Friendship Ride

So today we took a ride over to Friendship. The ride out was nothing special except for a few dead deer on the side of the road, but the ride back was a lot better. Shortly after our AWESOME lunch at the Friendship Cafe (I'll talk more about that later) we headed back home. We had the weirdest experience, it was reminiscent of the great butterfly massacre of 2010 a few weeks ago. We were riding along, and for about a minute we were getting pelted by grasshoppers! There were whole groups of them in the road, and they had the most excellent timing for hitting my shins and arms. I actually ducked behind my windshield since they were heading up toward my face at times too. Those suckers hurt when they hit you! I was laughing but Ed wouldn't talk because he didn't want to eat any of them. After that, there were some nice rolling hills, and at one point there was a row of HUGE pine trees right next to the road, but they were sheared off on the back side to make room for the power lines. It made me kind of sad because they were magnificent trees. It is obvious that summer is starting to wind down. The fields are mature, the hay is getting baled and everything looks like it's putting forth it's last best effort before getting ready for fall and going to sleep for the winter. The weather was perfect, lots of sun and no wind. We did about 145 miles, and I am within 30 miles of turning over 5,000 miles on my bike :-)

Now about the food: We stopped at the Friendship Cafe to eat. We walked in and it was packed. I felt sorry for the 2 ladies waitressing and the 1 lady cooking. They had a special, BBQ pulled pork and soup or fries which is what we both had. The meat was excellent and the bun was nicely toasted to give a good crunch to go with the meat. They ran out of soup (it was chicken dumpling so we were both pretty bummed) so we got crinkle cut fries instead. They were the skinnier ones, and they were fried to crispy perfection. They had 4 choices of pies for dessert, cherry, peach crunch, apple and rhubarb. Ed got the cherry, he said it was ok, a little tart and he wasn't a big fan of the crust. I got the rhubarb and it was delicious. It was nice and sweet even though it was a little thicker than I am used to. We left there nice and full, and the total bill for 2 sandwiches with fries, 2 pieces of pie and 2 sodas was $16. We spent that much for 1 meal and a soda last weekend for lunch so I thought it was a great deal and would eat there again. The waitress was really nice even though she was really busy so we tipped her well.

Yes, I am a slacker about blogging

Last Saturday we went for a short ride (130 miles) out around Green Lake and back. County Hwy E had just been repaved - no lines in the road yet - and we rode on that for quite a while. The area around Green Lake was really nice and quiet. and we pretty much had the roads to ourselves. There was one point when we were coming back that we came around a curve on top of a hill and the fields were amazing. There were two different crops in different shades of green, and the tops of the corn were blowing & rippling in the slight breeze creating the coolest effect of tan moving against the green. We tried to go to a new Mediterranean restaurant in Appleton, but it was not open so we ate at KFC since I've been craving the mashed potato bowl, and the KFC in Oshkosh got torn down to make room for the roundabout.

Today we went across the lake to meet some friends to go riding. We ended up going up to Manitowoc, Two Rivers and along the lake. Lake Michigan was very colorful today too. There was tan under where the water wan't deep and then beautiful shades of deep blue and aqua depending on the depth of the water. It was a little windy, but the ride was great. The humidity finally broke today and there were some clouds so it was very comfortable to ride. We had a buffet brunch at a cool little restaurant in Manitowoc. It's a Thai restaurant called Nikko's We were going to eat at a different restaurant but it was closed (I am sensing a theme here!) They had all kinds of things to eat including an omelet bar, French toast, bacon, sausage, a variety of Thai dishes and a fruit & dessert table with blueberry or cherry cheesecake. It was $13 a person, a little expensive I think, because there was no way I was eating $13 worth of food. It was good, but I would have preferred to order off the menu but that was not an option today. On the way back we stopped at Scoops in Chilton. They have great ice cream and they make it all right there. We didn't eat any because we were still full from lunch, but we have stopped there and had ice cream there before.