The Wright Place for the Right Meal

Healthy appetites and fieldwork go hand-in-hand. After many work trips to Wausau, Wisconsin, several restaurants spring to the top of my favorites list. I have had the pleasure of dining four times at the Wright Place on 6th and every meal has been more than satisfying.

First, three ground rules on restaurant selection: no fast food or chains, genuineness, and local food. This restaurant fits the bill. The Andrew Warren and the East Hill Residential Historic Districts, both listed on the National Register of Historic Places, surround the restaurant with beautifully restored examples of Greek Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Classical Revival and Prairie School architecture. The Wright Place draws its name from its builder, Ely Wright, and not, as I at first imagined, from Wisconsin’s architectural superstar Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Italianate building’s impeccable restoration, done with an obvious eye toward detail, fits right into the historic scene. The food and service continue this penchant for detail in all things. The menus rotate with the seasons, providing a rich array of fish, meat, and chicken dishes cooked to exacting standards by Chef Travis Teska. Both the owner, Patti Kay and Chef Teska share a common love of good food cooked well. They use as many as ten local producers, depending on the season.

Fridays feature a nod to Wisconsin tradition, pan-fried walleye. Prime rib and king crab legs celebrate Wednesdays as specialties. Entrees range in price from $18 to $30.

The accompaniments to a good meal are in ready supply here. The Poached Pear salad is a favorite of mine. I usually skip appetizers (in order to save room for the entrée) but I have tried the Salsa Baked Goat Cheese, the salsa a perfect match for the pungent goat cheese. For a light desert, the sorbet du jour or the handmade ice cream top off a tasty evening. Otherwise go for the strawberry rhubarb crisp or the chocolate cake.

The credible selection of house wines and most of the extensive wine list are available by the glass. Be prepared to pay by the bottle for reserve wines, though. Martinis are a specialty of the house.

Alas, the one thing in short supply here are vegetarian options. Mr. CartoGeek would be enjoying the architectural details and ambience more than he would the edibles. But, all and all, the Wright Place provides outstanding (meaty) meals and excellent service, a combination that is hard to beat.

Reservations encouraged anytime and recommended for Friday and Saturday nights.
The Wright Place on 6th
901 N. 6th St, Wausau, Wisconsin
Serving Monday through Saturday.
Dinner Hours: 4:30 to 10:00
Open Hours: 4:30 to Close

Ticks, Damn Ticks!

I grew up in the woods. Not literally, of course, but the bulk of my childhood memories revolve around being outside, whether exploring deep, dark forests a stone’s throw away from my house or playing the seasonal sport of choice. Fall equaled football and basketball; winter meant sled races and snowball fights; spring and summer brought baseball.

Bugs of all sorts came along for the ride – ticks, mosquitos, flies. You just got used to them and pulled them off or slapped them when necessary. Not much more thought went into the dangers these creatures can sometimes carry.

One summer during college, I visited my brother and his family in Pennsylvania. His wife was from another country and was unfamiliar with the pesky bugs of the East coast. We settled on a trip to a local park for a picnic and some canoeing. At the welcome station, my sister-in-law was introduced to a horrible visage of a framed dinner plate-sized deer tick under the bold blood red word: BEWARE! She gasped, covering the near audible scream with a worried hand. This creature looked to be from a bad 1950s B-grade horror flick; the only way to deal with this thing was a bazooka which we hadn’t thought to bring!

In reality, a deer tick looks like a small freckle with eight legs. Wood ticks are slightly larger. People who spend a lot of time in the woods find unique and interesting methods for dealing with them. One co-worker opts for the chemical route. There are some nasty sprays on the market composed entirely of unpronounceable 20-letter chemical ingredients. He liberally sprays his clothing, even as he wears them, encasing his pant legs in fuming clouds of tick deterrent. For another co-worker, rants are added to the mix, a chorus the ticks ignore. Other field workers create games to go with the inevitability of finding ticks on one’s body: a version of pin the tail on the donkey. Each recovered tick is live-pinned to a board and a tally kept. I’m not sure what the prize is for winning but vengeance seems like a good one.

I choose to employ barriers to the devilish villains of the woods. I look like a Cossack, with pant legs tucked tightly into my socks. Shirt tails stay in my pants and long sleeves stop most bugs at my wrists. A hat covers my head. And yet, this does not stop them completely.

Ticks like to hang out, literally. They gather on grass stems or tree branches, waiting for some unsuspecting animal to jostle their perch and induce them to drop onto said animal. It’s their cue for a moveable feast. Some humans are like elephants in the bush, bulling their way through, practically sweeping for ticks. I have found that the opposite is perhaps as good a method for avoiding the menace as any. In moving with deliberateness and thought, disturbing as little as possible and yes, if one can say it, being in tune with nature, the way becomes clear.

I have come to realize that when I go into the woods or wetlands, it’s their territory that I am invading. They look at me as another piece of walking food, an opportunity for a quick eat-and-run meal. We humans like to think we have somehow risen above nature; in fact, we are as much a part of it as any other creature. This, I find, is a humbling thought.

Image: CartoGeek, Munising, MI, Sept. 2008

Swamps, Shovels, and Sleepy Toads

What’s worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm? Biting into an apple and finding half a worm! My father was a gentleman, especially when it came to telling jokes. He may have enjoyed off-color humor but never in the presence of little ladies. He told me this one when I was six or seven. The imagery induces squirmy shivers still.

I wasn't thinking about apples or worms on a recent trip to central Wisconsin to document wetlands, though. This spring has been a dry affair. Studying swamps and wetlands at this time of year usually requires knee-high rubber boots but not this spring. Mats of water-stained leaves compressed by winter’s snow and ice lay dry and crumbly on many wetland beds. Sedge tussocks pop up like skyscrapers from soils barely moist at the surface.

Many people assume water must be present in these types of habitats throughout the year. Some basins, though, contain water for a short period of time, usually in the spring, and remain dry the rest of the growing season. Even in the absence of standing open water, soils can be saturated for periods long enough to support a distinctive assemblage of wetland vegetation.


Often cat tails or reed canary grass in degraded wetlands spread like a virus and conquer the sublime interplay of sedges, rushes, and dichotomous herbs (think milkweeds and lobelias). Tussock sedge and woolgrass dominated this particular wetland. In spite of the lack of obvious water, the ground was soft and spongy. As I labored over digging a test pit (the first one of the season), the shovel sliced through the soil, guillotine-like. I piled mounds of muck to the side of the hole as it grew to about 10 inches square and almost 16 inches deep. Next, we needed to look at a full top-to-bottom profile of the soil. I moved the shovel back about three inches from the edge of the hole and sunk it in, pulling the handle towards me to leverage out the section. With little effort, I pulled an intact 14-inch long column of soil out, letting it rest on the shovel blade. The steel-gray soil near the top became flecked with large masses of deep reddish brown about six inches down – a perfect example of a wetland soil.
Two unexpected pea-sized yellow dots, standing in stark contrast to the enveloping dark muck, drew my attention to the tip of the shovel. Staring back at me were the eyes of a sleepy toad, hardly moving, yanked from his winter hibernation in the muddy swamp. His warty skin was nearly the same grayish color as the surrounding soil so at first I thought my eyes deceived me. I was not sure if he was even alive as many hibernating frogs and toads, after having buried themselves in pond mud in the fall, don’t survive the harsh northern winters. Yet he seemed to be none the worse for being so rudely awakened. I sent him on his way with a gentle nudge.

They say that horseshoes is a game of inches, where being close really does matter. For this toad, it was a ringer. His first brush with destiny left him unscathed at the base of my hole and his second stroke of luck landed him exactly at the tip of my shovel, within a three-inch margin of error. Indeed, what a lucky toad that, on this day, the scales of life and death kept him in the land of the breathing. I find this miraculous. My unwitting participation in this two act play of Mother Nature reinforced the notion that small miracles happen every day. It took a toad to remind me of that.


And, then the remembrance of that childhood joke rocketed back to the present. What would be worse than digging up a toad? Half a toad, of course!


Image: copyright Tom Gula, http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/american_toad.htm

How to drive on air

This blog started as a result of perhaps a not too infrequent observation about our electronic world of mapping. Not everything is mapped and not everything is current. Paper maps all too often exhibited this flaw, especially when they are pulled from the car door side pocket after gathering lint and dog ears for 10 years. Even in a recent purchase of a recreational GPS unit, a substantial new elevated ramp near Wausau, Wisconsin was missing in action. As the ramp took us on a sweeping arc to the west, the triangle representing our car's GPS position started to go off-road, into unknown territory, air if you will and a blog was born -- driving on air.

Come explore with me those uncharted places and spaces, whether they be unknown blips on a map, resturants happily stumbled upon, or life's lessons re-experienced not through the confines of a 9'x 9' cubicle but the lens of the natural world.