Catching dinner considered successful day of fishing

Monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico in the fall. Early last October when Mark and I visited Dad, where he lives with my step mom on the coast of Georgia, we took the boat out and anchored at the mouth of a creek right in the monarchs’ southerly path. We pulled whiting from the sea and marveled at the monarchs flitting past. In a band 10 yards wide and from about two feet to eight feet above the water we witnessed a constant stream of butterflies. We estimated 800 to 1,000 butterflies flew by in three hours. Not many, but some, landed in the boat for a couple seconds’ rest. It felt magical being in the midst of the monarchs' natural pattern.

This year I suppose we were too late because there was no definite band of butterflies, just a few here and there flitting across the expanse of the bay.

Other things kept our attention.

Dad says, paraphrasing Forrest Gump’s philosophical aphorism, “When you fish in the ocean, you never know what you’re gonna get,” and that was surely the case on our first day fishing.

Mark fished the bottom while Dad float fished (with a bobber). I chose not to fish until it seemed worth my while. Right away Dad pulled in a trout, and Mark commented on how pretty a fish the trout is, long, thin and silver with dark spots on its upper half.

We were close to a small island rimmed with oyster shells, not much more than a sandbar. We let out enough anchor rope for the tide to carry the boat near, and I hopped out and combed the beach, looking for anything interesting that may have washed up.

Not finding anything out of the ordinary, I returned after 15 minutes and learned that Mark had caught a whiting, and a big one at that. Whiting, a mild, tasty fish, must be at least 10 inches long to keep; anything over 12 inches we consider big. Whiting are silver and not as thin as trout; they have no remarkable spotting or coloring.

Dad had switched to bottom fishing, and since fish were biting, I joined the men and tossed my line in with a shrimp for bait. Within a couple minutes I landed a redfish, also called a sea bass. Redfish are notch fish, meaning they must be bigger than a certain size to keep yet also smaller than another size. The notch for redfish is 14–23 inches. The one I caught was small but not too small.

Dad and I each caught a whiting, and both were too small to keep. Mark reeled in two sting rays, which are the bane of the south sea fisherman. They are fun to catch because they put up a fight, but getting them off the hook without getting stung can be tricky. Dad has suffered two stings, which did draw blood and were most painful. Submerging the stung body part in hot water eases the pain somewhat, but the true healer is time—five or six hours.

The day ended successfully. All-in-all, the three of us brought in eight fish species, a one-day record for us: flounder, croaker, skate, and shark, besides the trout, whiting, redfish and stingray from earlier.

One or two of us pulls in a decent size shark each time Mark and I visit. I caught the one this year: 18 pounds, my biggest catch of anything ever. We froze the filleted shark to bring back to Ohio. Mark’s brother makes a tasty marinade for grilling. Because of the mercury content, we don’t want to eat shark more than once a year.

Besides the shark, the fish we didn’t toss back into the sea were enough for dinner that night. Catching a meal is so satisfying—as is eating fresh-caught fish.

A duck farm in northern Indiana

“That makes it sound like they assemble ducks from pieces,” Mark says because I call the place the Culver Duck Factory. The company’s website gives the name simply as Culver Duck, not Farm, not Factory.

The PR guy, whom I contacted after our visit, says he prefers farm: “The word factory has gained a lot of negative press and is pushed by different groups to spin a bad light on what we do.” Culver Duck doesn’t piece together ducks; the place processes them—15,000 a day.

Tuesday after Memorial Day we arrive for our privately escorted tour with Tim.

On the way to one of several barns on campus, Tim tells us the company sells about 3.5 million ducks a year, mostly to Chinatowns across the United States. Ducks are processed at six weeks, like chickens, but spend less than 24 hours of those on site. The ducklings are sent out to surrounding Amish farms on the day they’re hatched, straight from the hatchery.

Baby ducks are born every workday, and before the tour takes us to the new arrivals, we pass a crate with seven or eight deformed or damaged baby ducks dying. Tim says that they’ve never had a healthy hatch rate better than 80%. Wild eggs hatch near 100% if weasels or another egg lover doesn’t find them and if they receive proper care from the mother duck. The eggs at Culver Duck, Tim tells us, are refrigerated for 3–8 days before they are incubated. Incubation is 28 days, nothing more, nothing less, which makes planning for hatchings quite easy.

In the back of the barn are stacks and stacks of crates, and I don’t even realize they are full of new hatchlings until we’re right up on them. Their quiet cheep, cheep, cheeps don’t give their location away. I hold one as Tim tells us that they are 100 per crate, and the baby jumps onto my chest and, like a kitten might, scoots over my shoulder. Luckily Mark catches it before it falls to the ground. Who knew ducklings could climb?

Ducks have little sharp points on their beaks that, at Culver Duck, get burned off right away when they are born. Tim tells us that ducks are carnivores, and bully ducklings can peck away at a more mellow one causing enough damage that many babies gang up and kill it—and THEN EAT IT!

Ducks at different stages of development are housed in the research barn, where feed and other variables are changed to try to produce a more optimal duck.

In the breeder barn are pens of ducks and fluorescent lighting overhead. Lights come up at 5 a.m., and most of the mommas lay their eggs then. Ducks produce one egg per day, six days per week. “Even ducks take one day a week off,” says Tim. Negotiated by the duck union? I forgot to ask.

We pass a wastewater lagoon, and Tim says all their water is treated on site and is used for field irrigation. The field is cut for hay once a year.

In the egg-sorting barn, lights shine on a tray of 30 eggs, and some are transparent. We see the inside of one is mostly purple, the color of a blood blister. These see-through eggs are infertile and are culled, as are any cracked, double-yolked, small, or imperfect eggs. The whole place carries a general bad smell, but here it’s almost unbearable.

Tim offers to let us see the entire operation: the stunning, killing, bleeding and plucking, but I decline. We do see ducks herded from a truck down a narrow path, at the end of which is the stunner and conveyor line, which carries the ducks, hung upside down, into the plant where they meet their deaths.

The tour took an hour, and before we part, Tim gives us directions on how to prepare duck; I tell him that I have eaten duck once, but it was greasy. He says people don’t know how to prepare them; they cook them like chicken, but that’s not the best way. He also hands us each a stick of duck jerky.

As we pull from the lot, Mark, chewing on his jerky, admits that the tour was interesting. I agree and am happy he thinks so. Picking alluring options for our long weekend up north was challenging.

96 laps, 128 cars, 2 dazed drivers and an ambulance

Before the main event, a couple old beater buses loaded with kids race around the 3/8-mile track at the Kalamazoo Speedway where Mark and I sit high in the grandstands this Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. The MC, high in a tower somewhere, is non-stop talk:

“Lines are short at concessions, get your hotdogs before the race starts.”

“Who out there saw the race today?” meaning the Indy 500. “Who likes Junior? How many Jeff Gordon fans?”

“It’s Shelby Carlisle’s 17th birthday today. Happy birthday, Shelby.” On and on. Very small-town.

The two bus drivers are actually in the first race, so at 7 p.m. they stop to jump in their own speedsters.

Soon the late model cars are lined up, two by two, eight or nine rows.

The cars look much like the race cars that Dale Junior and Gordon drive: sleek and low, all surfaces covered by sponsors’ names. They start circling the track, and after three go-rounds, the flag drops. Wow, it’s loud. A man a couple rows down wears earplugs. Smart.

Oh! There’s a wreck. The yellow flag is waved, and cars must keep their places as they circle. Nobody’s hurt, but a tow truck does have to pull the car away. The checkered flag flies again, and the noise is over the top.

A tower on the other side of the track displays a lap counter, and after 25, we think the race is over, because every car exits the track. But now the lap counter is a timekeeper counting down from 10 minutes.

The MC talks up concessions again, and every couple minutes he announces how much of the 10 minutes remains. He asks, “Who traveled more than 5 miles to get here? 10? Are there people who came from more than 25 miles away? How about 50?” He stops there. At 300+ miles, Mark and I may have come further than anyone.

With a couple minutes left, a car drives onto the track and into pit row for weighing. And before the 10 minutes has expired, all the cars—even one that wrecked—are back on the track. After the weigh-in, they line up in the order that they finished the first 25 laps, and the whole thing starts again.

After 75 total laps the winner is awarded $5000, and the MC climbs down from his tower and interviews him. He’s a local and has won this race several times

The MC announces that the Euro cars will race next: 200 laps at 128 cars on the 3/8-mile track.

Did we hear right?

Yes, he says it again—128 cars at once—and continues with the rules: if cars wreck or stop, they sit where they lie; other cars do not continue their circling but come to a complete halt until the driver of the dead car safely exits the track. It’s almost a demolition derby.

From the opening between turns 1 and 2, a seemingly never-ending caravan of four-cylinder junkers begins to wind around the track. Most are decorated, their numbers spray painted on their sides. One black Toyota has an MIA flag flying from the back window area, one has a tire painted yellow and secured squarely in the middle of its top, a teddy bear rides the back bumper of another.

The cars stack five-wide, and the flag drops. After only a couple laps one jalopy stalls at the inside near turn 3. The officials give the driver a couple minutes to try to resuscitate the car, but eventually call for a stop. Lights placed on the outside fence coming out of each turn and one in the middle of each straight-away flash red, and the 127 remaining cars screech to a stop. Of course there’s some bumping.

This happens again and again, and by lap 96 the track is littered with 10 or 12 cars, and bumpers, tires and various parts from the other 100. Two drivers have walked away dazed, and one needs a stretcher.

As we wait for the ambulance, the MC tells the crowd that the cars will race in the other direction after 100 laps. This is crazy.

As much as we’d like to, we don’t see the remaining 104 laps because we have reservations 50 minutes east on the coast of Lake Michigan and need to be there by midnight. It’s been so much fun; we might be back next year.

Transport back in time in a dream car

On our way to Michigan Memorial Day weekend, Mark and I stopped to stretch our legs at Snook’s Dream Cars museum in Bowling Green, Ohio. Snook’s is just a couple miles off the highway and looks like a 1950s service station from the outside. We’re the only ones here besides the lady who collects our $6 apiece to enter, so our original thought is that the place is a dud. But contrary to our initial impression, we find the place fun.

Bill Snook is quite the collector and not just of cars. The first room is filled with old pinball machines, carnival games, and slot machines—and most are playable. Mark gives me a penny and I slide it into a small gallery and get 10 shots with a little gun to try to knock down 10 metal tabs. The game has no flash—just wood and metal—but it’s fun. It takes me four shots to get the hang of the gun, which requires some force to fire, and I hit only two tabs. On to the roulette wheel.

The top of the machine has the colors with a coin slot next to each. I choose my color, pull the lever, but lose. One of several old nickel slot machines is calling anyway.

My first nickel gets nothing. My second pull lines up two lemons and I get two nickels back. I’m even. If I were in Vegas, I’d probably quit, but since I’m “gambling” with Snook’s money that the lady gave me from the till, I pull a third time. I hit the jackpot! Not literally, but that’s what it seems. Three lemons result and nickels pour from the machine. I take the winnings to the front—because there’s no gambling in Ohio. Snook’s gets all the loot.

I could spend the afternoon playing with another person’s money, and there are about 10 more machines to try, but I have returned my coins and Mark is already looking at the cars.

In the back I see Mark’s hands are deep in his pockets. He says it’s all he can do not to pop the hoods and look at the engines.

The place is pristine. Not a speck of dust anywhere, and the cars all shine like new, but they’re far from it. Nearly 30 cars make up the collection, from a 1921 Model-T Ford (black, of course) to a 1966 Pontiac GTO. Each car has next to it a sign listing year, original cost, current worth and how many were manufactured originally. My favorite is a 1954 Kaiser Darrin 161, which I have never heard of nor seen before. I really like the color—a soft mint ice cream. The accompanying sign says the paint is not original. It’s still my favorite though. I like the 1966 Mini Cooper too, as cute as a bug. Mark can’t pick one favorite, maybe the GTO.

We end our visit with a walk through the workshop, where an old truck is high on a hoist, and a car is parked in the other stall—with the hood up for Mark to take a peek at the power.

Snook’s Dream Cars museum is easy to get to: from I-75 north, take a right off exit 179 onto Route 6. Turn left at the next crossroad, County Home Road. Snook’s is on the right. Enjoy yourselves. And don’t worry about change for the pinball machine; Snook’s has got you covered.

Shenandoah National Park

To get to Shenandoah National Park, we drove east on I-70 through Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland to Virginia. The changing trees along the way were so pretty. In early October most had not yet changed, but among the hills of green were gold, orange, and red in small bunches Not shades of these colors, just the one hue of each, like a paint-by-number picture.

When we finally turned south off the major east-west interstates onto a state route in Maryland, traffic slowed to mostly stop within the first mile. As we crawled along, we passed tables of crafts and knick-knacks and junk lining both sides of the street. We were passing through on the day of the little town’s festival, and it seemed the whole tri-state came out on that beautiful early afternoon. Cafes offered outside seating, and I volunteered to get out, run ahead to a pizzeria and buy us some lunch. Mark wasn’t keen on that idea—and he had all our money.

In the second mile of our crawl, 20 or 30 minutes in, we stopped just before a kettle corn stand on Mark’s side. We agreed we needed kettle corn so I hopped out while Mark dug in his pocket for cash. At Mark’s door I grabbed the five ones he held out for me, ran across the street and up the embankment to the stand. They saw me coming, and a few steps before I got there I ordered“large!” I handed over the ones and the lady handed over the large bag of carmelly popcorn. I turned and saw that traffic had started its crawl. Down the grassy embankment, across the street, around the car and in. As slick as that, we had our snack for the rest of the trip.

A few handfuls of corn and 2 hours later, we were at the park. One north-south road 105 miles long, Skyline Drive, runs the length of Shenandoah National Park. The road runs along the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and part of the Appalachian Trail runs through the park. Entrance cost $15 a car, but we showed our National Park pass, collected the park brochure and drove in.

The park has 75 pullouts for overlooks down on farms and ponds or towns and rivers to the west, and hills and trees to the east. Trees are the draw to Shenandoah, and October is the busiest time of the year. Trees in Shenandoah seemed not as pretty as those on the drive out, and its more southerly location meant that we likely visited a week or two too early for the full blown colorfest.

Lots of bicyclists pedalled up Skyline Drive that Saturday. They all seemed to be going north; maybe it was a race. One pedaller sat atop a unicycle, traveling uphill!

We stopped to hike part of the Appalachian Trail and spotted a young deer nibbling bark from a tree. Mark wanted to see a bear, and one gentleman we passed, a long-distance hiker, said they were aplenty along the trail.

That section of the Appalachian ended at Byrd Visitor Center, and across from Byrd, to the east, lay the Meadow: acres of blood red, glowing in the early afternoon light, interspersed with bits of yellow grass and several scrawny, scraggly trees. Mountains backed the scene. Looking from the Visitor Center, we wondered at the cause of the vivid color. Upon hiking into the Meadow, we saw the stalks, about 18 inches high, with leaves from bottom to top, which had changed into their striking fall colors.

The only exit from the park besides the ones at mile markers 0 and 105 is at mile marker 32, which is perfect for those entering from the north entrance midafternoon. About 15 miles west of the park is Luray, where we had reservations at Days Inn.

The southern 60 miles of the park offered nothing that the northern 30 didn’t. Shenandoah National Park is too much like Ohio to thrill us, and as cliché as this sounds, getting there was half the fun.

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

Labor Day weekend we set our sights on a beach.

In Indianapolis we stopped at a BBQ festival for lunch. We arrived before 1 p.m. so saved a $5 per person entrance fee. On stage a band played, and the sound system was excellent: at every booth and lemonade stand in the small park, we could hear them well.

Feeling we’d scoped out the area enough to know where we wanted to spend our food tickets, we queued up and bought 21 for $30. All 21 tickets, that’s $30 plus the $8 for parking, bought us a half slab of ribs, a chicken breast sandwich, an order of potato salad, one of cole slaw and a small lemonade. Outrageous! But we enjoyed the lovely day, sitting in a patch of shade and listening to the band. Later that evening Kenny Wayne Shepherd was scheduled to perform. As much as we would have loved to ear-witness the guitar prodigy, we didn’t stay; our main aim was the beach.

Cruising up I-65, we saw a billboard advertising Fair Oaks Farms Dairy, 80 miles ahead at exit 220. I told Mark to wake me when we got there.

The place was right off the highway. Two barns sat adjacent to the parking lot. We walked behind them to a kids’ play area with a long, rectangular pillow of air on which they jumped, a wall with hand- and footholds they used to climb to the top to ring a bell, a track around which they rode mini John Deere tractors and small rails on which they rode a choo-choo train.

Beyond that beckoned a third barn. Mark and I walked in the door and down a short hall to an open doorway with a sign reading “Quiet please. Birthing in progress.”

Inside, sure enough, behind curving glass, under glaring lights, a cow, with birthing end pointed towards us, was pushing out a calf.We barely had time to register what we were seeing when she was pulled to her feet and out the back. Her bag was so big it was about to bust. A cow at milking time carries between two and four gallons. This mom was holding three times as much it seemed.

Another cow with a fresh calf lay in an adjacent enclosure. The calf wore the same white triangle on her forehead as her mother and the same white circle on her chin. We watched a couple minutes as she tried to stand: straightening her back legs and struggling to raise herself onto her front ones.

Before leaving Mark and I, of course, ordered ice cream. Vanilla and chocolate were out. It’s a good thing Mark and I both wanted butter pecan. After a pint, we drove north to the beach.

At Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, we walked onto Porter Beach. The clear waters of Lake Michigan and the crowd at the late hour surprised us. To avoid all the people, we decided to hike to Cowell’s Beach in the morning.

The park literature said we’d likely share Cowell’s with boaters who moored off the shore, but assured us we’d be of but a few who hike the two miles to arrive by foot.Along the mostly flat trail we hauled a double folding chair, our soft-sided cooler filled with water and a cloth Kroger bag with crackers, energy bars, a magazine and two books.

Arriving at 10 a.m. we shared the sands with two parties whose boats were anchored in close. Three hours, six bottles of water and some food later, we climbed the dune to the trailhead and turned to take a picture: parties from more than 50 boats now enjoyed the shore.

Parking was premium at all the beaches that afternoon, so we woke early on Monday and climbed Mount Baldy for a final view-from-on-high of the lake. On top of the highest dune in the park, we looked down on empty Baldy Beach and felt lucky to have the area to ourselves.Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore: the best natural beaches close to home.

Key West is Cool

People born on Key West call themselves Conchs, and folks who’ve lived on the key for at least 7 years may refer to themselves as Freshwater Conchs. However, because the cemetery is so little, only native Conchs may spend eternity there.

Mark and I learn all this and more while enjoying the Conch Train Tour. The tours last 90 minutes and leave every hour, so that means at least three trains, really just trolleys, are congesting traffic on the small island at any one time. Plus, thrown into the mix are at least three more from another tour company that offers 90-minute tours. The locals get annoyed but have come to accept it as a price to pay for, as Jimmie Buffet says, “Livin’ in Paradise.”

Our first night on the island we eat at Margaritaville, Buffet’s restaurant on Duval Street, the busy street with lots of surf and souvenir shops and restaurants. My mahi mahi is dry, but the music during dinner is good, all Buffet songs, and the margaritas are excellent.

Our second night we choose a less-crowded location for dinner than the popular Duval Street: We walk back the boardwalk from the docks and settle into a seaside, wooden booth at Turtle Krawl, a large restaurant that’s barely half full. We prefer the laid-back environment of the boardwalk to the laid-back, sensory overload of Duval Street.

Every evening the sun sets is a celebration on the west edge of Key West. The sun setting at the far edge of the ocean through billowy clouds is quite pretty, but also people crowd around street performers doing tricks for tips. A thin, athletic-looking man walks on his hands and bounds upright, one guy’s dog walks to people holding dollar bills, and she lightly chomps the money and carries it to drop in a hat; the owner tells semi-corny jokes the whole time. The best we see is a guy who juggles fire while riding a unicycle who tells funnier jokes. He opened his act by telling us he’d be juggling “not five, not six, but THREE” fire sticks. We speak with him after the performance. He has his college degree in finance but prefers the easy-going lifestyle of Key West and says he makes a good living earning tips each evening.

If either of us could juggle well or ride a unicycle, Mark and I might consider a move too. Key West is cool.