2024 Bear Hunt Day 1 - Bombing The Nursing Home

It got cool enough overnight that the air conditioner quit, but it was humid enough outside to make it just clammy in the hotel room in the morning.  So after a quick shower and some futzing around, I packed up and hit the road.

It was early and still dark.  I love watching all the wind turbines all blinking in unison.

I passed through the most evil toll both in the world - Illinois tolls really suck - and I was into Wisconsin.

It started to get light right near Madison.  Traffic picked up just a little bit, but it was still early on a Saturday so it was never an issue.  Then I continue north and west.

I finished listening to The Ends of the World and it got a lot better as I got into it more.  Early in the book felt very repetitive, but later in the book there were a lot of interesting anecdotes about prehistoric animals, when they actually lived and how much time separated some of them.  I also came away with the belief that geology, paleontology and astronomy are all somewhat petty and driven too much by egos.  Being a scientist myself (chemistry), I can say I see this all too often at work...

There was one laugh-out-loud moment when the author was talking about the possibility of the dinosaurs' end and the huge asteroid that hit Mexico being completely coincidental since some believe the asteroid happened after the dinos were already dying out, and it was referred to as the "Bombing the Nursing Home Theory" - which I thought was really funny (maybe you had to be there...).  I also really liked how he went into detail about how some animals have adaptations to conditions and predators that no longer exist - meaning animals like pronghorns that are laughably fast compared to their predators are essentially running away from ghosts.  Although I guess they still can't outrun bullets.  All in all it was a pretty good book.  It ended on a mixed note which I found oddly comforting.  No matter what we (humans) do, on the geologic time scale, things will end up where they end up.  I am cosmically meaningless.

I didn't want to start a new book, so I listened to pod casts the rest of the trip.

The drive went well enough.  Temperatures started cool but got warmer.  Traffic remained light to tolerable the whole day.  I realized as I got near Eau Claire that I had finally started to relax a little bit.

As I continued heading north, the area got beautifully boggy and northy.  This kind of scenery always tells me I'm headed to an adventure.

I continued on to Baudette where I had a hotel at a fishing resort right on the river.  I loved the place - I may have to come up early on a future trip since I have never caught a sturgeon.  The view was absolutely gorgeous and right across the Rainy River was Canada.  I couldn't help think of my 2021 trip where I stared across the same river in Fort Fort Frances at the United States.

After wandering around for a little while I returned to my room to veg out before preparing to head across the border to bears in the morning.