I’ve spent a good chunk of this week making travel plans. Dreaming of exotic destinations, you might say, though “exotic” is admittedly a stretch.
First up: Green Bay in December. This might make sense if I were a Packers fan, but I bleed orange and blue. Go, Broncos! I’m not headed for Lambeau Field, but rather, the Resch Center right next door. Home of the Phoenix basketball team, the Gamblers hockey team, and the Blizzard indoor football team. And also, Heart and Cheap Trick on the 4th, a stop on their Royal Flush Tour.
You might recall I’d bought tickets for an August 2024 concert in Milwaukee, which was postponed due to Ann Wilson’s health and eventually rescheduled for a date last spring that didn’t work for us. I’d also, rather foolishly, booked a nonrefundable hotel room. Somehow, I was able to work my manifesting magic and sweet-talk them into a full refund. Whew! Lesson learned: always have an out.
There were no other close-by Midwest dates scheduled at the time, so I’d resigned myself to never seeing them live. Who knows how many tours either band has left in the tank? But then they added that show in Green Bay a few months ago. I was on the fence for a long time, mainly because it’s GREEN BAY in DECEMBER, but finally bit the bullet. There aren’t many classic rock bands we haven’t seen live by now, and the Wilson sisters are too legendary to pass up! “Magic Man,” baby. “Straight On.” “Barracuda.”
Also, I cannot wait to air drum to Cheap Trick’s “Surrender”!
(Yes, I booked a fully refundable room this time. In a hotel right next to the arena, so we won’t have to deal with parking. We’ll just pretend that snow in Green Bay is a rarity that time of year and hope for the best.)
Next (or technically first, if I’m going in chronological order by date booked), I reserved us a room in Custer, South Dakota, the third weekend in January. If you’re thinking I’ve lost my marbles, planning a trip to the Black Hills in the middle of winter, it’s only because the Burning Beetle Festival is scheduled that weekend. How often does one get to burn a giant beetle in effigy?! Well, twice in our case. We’d planned a third visit in 2022 but stupid COVID scuttled that. “Maybe next year,” I wrote in that post, obviously having no idea we would be living in Wisconsin 365 days later. Surprise!
We’d briefly debated a spontaneous road trip this year, because it’s probably our favoritest (definitely our coldest) event in Dakota Territory, but the idea was too last-minute and we were too broke. “Maybe next year,” I wrote in that post too. Barring yet another move (we’re not, I swear!), this trip has a better chance of happening. I peg the odds at 50/50; it’s all going to come down to the weather, since we’ll be driving 11 hours across the Northern Plains. We probably won’t know until a couple of days beforehand whether it’s a go. But again, the hotel room can be cancelled and my deposit refunded in full up until a few days before the festival. Minus a 4% credit card processing fee, but I did the math and we’d be out a whopping $9. Helluva cheap insurance policy if you ask me.
Finally, I’m planning a solo trip to the Pacific Northwest in mid-April. Believe it or not, this will be my first visit “back home” since leaving in 2018, thanks to a variety of factors (COVID, moving to Wisconsin, buying a house, new jobs, hermit tendencies). Plus, my parents come out here to visit pretty regularly. But it’s long overdue. The date was carefully chosen to coincide with my daughter Audrey’s birthday.
Well, it was also chosen to avoid snowy mountain passes, but that’s a moot point now. I’d originally planned to drive, because A) I despise flying, and 2) I planned on bringing back a carful of PNW goodies we can’t get out here. But then I realized, even pushing it, pedal to the metal, would take me three days to get there and three days to get back. And dammit, as much as I love a good road trip, I just can’t justify spending six full days on the interstate. Plus, I’d have to squeeze in the actual visit, which was starting to feel like an afterthought. Man, whose bright idea was it to move to the Midwest?!
Oh, right. Mine. (Absolutely no regrets.)
Flying, as terrible as it is, will save me a ton of time and PTO. Tara won’t be going because she’s planning her own long-overdue trip to visit family in Ely in July, plus our clingy cats would freak out. I’ll send her a postcard.
Getting ready to bare it all
Now that it’s almost November (how?!), our fall colors have reached their peak. I give the trees another week or so before they’re bare. But I sure have enjoyed the foliage! Like this pair, hanging out next to our library.
And these beauties around our yard.
As much as I love fall foliage, and as fleeting as it is, I am ready for snow! Err…as long as it doesn’t impeded my travel plans, of course.
Don’t be a hater. It’s my reward for surviving a hot and steamy summer and about a thousand mosquito bites.
(Doesn’t appear to be happening anytime soon, but a fella can hope.)
Trick’s on me, I guess.
Sunday’s mid-afternoon trick-or-treating (I still hate that!) was surprisingly robust. At least by rural township standards: we had 14 costumed kids ring the doorbell. Which may not sound like a lot, but it’s 12 more than last year and 14 more than 2023.
Whaddaya know? Turning the porch light on actually did the trick.
Clearly, I was out of practice, because at one point I told a group of kids, “Help yourselves!” What I meant was, choose between the Kit-Kat, 100 Grand, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. But the greedy bastards they took this as an invitation to raid the candy bowl, and started grabbing fistfuls of mini chocolate bars and dumping them into their treat bags before I even knew what was happening.
Perhaps sensing my disapproval (this might’ve had something to do with the “Hey! Whoa!” flying outta my mouth), one of the kids paused midair, his grubby little fingers clutching a wad of candy.
“Umm, is four too many?” he asked.
“YES!” I wanted to shout, but by that point his co-conspirators had already bagged at least that many chocolate bars themselves. “That’s fine,” I said with a heavy sigh, my passive-aggressive way of letting them know no, not really. They hightailed it out of there before I could change my mind.
In the end, it didn’t even matter. We still have maybe a bag’s worth of candy left, so no big deal. But I didn’t know that at the time, because it was still early and there were other kids roaming the neighborhood. You can bet your ass I made sure to hand out the candy myself the rest of the afternoon.
Do you have any travel plans in the next year? How many trick-or-treaters did you get? Oh, wait…NONE, because Halloween is tomorrow! OK, how many are you expecting? And do you ever let them “help themselves”?
Mark My Words 
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