Saturday, September 30, 2006
Wisconsin Dells trip
Photos from our trip to the Wisconsin Dells area from Sept 27-29, 2006.
Wednesday, September 27
First we went to downtown Wisconsin Dells and bought our tickets for both the Upper & Lower boat tours. We had a little time to eat, so we quick ate some hot dogs and nachos before hopping on the bus that took us to the start of the Lower Dells boat tour. We heard the upper was better, so we started out with the lower to not disappoint ourselves. We wanted to take the Ducks, but it was drizzling ran & didn't want the kids to get too cold. Norah was a challenge to keep from running all over the boat, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.
After the bus took us back, we let the kids play at the local arcade there in the main tourist area of downtown Dells. They won enough tickets (with Mom's help) to buy some dinosaur stickers and a piece of candy. Next we went to Pirate's Cove Adventure Golf putt-putt course and did just one of the five 18-hole courses they have. Dejaquan wanted to zoom through the course not waiting on us, and Norah was basically done after about 9 holes--she just wanted to run around and get to all the places you're not supposed to go on a putt putt course (like a water fall & in the small crevices where you hit your ball through).
We then checked into our cabin at Christmas Mountain Village and got settled in. The kids loved splashing around in the jacuzzi, but did eventually settle down enough to go to sleep.
Thursday, September 28
Went to our resort's game room right away in the morning, but found out the activities planned for the day (like sand art, card games, etc) were cancelled for the day due to illness. We made the most of it, though by taking advantage of the small indoor water park they have there (every place there has a water park - it's crazy). We used our cabin's grill for lunch and then tried to have the kids nap, but one thing led to another & we headed off back to downtown Wisconsin Dells for the upper boat tour without anyone getting any rest.
The upper tour was more fun that the lower, as expected. We docked on the east side of the Wisconsin River and walked down a narrow cavern to a snack shop, ate popcorn, then promptly went back to not miss the boat leaving. Then it went across to the other side and docked where we got to watch the dog jump. We took the "long walk" which was so easy--they made it sound like it was going to be a big climb that would get your heart pumping, but it wasn't. As we road the boat on the way back, the kids fell asleep, of course. I let Norah sleep in my arms for probably 20 minutes.
Before you get on the boat, they take photos of you so that by the time you get back, they have a photo package you can buy. We opted not to buy it when we took the lower tour the day before, but decided we should buy it this time on the upper tour if the pictures were good since we didn't ask a stranger yet to take a good family photo of us with our own camera. So, when I looked at the package of the photos they took before we had gotten on the upper tour boat (while holding Norah, sleeping), they showed me they had the lower photos available still that I could still buy. Keep in mind that the tickets you buy for the boat tour are good at any time. They had no idea we were going to be on the upper tour the next day. Pretty smart, in my opinion, for them to transfer unpurchased packages to the other launching site, and then to take the time to try to match them up. They haggled with me, and I bought the lower Dells photos (without the key chain) for a 3rd its original cost with the purchase of the upper package.
With the kids thoroughly tired, we braved eating out. We were attracted by a sign for a steak-house restaurant that said all-you-can-eat buffet, but it turned out that was for their breakfast buffet. So we went back and ate at a Mexican restaurant we saw next to the putt-putt course called Pedro's. The food was good, and the kids behaved amazingly well. So, to reward them, we stopped at the pirate-themed kids' playground attached to the putt-putt course they had seen before and wanted to play at.
Friday, September 29
After checking out of our cabin in the morning, we drove down US12 out of Wisconsin Dells to Mirror Lake State Park. We got to see the remaining plethora of haunted houses, roller coasters, and water parks, all shut down since it was off season. At Mirror Lake State Park, we walked out to Echo Rock and got a good view of the lake. We drove around the rest of the south-east side of the park, spent a few minutes throwing rocks in the lake while it was drizzling rain, then went back and asked about the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Seth Peterson cottage, finding out that it is only available for tours once a month.
After driving by the cottage, finding it totally closed for a private rental, we drove down to Baraboo, skipping the Circus Museum in lieu of going to Devil's Lake State Park. One of it's claim to fame is the balanced rock, and we took the Devil's challenge and dared the climb with Norah & Dejaquan.
That was the last thing we did on our trip before returning to Milwaukee & a home full of apples.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Website hosting and mail clients
I use doteasy for two websites. http://dovelyquilts.com & http://milwaukeemennonite.org
At some point, I'd like to switch to another ISP. I get frustrated at how unreliable doteasy is--not a month goes by where I don't personally notice dovelyquilts.com is temporarily inaccessible. I haven't used a pop client with doteasy's mail. I do, however, have email forwarded from one of the sites to my gmail account.
Currently Sarah just uses doteasy's web mail interface, which, yes, has no spam filtering. She doesn't bring her computer home from the store (which has no good internet access--just one phone line), but at some point I'm going to get her a computer to use & leave at home, at which point, depending on the OS I put on it, would determine the mail client I have her use for use with doteasy--probably Thunderbird if the OS were Linux or Windoz.
I use Thunderbird for personal email (gmail POP which actually works just as well as IMAP, and some personal IMAP accounts), and have been using it for about 2-3 years. It has a decent spam filter learning algorithm included (catches about 75-85%). I also like Thunderbird for the nicely integrated enigmail add-on which allows me to easily de/encrypt and sign/verify email using PGP. And I use Thunderbird for reading blogs RSS/Atom feeds certain family members & friends have. For feeds from news sites & such, I use Google Reader.
As a side note, what I hope transpires over the next year is Google calender synchronization support with the Mozilla calendar add-on for Thunderbird so I can view & edit my Google calendar in my personal email and be able to send calendar entry invites via email. I'm not as hopeful on Thunderbird - Palm synchronization, though. For that I use airset.com to sync my Google calendar to Palmdesktop.
At some point, I'd like to switch to another ISP. I get frustrated at how unreliable doteasy is--not a month goes by where I don't personally notice dovelyquilts.com is temporarily inaccessible. I haven't used a pop client with doteasy's mail. I do, however, have email forwarded from one of the sites to my gmail account.
Currently Sarah just uses doteasy's web mail interface, which, yes, has no spam filtering. She doesn't bring her computer home from the store (which has no good internet access--just one phone line), but at some point I'm going to get her a computer to use & leave at home, at which point, depending on the OS I put on it, would determine the mail client I have her use for use with doteasy--probably Thunderbird if the OS were Linux or Windoz.
I use Thunderbird for personal email (gmail POP which actually works just as well as IMAP, and some personal IMAP accounts), and have been using it for about 2-3 years. It has a decent spam filter learning algorithm included (catches about 75-85%). I also like Thunderbird for the nicely integrated enigmail add-on which allows me to easily de/encrypt and sign/verify email using PGP. And I use Thunderbird for reading blogs RSS/Atom feeds certain family members & friends have. For feeds from news sites & such, I use Google Reader.
As a side note, what I hope transpires over the next year is Google calender synchronization support with the Mozilla calendar add-on for Thunderbird so I can view & edit my Google calendar in my personal email and be able to send calendar entry invites via email. I'm not as hopeful on Thunderbird - Palm synchronization, though. For that I use airset.com to sync my Google calendar to Palmdesktop.
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