Author: bbpeck

Bob and I had a great 3+ hour walk around Wauwatosa today to check out some of the murals that adorn buildings along the busy North Avenue as well as some homes on one of 5 self-guided walking tours put together by the City of Wauwatosa Historical Preservation Commission to showcase local examples of Arts and Crafts, Bungalow, and Mail-Order homes.

But first, we went back to the library, as it was in the desired direction, and Bob had found a cut-through from “our” neighborhood that we were interested in checking out. It was a lovely mid-70s F day for a walkabout.

We then started walking east on North Avenue from Wauwatosa Street.

We walked through a number of neighborhoods to get to the architectural walking tour, but the Washington Highlands neighborhood was especially lovely. So many trees, beautiful homes, and well landscaped lawns and/or gardens.

We mainly chose the Tour A tour today because it was closest to the other things we had planned. However, the guide described this route as offering examples of the full range of Arts and crafts and bungalow styling. The homes on the route were built between 1908 and 1928.

First, a couple of brief definitions. Arts and Crafts is a style that can appear in many forms of architecture. It can be in the use of materials, overall styling, simplicity of elements, or decorative details. Bungalows are a building form rather than an architectural style. They are typically a1.5 story home with a broad, low-gabled roof with overhanging eaves and a prominent porch.

Bob and I have been seeing a bit more of Wauwatosa (or Tosa as the locals call it) and a bit more of our shy cat as luck would have it. We have discovered his favorite hiding places — behind the washing machine or among some boxes in the basement.

We are loving this area and thrilled that the cats are continuing to warm up to us. They are an amusing bunch.

Saturday, I drove 1.5 hours to Janesville to see my mom. We got some cleaning done at her house and some errands run as well. Bob did errands of his own here.

Wauwatosa is a town of about 49,000 that is a suburb of Wisconsin’s largest city of Milwaukee. It is known for its historic village, parks, and diverse housing. Yesterday and today we walked to and explored a couple of its parks, and tomorrow we hope to do a portion of one of the 5 neighborhood self-guided walking tours to see some of the varied housing styles throughout the town.

Yesterday’s walk to Hartung Park took us through more lovely neighborhoods with large (but not huge homes) and by a small college.

Today began with a lovely surprise.

Bob and I then walked to another pretty neighborhood park — Firefly Grove Park. It looks very new and includes a bicycle pump track, play area, walking paths and pond, and a Thomas Dambo troll, which was the main attraction for us.

Most of our walk was along busy North Avenue, but homes in “our” neighborhood continue to catch my eye.

There were some artistic benches around the park.

This type of sculpture is typical of Thomas Dambo, as he is known for his installations of giant wooden sculptures (usually trolls) made out of recycled materials. We have seen other Dambo trolls including one in Austin, Texas. Sadly, that troll just burned down in the last couple of weeks.

Bob and I visited the Mitchell Park Domes Horticulture Conservatory today. Our homeowners kindly left us their membership card, so it was a free visit. They have 3 domes of plants — the tropical dome, the desert dome, and a show dome which has a seasonal display. Sadly for us, we’re here during the transition from the spring exhibit to the summer exhibit, so we only got to see two of the domes. Still, a lovely way to spend a bit of time and fairly close to the house.

On the drive over, we passed by the ball field for the Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Team.

Some pics from the tropical dome.

Some pics from the desert dome.

Bob and I have had a bit of a dramatic start to our current housesit. After the homeowners left yesterday, Bob and I got settled in and had a great afternoon and evening until we decided it was time for bed. The cats haven’t been left before and are still trying to decide if we’re okay people, so they are keeping their distance. We were able to locate 3 of the cats, but try as we might, and we did try for an hour (including walking up and down all 3 floors shaking a bag of treats and calling his name), we could not find the fourth cat.

We were almost positive he hadn’t scooted around us out the door the one time we went outside last night, so we finally decided to go to bed and get up for their 5:00 am automated feeding to ensure that all 4 turned up. It was a logical plan but didn’t lend itself to a great night of sleep.

The story has a happy ending. All 4 cats turned up for breakfast, although we still don’t know the location of the elusive hiding place. Here is a better look at the 4 cute, but currently wary of us cats.

We hope we will have won at least some of them over before we leave on the 8th.

Today, we walked about 10 minutes or so to the area of Wauwatosa considered “The Village of Wauwatosa.” We then walked along the Oak Park Trail in both directions before stopping at the cute local market near the house.

The Village of Wauwatosa seems to be where maybe the town originated as there are a number of older buildings in this shopping and restaurant district.

The Oak Leaf Trail is a mostly paved 135 mile multi-use trail that encircles Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. On the part that we walked in Wauwatosa, it runs along the Menomonee River and the train tracks. It runs alongside volleyball, pickle ball, and tennis courts, as well as a football stadium, amphitheater, and a couple of children’s play areas. It was being used by cyclists, runners, and walkers with and without dogs and children in strollers.

Note: On our walk, we saw at least 3 references to fireflies. Turns out, the name Wauwatosa is from the Potawatomi word that means fireflies. The area used to be filled with swarms of fireflies in the summer.

Bob and I left Niceville, Florida, in a thunderstorm this morning for a rainy 6.5 hour drive to Brentwood, Tennessee, as we make our way to Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, for our next housesit. Tomorrow, we’ll have a little bit shorter drive to Fair Oaks, Indiana. Oddly enough, although we are currently in the Central Time Zone and will land in the Central Time Zone tomorrow in Fair Oaks, most of our drive through Indiana tomorrow will be in the Eastern Time Zone.

The last couple of days in Niceville were pretty quiet, with cleaning, errands before departure, and time with Seasame. Some photos from the last few days in Niceville and the 3 cats.

Friday we walked about 25-30 minutes in the neighborhood to The Blue Tee, the bar/restaurant on the neighborhood golf course.

We ended up going back to The Blue Tee on Saturday night for a drink. We had a great bartender and had decently priced and good drinks ($8 for a vodka martini!). However, a couple came in for dinner and were the only people eating, and they still managed to mess up their order by sending the entrees out before the salads and then they had everything at once.

I think it stuck out to us also because when we checked out the restaurant Friday on our walk over, a guy was complaining that they had put onions on his burger and he had specifically asked for no onions. At the time, we thought he was being a bit of a jerk about it, but with the second occurrence we began to think maybe there are some service issues with the restaurant side of things.

We had a lovely time in Niceville. It was great to be right on the water in a lovely, quiet neighborhood.

Before I get to today’s blog, I need to share a perk of our current house sit. After we sent our daily note to our homeowners yesterday afternoon, they told us to watch for the weekly sailboat race that takes place in the bay behind the house. We got a couple of pics from the backyard.

It is so chill here, so that is the type of race you can appreciate and not destroy the serene surroundings. After that, we lost WiFi/TV for the night (neighborhood cable issue), so that was less fun.

On with today’s news…. One of the things to do near Niceville according to a Google search is a visit to Fred Gannon Rocky Bayou State Park. It costs $5 per car for up to 8 people and it was less than a 10 minute drive from the house, so we headed there today. The next few days look to be rainy/stormy here.

The state park was established in 1966 on land that had been used as a training area for the nearby Air Force base. In fact, it was a major site for gunnery and bombing practice during WWII. Remnants of bombs dropped at that time still exist on the grounds.

Fred Gannon was the Director of Civil Engineering at Eglin Air Force Base in the late 1950s and proposed to convert the former military practice range into a public use area, as it was by then in too urban of an area to be used for training.

We walked the three short hiking trails in the park — .75 miles, 1 mile, and .5 miles.

We always like to bring our homeowners a locally made gift from our prior housesit. So in preparing for our upcoming housesit in Wisconsin, we stopped at the very cute Salt and Story Bookstore to see what they had to offer. We found something for our homeowners and an insulated water bottle for me (I had to toss my old plastic bottle.) that says Niceville on it, as I am taken with the name. Maybe it will help soften my rough edges.

Today was a non-running day, so Bob and I had a leisurely morning. About 10, Bob decided to do his 4 mile walk in the neighborhood, and I headed off to check out Northwest Florida State College. The campus exploration was in lieu of being able to see a show at the campus theater which came up as one of the things to do in Niceville.

I read online that the school offers Associate and Bachelor’s Degrees, certificates, and adult education. If you went to cheer on one of their sports or academic teams, you would be rooting for the Raiders. Niceville is the main campus but they have other locations across Oskaloosa and Walton Counties. Their motto is “Beyond: Dream Beyond the Reasonable,” which seems a bit bold for a place called Niceville.

It is an attractive campus and appears to be relatively new.

Maybe cats first and then turkey.

Bob and I are caring for three food-named cats at our current housesit — Nutmeg, Parsley (Nutmeg’s daughter), and Seasame (pronounced Sesame). We really (at least so far) interact with Seasame. The other two are pretty happy for us to be food sources, although Parsley comes close enough to check us out on occasion.

On a Google search of what to do around Niceville, a few things have popped up. One is the Turkey Creek Nature Trail which begins in Turkey Creek Park. It is basically a mile long boardwalk along a creek and marshy vegetation. While a number of signs in the park announce the presence of alligators, bears, and snakes and warn that you swim in the creek at your own risk, they provide a number of docks along the boardwalk for you to enter the water to swim or float. In fact, we saw a group of moms and young kids playing in the water and quite a few teens and young adults walking to the far end of the boardwalk with their inner tubes to float back to the start.

Although we would have liked to have seen an alligator, as we felt safe on the elevated boardwalk, we had no desire to chance seeing one up close by getting in the water.

Tonight we walked 5 minutes down the street to the marina to the L J Schooners Oyster Bar. Crazy good happy hour and lovely setting!

Bob and I left the lovely Destin beach rental house at 1:30 on Saturday for a one night stay at a TownePlace Suites Hotel across the bay in Niceville, Florida. We were warmly greeted by the town and hotel, so maybe people really are nice in Niceville. The name definitely sets moderate expectations.

The hotel was comfy. It looked to be new, and it had a great fitness center. Unfortunately, Bob’s Marriott Titanium status didn’t pull as much weight as we had hoped. Although we were able to get in early on Saturday, we could only extend our stay until 2:00 pm on Sunday. We were hoping to stay until 4:00 since we weren’t to meet up with our homeowner until 6:30.

This forced us to get creative, so we ended up visiting the free Air Force Armament Museum near the Fort Walton/Destin Airport. With the current actions of the US government, we had a hard time generating much enthusiasm for the impressive array of various instruments of war, but it was attractively displayed and provided a good amount of information.

After a little over an hour at the museum, we drove into Destin, which was about 25 minutes with weekend traffic, to kill some time at a bookstore before heading to dinner.

At 6:30 we met up with the wife of our homeowner couple in Niceville, who gave us a quick walk through before offering us a glass of wine which we took out on their back patio for a lovely sunset view.

Our homeowner left today at 1:00 pm to meet up with her husband for their sailing trip along the coast. We will be caring for their 3 indoor/outdoor cats — one of whom we may not see much of as she is not so fond of people.

We are here until early on the 25th.