Memorial Day Parade in Monona 2009

Every parade I've ever been to has featured the guys that paint a face on their great big beer bellies and jiggle while "Colonel Bogey's March" plays on the loudspeaker. And the crowds just love them.

I followed this dedicated paddler down to to the lake shore to see if he would really be able to find enough open water to put his canoe it, and what do you know, he could.

Skimmed Over

We've had a little more than a week of temperatures below freezing, so that the ponds on the golf course along the edge of Monona Drive have finally begun to freeze over.

Visitors

These Canadian geese came wheeling over my head as I strolled the neighborhood streets of Monona this afternoon. By coincidence, I walked home along Monona Drive and found them grazing on the fairways of the golf course.

A Morning Walk in Monona

This sentinel is keeping watch over the shore line of Lake Monona from his perch atop a stump at Graham Park.

The city of Monona is confined to a peninsula jutting into the lake from the eastern shore. Mammoth houses stand shoulder to shoulder along the shore, blocking sight of the lake from the road almost totally.

One of the nice things about Monona, however is the public access to the shore guaranteed by a string of small parks. My walk along Winnequah Road this morning took me past Graham Park and Frostwoods Beach.

Here's another view of the shore, looking north, from the beach at Frostwoods Park.

Autumn colors on Nichols Road in Monona.

Monona's Sylvan Shores

I took a walk this morning to see if I could find out who was playing their stereo loud enough to wake me at six-thirty. I ended up on the shore of Lake Monona at Frostwoods Park, where the sun was just beginning to shine down on this idyllic early-morning scene. This is what they pay the big bucks to wake up to.

All the noise, by the way, was coming from the Monona Terrace, where the Iron Man was getting underway. From the opposite shore of the lake I could just make out a couple thousand people teeming across the terrace. The near-calm on the lake must have been perfect for carrying the sound all the way to Monona, five miles away, where I could clearly hear the announcer and the background music.

Sunday Morning On The Yahara

Boats on the river between Upper Mud Lake and Squaw Bay, as seen from Bridge Street in Monona.

Monona City-Wide Garage Sale Today

This was about the most interesting thing I saw.

Cool tree house.

This one's on the Yahara River along Broadway.

Corner of Sleepy Lagoon and Whispering Waters, the abandoned trailer park in Monona that was supposed to be new condominiums by now. I'll bet that's on indefinite hold with the popping of the housing bubble.

Sunset over Monona

We had to "spring ahead" last Sunday but that gets us home early enough to see the sunset from our front window now.

Daylight savings time still sucks, though. That hasn't changed.

Sodium Bounce-Back

A low overcast reflects the city's streetlights in this before-bedtime snapshot.

A Wooded Lane

Midland Lane in Monona.

The Parting Of The Ways

Trees parted where a power line runs between the boughs. In the center foreground, all that is left of a tree that failed to spread its branches is the chunk that engulfed the wire.

Up a Lazy River

Morning on the Yahara River in Monona

The fog comes on little cat feet ...

On the Ice I

The weather was so sunny and warm that I could hardly wait to peel out of my pyjamas and take a walk.

There's a park at the end of Frostwoods Avenue that fronts on Lake Monona. I could see a few people on the ice fishing.

I haven't been fishing in years, and the last time I was ice fishing I wasn't any taller than my dad's knees, but there's a weird, almost irresistable attraction to walking across a frozen lake. The thought crossed my mind a couple weeks ago, when the temps were below freezing and I felt confident that the ice was safe. With the sun beating down and a warm wind blowing today, I wasn't so confident, but if I went sploot through the ice, maybe one of the fishermen would see me disappear and call the EMTs.

So I took a little walk across Lake Monona ...

On the Ice II

Ice fishing on Lake Monona is not going to last many more days past this weekend as temps climb into the fifties and the insulating layer of snow melts off.

In my short thirty-minute walk across the ice, I watched fishermen scoot their shelters from hole to hole, leaving a trail of shavings behind them.