Dalton Graham

This is Pymatuning State Park, on the Pennsylvania-Ohio border.

When I left you, we were driving around the lake, and had already done the spillway, the fish hatchery, and the train museum. There was also a canal museum, dedicated to the Erie Canal Extension that at one time went through the area, but I didn't take any pictures there.

The rest of the pictures from the drive around the lake are mostly various views of the lake. This one shows the causeway, that cuts across the lake, connecting the Pennsylvania and Ohio sides. It's really neat to drive on!

And here's another map of the lake, since it's been a while since I posted the one at the beginning. This is the Ohio park's map, but it has some of the Pennsylvania landmarks on it, too. The PA/OH border is the vertical line that goes up from the A in Pymatuning (at the bottom); the causeway is the one obvious horizontal line, and my cabin is the campground/cabin icons just under the Ohio state seal.

Pavillion on the Ohio side. With all the stops that I made, it took me about 7 hours to drive around the lake. If you just drove, it would probably take a little under an hour.

This is the lake's biggest island, Clark Island, that I wanted to take Willow-boat out to, but I didn't get to, because of Events to Be Described later.

The day after the drive 'round the lake, I made a foray into deepest Ohio to buy wine and cider at Trader Joe's and Aldi. (Pennsylvania ones don't sell alcohol, for reasons having to do with our unusually strict liquor laws.) After those stops, the rain was wrapping up, so we zipped up to Lake Erie for a quick look at the inland sea (which we planned to explore in more depth later).

There was an Ohio state park nearby, but all of the beaches had these signs. (If you can't embigged to see, it says, "NO PETS ON BEACH.")

There was one walking path that ran parallel to the beach, where dogs were allowed, so we walked along that. At one point there was a probably-unofficial trail to the beach that did not have the sign, so we popped in for a quick look:

Then Teddy was kind enough to wait in the car for a bit while I hiked out to the nesting ground of the endangered Great Lakes Piping Plover.

Due to a signage error, it was a lot farther than I thought it would be.

But it was pretty cool!

The next day was supposed to be Lake Adventures Day. We got up, and I started inflating my paddleboard, Dragonfly, for an explore around the beach area with Ted.

However, after I had finished inflating the paddleboard, my car wouldn't start. I called around, and found a place nearby that could look at it. This guy:

Sold me a bill of goods about how my car takes a very special kind of battery that's hard to find; his parts guy had one that would work, but it was a high-end one and kind of expensive...long story short, he charged me $500 to put a new battery in my car. Supposedly it was $450 for the part, and he was giving me a deal on the labor at $50. Which I figured was pretty high, and he must be getting a kickback from the parts guy, but I didn't want to waste any more of my. vacation than I had to screwing around with this, so I chalked it up to a convenience fee.

Late afternoon, the car was dealt with, and Teddy and I finally got out on the water.

Foggy photo because my phone was in the waterproof case.

Teddy got on the paddleboard for a bit, and also learned to enjoy his DFD (Dog Flotation Device). He likes to swim, but he doesn't like getting his ears wet, so it's perfect for him! (He was actually swimming mere moments before this photo was taken, but it took me a while to get the phone out.)

So I didn't have time to take Willow out to Clark island, but we had some nice campfire stew,

And another frog sighting

And the next day (Wednesday) we were up bright and early and headed to Erie. Our first planned stop was the smaller of Pennsylvania's two Lake Erie parks, Erie Bluffs. It's a small, mostly-undeveloped park with some hiking trails and a boat launch.

As soon as we got there my car died again.

While waiting for the tow truck, we took a quick walk to the nearest overlook and had a quick look at the big lake, in case that was all we were going to get. Then the tow truck driver had to pick Teddy up and put him in the cab, so he could take us & the van to another shop. Luckily, I'd been able to find one that was nearby and thought they could probably take a look at it after lunch.

As soon as they opened the hood, they saw that the battery was not correctly installed. The clamp that's supposed to hold it in place wasn't bolted down, and the red connector was loose and arcing. The battery was completely dead, and the alternator was fried.

When I first arrived, the office manager had been making noises about how they might not get to it after all, and I might need to find a motel, but when they discovered this, and I told them that I had, just yesterday, paid $500 for that battery, she took me under her wing and made sure the shop guys prioritized getting me going again.

She also looked up the part number on the battery. It was a low-end store-brand battery from a place that had a store 17 miles from where I got it put in; they had plenty of them in stock, and other options besides.

I made a couple of irate phone calls to the original guy, but nothing came of it. We ended up having to spend pretty much the whole day in the shop; Teddy didn't mind, because people kept coming in and petting him, but I was less than thrilled about losing a second day of my vacation to this shit, and I definitely wasn't going to have enough daylight left to make it worth going to the big Lake Erie park, Presque Isle.

Luckily, my dad felt bad for me, and decided to send me some money to help with the unexpected expenses. With that in hand, I decided to extend my vacation a couple of days. The park cabins run Friday to Friday in the summers, and I wasn't expected back at work until Tuesday, so I found a motel up by Presque Isle for Friday and Saturday nights. That ended up being really good, so it all worked out okay I guess; more about that in Part 4.

By the time we got out of the shop, it was about 5, so we had enough daylight to go back to Erie Bluffs again. We did some more hiking,

And explored the little piece of beach that that park has,

And Teddy got to sniff a lot of stuff.

This is a little sandbar that sticks out where Elk Creek flows into, or possibly out of, Lake Erie.

As we walked back to the parking lot on a trail above Elk Creek, I began to hatch a plan.

I decided that the Willow was going to visit Lake Erie.

It was about a 15-minute paddle from the boat launch back out to the sandbar.

A view of the inland sea from the deck of the Willow!

Then we turned around and paddled back. (Unbeknownst to me, my dad was kind of freaking out while I was doing this, because I'd texted him and my sister my float plan, and apparently he wasn't quite convinced that I had correctly judged this as a reasonable thing to do in my folding boat. But really, the creek was barely moving; it just felt like an adventure because there was a Great Lake at the end of it.)

Nicholas Galanin

Native American (Tlingit/Unangax̂), born 1979

And my brother and I started saying that all the time, in a specific weird high pitched voice, with a British accent, and we'd drag out the "I" unnecessarily... like, if I was going to say, "I'm going to ride my bike" I'd be like, "Prince Philip and IIIIIII... am going to ride my bike."

My then boyfriend and his younger brother both lost their minds over it while I just sat at the dinner table confused. Sure, im always pale but, jaundiced?? This woman used to be a registered nurse!

Anyway, from that point on, the younger brother at random, anytime the in-law said something dumb (which was often) would reply with "Kero I think you have JAUNDICE."

The entire phrase was spoken mockingly but the emphasis on the word 'jaundice' always had so much venom and rasp to it. It became a household meme, and to this day, some 10 years later, I have an impulsive laugh whenever I hear the term 'jaundice' and MUST reply with that phrase.

A few years ago, I went to Florida with my friends, and we went to Universal, and we were waiting in line for a ride and there was a mother and child behind us, and the kid was getting more and more nervous as we got closer to the front, and he was giving all these random reasons they should get out of the line... they also happened to be British, and when we were almost to the front, the kid suddenly tells his mom he has to poop and if they go on the ride, he'll poop his pants. The mom was like, "I asked you before we got in line if you needed the bathroom and you said no" and the kids goes, "I didn't have to go then, but I have to go now. It's how the body works!" But he said the last part so emphatically, in this British accent, and it was all I could do to not burst out laughing... I think they got out of the line (I can't remember), but my friends and I still always say, "it's how the body works!" In a British accent 🤣

I thought it was a smooth conversational transition. It was not.

Great Hornbill (Buceros bicornis), family Bucerotidae, order Buceroftiformes, northern Bengal, India

Texas Ironclad Beetle (Zopherus nodulosus), family Zopheridae, North TX, USA

my friend's 5 year old recently got a toy veterinary medicine set - it's super cool, like one of those mini play kitchens a lot of kids have, but it's set up to pretend to be a vet (it's this thing) - it has stuffed animals and things to weigh them, give them medicine, take x-rays, write on their charts, etc.

so this kid, who is five and to my knowledge has no experience in the administrative bureaucracy of modern healthcare, puts a stuffed pig named Piggy on the exam table. she pretends to draw blood from Piggy using a fake syringe, and the blood goes into a toy test tube vial that she calls "the resulter"

i'm playing with her, right, so i'm like, awesome, what are the results of Piggy's blood test? and she says "we have to send it to the scientists." so we send the vial to the scientists (put it in her bedroom) and when we get back to the vet playset i'm like awesome what did the scientists say? and she says they have not gotten back to us yet

so she rolls her eyes, exasperated, and says we have to call the scientists. she pretends to call them. apparently, they tell her that Piggy's blood test is "at the bottom of the list" and "we have to WAIT." she frowns. we wait a bit longer and call them back. they tell us it will be a while! she says we should go ask the scientists in person so we go back to her bedroom and she inquires at this imaginary lab, at which point the scientists yell at her and tell her now they will make us wait even longer!

keep in mind she is 100% directing this play. she is making all this up. she is fully in control of this game, and she has decided that what we are going to pretend is that we are dealing with this exhausting nonsense, not actually treating Piggy.

finally the blood tests come back. they are inconclusive. the scientists do not know what is wrong with Piggy. the little girl walks back to the stuffed pig on the exam table, sighs deeply, and says in a very serious voice "we can never help you."

i'm obsessed with this kid. when given complete control over a make believe scenario, instead of becoming the heroic rescuer administering effective cures, she is instead a beleaguered vet making multiple calls to an overworked lab only to be left unable to help her patient.

Most of this article is copied below. Bold added.

In its look at the adoption of electronic book formats, Pew Research stumbled onto an interesting data point. The most likely person to read a book — in any format — is a black woman who's been to college. Slate's Jacob Weisberg spotted the data point buried in Pew's report, "E-Reading Rises as Device Ownership Jumps." When asked Pew asked people if they'd read a book over the past year, there were clear demographic differences in the responses. Not all of the distinctions are statistically significant here, meaning that since Pew is looking at smaller and smaller subsets of its data, small percentage differences can misrepresent reality. But some distinctions are clear and significant: -Women read more books than men. -Black and white people read more books than Hispanics. (The difference between black and white readers isn't large enough to be statistically significant.) -People who've been to college read more books than those who haven't. There are other contrasts that the report draws: people who make $50,000 or more a year are more likely to read books, as are young people, in some circumstances. Nor is it the case that ebooks are rapidly gaining on traditional paperbacks. More Americans own tablets or ereaders (like a Kindle), but still 69 percent of Americans are reading traditional book-books. Only 28 percent of Americans read an ebook last year. That 69 percent figure is actually up slightly over 2012, when only 65 percent of Americans did so. That distinction doesn't vary much by demographic group. Young people are more likely to read ebooks than older people, but they're also generally more likely to read paper books, too. Black people read more of every type of book, though it's statistically close. Ebooks are more likely to be read by people in cities or suburbs than in rural areas.

In today's society, Black women remain all too invisible in plain sight.

The statistics from this 2014 article still rings true. More books across the board are being read by Black women, that exact group those many, many stories that forsake diversity tend to shun completely or box into a supporting act, often some flat variation of a sassy, angry, romance-less typecast. Negative bonus points if our story begins and ends in tragedy!

Fun fact for today! Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Today is the birthday of Ida B. Wells.

Born on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Ida B. Wells was a journalist, author, suffragist, Black feminist, and much more.

Read more about Ida B. Wells-Barnett >>

Let's support Black women's voices, their stories, and the works that include Black women with respectable, full-faceted and beautiful representation!

Here are some related posts from WWC to inspire you:

More reading:

Black girls and women: Representation that we want

Black sexuality representation we want to see

Top favorite books from Black authors and/or Black MCs (2025)

Agami Heron (Agamia agami), family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, Costa Rica