The ladies of the lake
Mom's job has a fake holiday in August--Founders Day, I think--and she has Monday off. As such, she wanted to head up to Lake Geneva this weekend, either day, since she has a three-day weekend. Even though I figured Saturday would be busier, I'd rather be home on Sunday, because I am *not* off on Monday and who knows what all I'd need to recuperate from. I ended up working past 5 last night, and called dad to let him know that I was coming home, and immediately after I hung up with him I got a text from mom, asking if I'd want to do the lake boat tour. I ignored it, preferring to just come home, but yeah, I was game.
We didn't leave the house until almost 9:30. It's best to leave as early as possible to beat the traffic and get a decent parking spot. Well, we didn't beat the traffic, we didn't get a good parking spot, and somewhere around Woodstock we got into the family therapy session about what's terrible about our lives and our house, culminating with my father calling my mother lazy (he's not wrong), and naturally her getting upset over it. It got pretty heated for a few minutes there. By the time we got into Wisconsin, though, things had calmed down; it helped that we played Count the Antique Stores in Hebron, which is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sort of place which nevertheless had five antique stores that I saw, all within a one-block span, though at least one of them was across a cross street.
Alas for us, our usual parking spot in the large municipal lot behind Egg Harbor Cafe was full. Mom was so excited; she had this little bag full of quarters for parking. We ended up not using them at all, because we parked far enough away from downtown that parking was free. My father, in his infinite wisdom, passed a perfectly good parking spot just north of the main road through town, in part because it was on a street at the far west end of the beach area; mom and I had both pointed it out. Okay, okay; he went around the block...just in time to see a guy in that very spot the next time we drove there. We had to park even farther away now. Good job. We had no idea where we even were; we were close to the intersection of Wisconsin and Warren, which at least was alliterative enough to remember, plus mom at one point had an Uncle Warren. Uncle Warren in Wisconsin--that's how we remembered our spot.
By this time it was well after 11, and we wanted to see what tours were available for the one-hour boat rides. The next one was at 12:15, with boarding at noon. It was about 11:35 by the time mom got our ticket (singular; she paid by credit card and got just one ticket total, which is interesting). Dad hadn't eaten breakfast and mom only had a leftover doughnut I'd brought home from work last night. We'd planned to have a meal there but knew we couldn't wait until after the boat ride. The Riviera, where the tours emanate from, has a little mall on the first level, including a few snack food stands. We stopped at one where mom got the hot dog combo with fries and a drink, dad got just a hot dog, and I got a pretzel; that would tide us over. The people who run it apparently had a daughter of about 10, who was off in some store or something across the way. After we ordered, this large family I think was also going on the tour came by, and the husband working the snack stand went and fetched the little girl to help out. What we thought was weird was that the place had two windows, but it wasn't like one was the order window and one was the pickup. This meant, when our food was done, the husband was handing it over people's heads to us, including the wife's who was sitting there taking orders and ringing us up. Odd. We went outside, ate our food, then took the tour.
Lake Geneva (the town) and Geneva Lake (the body of water) have long been playgrounds of Chicago's well-to-do. You may not recognize all the names mentioned, but many of the companies they worked for are still around. The tour focused on the period from the 1870s to the 1920s for the most part, and while some of the buildings are no longer in existence, a fair amount are. Some of them are really amazing. Some houses are almost right on the shore; some of them take multiple flights of stairs to get up to them. A number have boat houses practically on the water. We got told that all of the piers have to be taken in each fall so as not to get damaged come winter, when the lake can completely ice over--cars have been known to drive on it. The docks all have numbers, partly to receive mail (yep, there's a mail boat) and partly in case of emergency; you can tell people you're at, say, dock 48 and experiencing an issue. Our tour only went for the eastern third of the lake and turned south at The Narrows, the narrowest point of the lake, naturally. I think they said the shores are just a half-mile apart at that point. The lake itself is seven miles long. I think the north docks had reached about 80 when we turned; at that point, the south docks were in the 680s. You see some really interesting stuff, tons of if-I-won-the-lottery places. The guides even pointed out the one island in the lake, which has a house on it; it's adjacent to the (extremely exclusive) Lake Geneva Country Club. There is no road to the island, only a path, and the owners have to park on the country club's property and take a golf cart to their home. That's pretty wild. There's even an emergency boat parked on the lake since the roads on the south side of the lake are pretty narrow. The tour boat chugged along up until it reached the largest single-family home constructed on the lake, and at that point the engine was cut. There was so much to discuss about that place that they actually stopped completely in front of it for about five minutes to talk about everything--seven floors in all! Two sub-basements! A 14' deep pool on the roof! (...That last one, holy crap.) And, essentially, financial ruin has beset all owners past the first one, something like that. Really makes you want to buy it, heh. After that point, the pier was in sight, and I know all the buildings in that area to some degree, so I opted to go to the bathroom before the ride ended. That was probably the worst of it. I get motion sickness, and with no windows and a lot of rocking, the bathroom was a bit disconcerting. The stall was not very long, like I barely had enough clearance for my knees when I sat down, and the engine was directly under the toilet, which was a little freaky. It also wasn't a standard toilet, though I don't know how to describe how it was different. Like...there was a little door the waste water went down that closed back up once flushing was done. I returned to my seat before we had docked. We'd chosen to sit downstairs, which at first was kind of a bummer (it was mom's choice) but it actually worked out. Most people sat upstairs, so we were sure it was full, but it's completely open air and I'm sure bodies would have blocked the view. Downstairs, fewer than 20 people were there, and I estimate there was room for 130 people, so it was pretty open and our views were nearly unobstructed, which was great. There were large windows that were all open and there was a nice breeze, and it was really pleasant. The only issue was that the boat returned late while we waited to board, so we ran about five minutes behind, and there was some sort of battery issue so that when we were supposed to leave to start the tour, we couldn't. There was a trap door next to where I was sitting, in the very back row on the aisle (mom had the window, dad was in the middle--ours was a short row; most had four chairs per side), and somebody climbed down in there to fix the situation. Everything must have been fine after that.
I forgot about the popcorn. While we waited on the pier for the boat, and dad saw it wasn't there yet, he decided he wanted a bag of popcorn and got out of line. I went, okay, you have five minutes! Technically he got back late, but the boat still wasn't there, so it didn't matter; we then busied ourselves with his bag of popcorn. I was the first to drop a kernel, and he was unhappy about that; mom would end up dropping some as well. What, the kernels were all sticking together, so you tended to come away with more than you actually grabbed. Dad was not without fault--as he was talking to me, a kernel escaped his mouth. Essentially, he spit it at me (not purposely) and that landed on the dock, too. And you wonder why the seagulls were constantly above. Actually, one pier we passed, there were gulls on every single post of the pier. It was pretty funny. That was on the north side; on the south side, one pier by the golf club had pinwheels topping every post. It was kind of cool looking, plus we're sure it deters the pests. Two for one, why not.
There was an art show going on at the little park across from the lake on the far east side. We saw it while driving in and decided to stop by and look around. There were some cool booths, with the first one we stopped at being a favorite. The guy welds nature scenes, including dogs, birds, dragons, even full-on trees. My favorite was a large tree with two cardinals in it. Adirondack chairs were the item/word of the day, and one guy had taken a shovel and carved a scene into it featuring two Adirondack chairs. A third person sculpted birds, and mom ended up buying a hummingbird from him for $8. Lastly, there was this cool stained glass booth--and we discovered the guy is from our hometown! Cool. He said he was down by the Lincoln Inn, so dad replied, great, we don't have to schlep stuff home from here. I then had to say, we're from Batavia, too. We looked around for a while but eventually left.
Mom next wanted to go to the library book sale a few blocks away. I had told her when we left the car that I wasn't carrying anything for her; I'd brought a bag, but it was full, in part because it's my outdoor bag for band days and has a blanket in it. In the past I've lamented not having a blanket to sit on for when mom and/or grandma goes cavorting and dad and I just want to chill. Sure enough, I pulled it out, because while mom went to the book sale, she then said she wanted to go exploring the nearby shops and we didn't care to do that. (I'd also reminded her she was stuck carrying any books she bought...and guess what, she bought none. The car wasn't close enough for us to go back to, so she'd be schlepping them for a while.) Dad was lying down on the blanket, and I'd thought to bring today's paper with me, so I read that for a bit before lying back to watch the clouds. Then came a late lunch/early dinner at Popeye's, the longtime downtown restaurant. I think we went there once, ages ago. We got seated inside by a window overlooking the Riviera, so that we could watch one wedding party arrive for their reception...and a bit later, a second wedding party showed up in a hotel minibus. It's a scenic location and I'm sure the second group wanted to take pictures there, either on the stairs or in front of the fountain or both. I'm not sure I'd want to be married there, because LG is SO crowded on Saturdays to begin with, but add in that this likely was the last Saturday before school starts for a lot of families and it led to my mom saying this was the busiest she could ever recall it being up there. Since we hadn't eaten much, we got an appetizer which was basically Greek hummus. We were warned it was VERY garlicky, and it was; hours later, we can still taste it. But it was good and it came with these nice rolls and some vegetables. It likely would make a nice vegetarian meal by itself. Mom got the shrimp Caesar salad; I got the barbecue pulled pork sandwich, of which I ate only half; and dad got the double cheese bacon burger. He claimed he was full after finishing his food, but I was okay for dessert. Mom at first said she didn't want any, then acquiesced, figuring once she left the restaurant, she'd want fudge or something. We got the chocolate mousse cake and we all shared it. Good, hit the spot, but did not dissipate the garlic taste, oh well. We did a little bit more walking and they popped into a store for a bit, but otherwise we were done.
The ride home was not as eventful as hoped. We took the west route out of town because dad was hoping to get cheap gas. I think it was in Williams Bay that we spotted not one, but two places with gas for $2.59. (For reference, it's in the mid- to upper $2.60s here.) Dad insisted on going on to Walworth, remembering the gas station on 14 right after we turn off of 67. Alas for him, gas was a whopping $2.89 there! Holy cow. Needless to say, he did not get gas, and we never saw a better gas price than the $2.59. Had they really been on top of things, they'd have checked Gas Buddy or something before we left and been proactive. Oh well. Next time. We did make it home before 7 PM, so the ride took about an hour and 45 minutes with the added excursion, but it's a pleasant ride in the country and it was a nice day, so we didn't mind.
We didn't leave the house until almost 9:30. It's best to leave as early as possible to beat the traffic and get a decent parking spot. Well, we didn't beat the traffic, we didn't get a good parking spot, and somewhere around Woodstock we got into the family therapy session about what's terrible about our lives and our house, culminating with my father calling my mother lazy (he's not wrong), and naturally her getting upset over it. It got pretty heated for a few minutes there. By the time we got into Wisconsin, though, things had calmed down; it helped that we played Count the Antique Stores in Hebron, which is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sort of place which nevertheless had five antique stores that I saw, all within a one-block span, though at least one of them was across a cross street.
Alas for us, our usual parking spot in the large municipal lot behind Egg Harbor Cafe was full. Mom was so excited; she had this little bag full of quarters for parking. We ended up not using them at all, because we parked far enough away from downtown that parking was free. My father, in his infinite wisdom, passed a perfectly good parking spot just north of the main road through town, in part because it was on a street at the far west end of the beach area; mom and I had both pointed it out. Okay, okay; he went around the block...just in time to see a guy in that very spot the next time we drove there. We had to park even farther away now. Good job. We had no idea where we even were; we were close to the intersection of Wisconsin and Warren, which at least was alliterative enough to remember, plus mom at one point had an Uncle Warren. Uncle Warren in Wisconsin--that's how we remembered our spot.
By this time it was well after 11, and we wanted to see what tours were available for the one-hour boat rides. The next one was at 12:15, with boarding at noon. It was about 11:35 by the time mom got our ticket (singular; she paid by credit card and got just one ticket total, which is interesting). Dad hadn't eaten breakfast and mom only had a leftover doughnut I'd brought home from work last night. We'd planned to have a meal there but knew we couldn't wait until after the boat ride. The Riviera, where the tours emanate from, has a little mall on the first level, including a few snack food stands. We stopped at one where mom got the hot dog combo with fries and a drink, dad got just a hot dog, and I got a pretzel; that would tide us over. The people who run it apparently had a daughter of about 10, who was off in some store or something across the way. After we ordered, this large family I think was also going on the tour came by, and the husband working the snack stand went and fetched the little girl to help out. What we thought was weird was that the place had two windows, but it wasn't like one was the order window and one was the pickup. This meant, when our food was done, the husband was handing it over people's heads to us, including the wife's who was sitting there taking orders and ringing us up. Odd. We went outside, ate our food, then took the tour.
Lake Geneva (the town) and Geneva Lake (the body of water) have long been playgrounds of Chicago's well-to-do. You may not recognize all the names mentioned, but many of the companies they worked for are still around. The tour focused on the period from the 1870s to the 1920s for the most part, and while some of the buildings are no longer in existence, a fair amount are. Some of them are really amazing. Some houses are almost right on the shore; some of them take multiple flights of stairs to get up to them. A number have boat houses practically on the water. We got told that all of the piers have to be taken in each fall so as not to get damaged come winter, when the lake can completely ice over--cars have been known to drive on it. The docks all have numbers, partly to receive mail (yep, there's a mail boat) and partly in case of emergency; you can tell people you're at, say, dock 48 and experiencing an issue. Our tour only went for the eastern third of the lake and turned south at The Narrows, the narrowest point of the lake, naturally. I think they said the shores are just a half-mile apart at that point. The lake itself is seven miles long. I think the north docks had reached about 80 when we turned; at that point, the south docks were in the 680s. You see some really interesting stuff, tons of if-I-won-the-lottery places. The guides even pointed out the one island in the lake, which has a house on it; it's adjacent to the (extremely exclusive) Lake Geneva Country Club. There is no road to the island, only a path, and the owners have to park on the country club's property and take a golf cart to their home. That's pretty wild. There's even an emergency boat parked on the lake since the roads on the south side of the lake are pretty narrow. The tour boat chugged along up until it reached the largest single-family home constructed on the lake, and at that point the engine was cut. There was so much to discuss about that place that they actually stopped completely in front of it for about five minutes to talk about everything--seven floors in all! Two sub-basements! A 14' deep pool on the roof! (...That last one, holy crap.) And, essentially, financial ruin has beset all owners past the first one, something like that. Really makes you want to buy it, heh. After that point, the pier was in sight, and I know all the buildings in that area to some degree, so I opted to go to the bathroom before the ride ended. That was probably the worst of it. I get motion sickness, and with no windows and a lot of rocking, the bathroom was a bit disconcerting. The stall was not very long, like I barely had enough clearance for my knees when I sat down, and the engine was directly under the toilet, which was a little freaky. It also wasn't a standard toilet, though I don't know how to describe how it was different. Like...there was a little door the waste water went down that closed back up once flushing was done. I returned to my seat before we had docked. We'd chosen to sit downstairs, which at first was kind of a bummer (it was mom's choice) but it actually worked out. Most people sat upstairs, so we were sure it was full, but it's completely open air and I'm sure bodies would have blocked the view. Downstairs, fewer than 20 people were there, and I estimate there was room for 130 people, so it was pretty open and our views were nearly unobstructed, which was great. There were large windows that were all open and there was a nice breeze, and it was really pleasant. The only issue was that the boat returned late while we waited to board, so we ran about five minutes behind, and there was some sort of battery issue so that when we were supposed to leave to start the tour, we couldn't. There was a trap door next to where I was sitting, in the very back row on the aisle (mom had the window, dad was in the middle--ours was a short row; most had four chairs per side), and somebody climbed down in there to fix the situation. Everything must have been fine after that.
I forgot about the popcorn. While we waited on the pier for the boat, and dad saw it wasn't there yet, he decided he wanted a bag of popcorn and got out of line. I went, okay, you have five minutes! Technically he got back late, but the boat still wasn't there, so it didn't matter; we then busied ourselves with his bag of popcorn. I was the first to drop a kernel, and he was unhappy about that; mom would end up dropping some as well. What, the kernels were all sticking together, so you tended to come away with more than you actually grabbed. Dad was not without fault--as he was talking to me, a kernel escaped his mouth. Essentially, he spit it at me (not purposely) and that landed on the dock, too. And you wonder why the seagulls were constantly above. Actually, one pier we passed, there were gulls on every single post of the pier. It was pretty funny. That was on the north side; on the south side, one pier by the golf club had pinwheels topping every post. It was kind of cool looking, plus we're sure it deters the pests. Two for one, why not.
There was an art show going on at the little park across from the lake on the far east side. We saw it while driving in and decided to stop by and look around. There were some cool booths, with the first one we stopped at being a favorite. The guy welds nature scenes, including dogs, birds, dragons, even full-on trees. My favorite was a large tree with two cardinals in it. Adirondack chairs were the item/word of the day, and one guy had taken a shovel and carved a scene into it featuring two Adirondack chairs. A third person sculpted birds, and mom ended up buying a hummingbird from him for $8. Lastly, there was this cool stained glass booth--and we discovered the guy is from our hometown! Cool. He said he was down by the Lincoln Inn, so dad replied, great, we don't have to schlep stuff home from here. I then had to say, we're from Batavia, too. We looked around for a while but eventually left.
Mom next wanted to go to the library book sale a few blocks away. I had told her when we left the car that I wasn't carrying anything for her; I'd brought a bag, but it was full, in part because it's my outdoor bag for band days and has a blanket in it. In the past I've lamented not having a blanket to sit on for when mom and/or grandma goes cavorting and dad and I just want to chill. Sure enough, I pulled it out, because while mom went to the book sale, she then said she wanted to go exploring the nearby shops and we didn't care to do that. (I'd also reminded her she was stuck carrying any books she bought...and guess what, she bought none. The car wasn't close enough for us to go back to, so she'd be schlepping them for a while.) Dad was lying down on the blanket, and I'd thought to bring today's paper with me, so I read that for a bit before lying back to watch the clouds. Then came a late lunch/early dinner at Popeye's, the longtime downtown restaurant. I think we went there once, ages ago. We got seated inside by a window overlooking the Riviera, so that we could watch one wedding party arrive for their reception...and a bit later, a second wedding party showed up in a hotel minibus. It's a scenic location and I'm sure the second group wanted to take pictures there, either on the stairs or in front of the fountain or both. I'm not sure I'd want to be married there, because LG is SO crowded on Saturdays to begin with, but add in that this likely was the last Saturday before school starts for a lot of families and it led to my mom saying this was the busiest she could ever recall it being up there. Since we hadn't eaten much, we got an appetizer which was basically Greek hummus. We were warned it was VERY garlicky, and it was; hours later, we can still taste it. But it was good and it came with these nice rolls and some vegetables. It likely would make a nice vegetarian meal by itself. Mom got the shrimp Caesar salad; I got the barbecue pulled pork sandwich, of which I ate only half; and dad got the double cheese bacon burger. He claimed he was full after finishing his food, but I was okay for dessert. Mom at first said she didn't want any, then acquiesced, figuring once she left the restaurant, she'd want fudge or something. We got the chocolate mousse cake and we all shared it. Good, hit the spot, but did not dissipate the garlic taste, oh well. We did a little bit more walking and they popped into a store for a bit, but otherwise we were done.
The ride home was not as eventful as hoped. We took the west route out of town because dad was hoping to get cheap gas. I think it was in Williams Bay that we spotted not one, but two places with gas for $2.59. (For reference, it's in the mid- to upper $2.60s here.) Dad insisted on going on to Walworth, remembering the gas station on 14 right after we turn off of 67. Alas for him, gas was a whopping $2.89 there! Holy cow. Needless to say, he did not get gas, and we never saw a better gas price than the $2.59. Had they really been on top of things, they'd have checked Gas Buddy or something before we left and been proactive. Oh well. Next time. We did make it home before 7 PM, so the ride took about an hour and 45 minutes with the added excursion, but it's a pleasant ride in the country and it was a nice day, so we didn't mind.