out and it was a really freshly killed bunny.  So Mommy and I turned around and walked very quickly back to the car.  Anyway, I tell you this because once again a cougar is being spotted in the county, but he seems to be following a different set of trails this time, but still, when we got to the dead bunny spot Mommy did a good and thorough scan of the woods before we continued.

It was a busy day on the trail with lots of bikers.

If you look closely you can see some people ahead of us.

 

 We pass a lagoon which is always covered in algae and turtles

 

This guy struck Mommy funny because of how much algae he's wearing.

Another biker

On the return trip I got hot and tired and grumpy because all my favorite wading spots had dried up.

There is supposed to be a swamp full of frogs to my left but it wasn't there.

I figured I'd wait for it to come back, but Mommy got impatient.

I took another breather and got a good shot looking up at the trees.

When we got to where I normally take a dip in the river the water was too low for me to get to it.

Mommy and I wandered off trail a bit and found a spot where I could get in.

Getting out was another matter and I ended up having to swim upstream a bit while Mommy walked along the shore holding my leash until she found a spot I could climb out at.

There were interesting smells there and not too much poison ivy.

 Hooray! Mommy's car!

So that was my busy Labor Day Weekend worth of hikes.  Three more hikes to go and I will have completed the challenge, but Mommy and I hope to do all the dog-friendly hikes like we've always done in the past.