Days 105-111, September 2-8, Iowa to Wisconsin

I'm home now, safe and sound on Drumbore Farm in PA.  Before I compose a final wrap-up about my summer-long trip, I want to cover in this post the last social and fishing stops I made before my return.

After the events in my last post, Trish joined me at her father's house in Walnut, IA shortly before Labor Day.  All of the in-laws came to town for an afternoon party on the 4th.  To tell you the truth, I was getting homesick by that time.  But I had one last hook-up scheduled with friends, and I didn't want to forego the opportunity to see them.

The friends, in this case, were Carl Thompson and his brother Dave.  I've known Dave longer than any other continuing friend except for Dave Loebsack, a U.S. Congressman from Iowa.  Representative Loebsack and I met when we were both freshmen at Iowa State, residing in Ayres House in Larch Hall.  We became roommates as sophomores at the same time Dave Thompson matriculated at ISU and moved into Ayres House.    A few years later I moved into an off-campus house with three other former Ayres House residents - Dave Thompson was one of them.  Through him I met his older brother Carl, with whom I later resided in another house while I was still attending graduate school in Ames.   The adventures that Dave, Carl and I had over the years we lived together, and for many years afterward, cemented a relationship that we've actively maintained over four decades.  But it had been too long since we were last physically together.

On Labor Day I drove to Ames (Ames was a full-on nostalgia trip in its own right) to have lunch with Carl and his wife Karen - Karen is another long-time friend.  Fortunately their oldest son Greg was visiting and I had a chance to chat with him for a short time.  In the early afternoon Carl and I climbed into Excalibur and carved a crooked path on quaint byways to southwest Wisconsin, stopping in Platteville for the evening.  Carl's youngest son Joe attends college in Platteville.  We took Joe out to dinner and wound up spending the night in the driveway of the old house in which Joe resides with several roommates.  The situation reminded both Carl and me of our time living on 119 Beach Avenue in Ames, way back when.  It was fun to sit around a backyard campfire with Joe and his roommates, conversing into the late hours.  A couple of the roommates were English majors, as I once was.  Talking with these kids about poetry and novelists and other subjects that don't come up in my day-to-day life in PA transported me back to my twenties.  It was exactly the kind of experience I craved.

Classes started on Tuesday and our new young friends disappeared quickly, so Carl and I snuck out of Platteville right after breakfast, landing that afternoon at Castle Rock Creek near Fennimore.  Carl hadn't fly-fished for many years but he gave it the college try, and before long we landed several solid brown trout.  Castle Rock Creek is a pretty little spring-fed stream that flows through numerous lovely farms nestled in a deep, narrow valley.  Countless other cliff-lined valleys that surround and connect to the one we were in combine to form a latticework through the Driftless Region of Wisconsin.  The Driftless Region is an area surrounding the adjoining corners of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota - an area that avoided the glacial scrubbing subjected to most of the upper Midwest in the last ice age.  This unique regional geology is a blessing to fly fishers because the rivers and creeks there are cold and clear enough to support healthy populations of trout, which is why we were there.  Many thanks to Trout McGee, a fly-fishing blogger like me (and a much-better photographer than me).  He was very kind to point me in the direction of Castle Rock, which is roughly in his neighborhood.  He knows the Driftless Region well.

That evening Carl and I set up Camelot in a private, deserted campground on the banks of an improved portion of the stream, directly beneath the gray cliff that gives Castle Rock Creek its name.  There we found numerous trout rising to a variety of hatching flies late in the evening.  The evening passed too quickly, but not before we caught several chunky browns.  Under a burst of starlight and a waxing gibbous moon we made a campfire, enjoyed a steak dinner, and debated economics, investing theory and related topics well into the night.  Here's a look at the scenery in which we found ourselves (remember, you can click on the pictures to make them larger):

The next morning we tried to catch a few more fish but we didn't get it done.  It didn't really matter.  We decided to leave Castle Rock and head for Delavan, WI to meet Dave.  Shortly after we launched, we stopped in a little pub for lunch.  The young waitress there was an unusually flirtatious and attractive gal, but Carl and I are far too old and much too married - we moved on, feeling pleasantly flattered by her attentions the rest of the day.  Around 3 pm we rolled into Delavan, joining Dave in his lake house there.  What a great afternoon and evening!  Dave has a neat little Bayliner on the lake and we took it out for a spin on a superlative late afternoon, kicking up a big wake in the shadows of lakeside mansions until sunset drove us back to shore.  That night Dave prepared a succulent Italian dinner.  We reminisced about the past, watched videos of Dave's talented boys playing guitar and sax and competing in track, talked about our present lives and generally enjoyed one another's company as we always have.

I've had this kind of wonderful experience many times this summer, reacquainting myself with old friends.  When we saw each other, in some cases after several years apart, it felt like we had just been hanging out yesterday.  Friendships that sustain themselves that way are the best kind.  If I'm glad about any single recurring theme of my trip this summer - more than the fishing, the amazing sights and my immersion in nature - it was the camaraderie of friends and family I spent time with along the way.  I love them all.

On Wednesday I dropped Carl off at the Milwaukee airport so he could fly back to Ames, and then started for home.  More about that next time.