Jacques hurt his foot and could not accend to the top level of his bunk bed – good enough excuse to sleep on the couch.
Tuffie, our Feist, enjoys the sleeping companion!
Kayak on the Cannon River
Our trip on the Cannon River went from Cannon Falls to the town of Welch, Minnesota! You can see the whole of the town in the one photo.
We also saw a prospector who was paning in the river for gold.
The river runs in a beautiful ravine and in places we could hear people on the bicycle trail alnong the river, but we could never see them.
Next time we want to go all the way to the Mississippi River.
Trip to the Arrowhead
We had scarcely landed in our room in the Casino Hotel in the Native American Reservation of Grand Portage, when the family started to plan activities for our three-night stay.
The view from our room was onto a bay in Lake Superior. The hotel/casino was 5 miles from the Canadian border in the very north east corner of the state of Minnesota – on “the north shore”.
The bay opens into the huge expanse of Lake Superior – the lack of waves the only indication that you are not dealing with an ocean!
The smooth glass table top of the water and the whole beach made up of mostly pebbles invites the stroller to try his hand at skipping the round flat stones on the water.
Wilhelm is easier to photograph when he stands still with a pole on his head….!
To quote him: “Just kidding…..!”
Not two ‘little’ boys any more! We are visiting Thunder Bay, in the Canadian province of Ontario and in the background “the sleeping giant” – an island that looks like a man lying on his back.
Kayak on the Mississippi
This was a very impressive trip I took with Troy on the Mississippi river just below one of the locks at Hastings. On one side was the railroad where we watched a train go by and on the other side of the river we saw a tugboat bring six barges into the lock to go upstream. To see them from the water surface makes them a heck of a lot bigger than what they seem like from the river’s banks.
We kept well clear of the barges – they have such a shallow draft that they are notorious for having the water suck you right under them with the flow of the river.
Tropical Zoo
We visit the tropical (indoor) part of the Minnesota Zoo.
Putting on Weight
Part of Gina’s studies, entails detailed anatomy – here she is adding clay muscle to Mr Bones. Getting clay to stick to plastic bone is a nightmare and the sticky-jucky clay is no big pleasure either! I think she will be most relieved when she writes the last anatomy exam!
Suddenly and Unexpected
No warning on the radio and the meteriologists had to admid they were caught with their radar sets down – at ten this morning we got a sudden snowstorm – one inch of snow per hour for more than three hours.
I was in Stillwater, 30 minutes from home, to deliver our tax forms to the accountant, and when I left her office, the roads were already very slippery – the roads department computer weather forecasts showed that the storm would by=pass the Cities and so they did not pretreat the roads the night before.
At every trafic light there were one or two cars that slid off the road – so most of us took it very slow indeed. At a larger highway the traveling was somewhat faster, until we got to the bridge crossing the Mississippi river – we came to a crwl and then stopped – for an hour! That’s about 500meters in 60 minutes.
This photo actually shows the river on the right – but the snow was coming down so thick that visibility was extremely poor. I had the car in ‘Park’ for long stretches at a time and it was times like these that I took these photos and other people got out of their cars to scrape the snow off the car windows.
When I reached the next turnoff, few cars were taking it because it led to to a very quiet part of the world, but it was a road I could take home – so I did. And that took me another 90 minutes (should have been 15minutes) – I saw very few cars on most of the way home – everyone by now knew to stay put and not travel unless you reaally reeeally had to!
And because nobody else made tracks, there were parts of the road that I kind of kept to the middle of the road by following the signs next to the road – you could not see where the sidewalk ended and the tar began.
At least I got home safely. The previous two Mondays saw an average of 22 car crashes in the Twin Cities – this morning they had 122! – Luckily mostly slow-motion car damaging crashes that did not have too many fatalities.
By two this afternoon it was all cleared up and we were way above freezing again.
March Snow
After two weeks of warmer than freezing weather, all our snow had just about melted – only the large heaps in the parkinglots were left to show that we had good snow covering two weeks ago.
And I was dreading having to live for two months or more waiting for the green to appear and there be no snow on the ground! But this morning when we woke up, it was a different story! A good six inches lay on the ground and the schools were closed. The roads were a mess and it was still falling!
Because it was warm, the snow is very wet and clings to everything – it turns the garden into an absilote fairyland…. and it broke one huge branch off a liloc we have standing right behind our house…! All the branches are hanging under the weight of the snow!
Gina left for work driving over the six inches of snow – normally not a good idea – in below zero temperatures that would turn the compacted snow into concrete hard layers that will ice-up and be very slippery and difficult to get off your driveway. BUR, with the very nice warm weather we are having these last two weeks, any compacted snow will just melt.
I went to the second storey window to take this photo of the Liloc standing right below that window – there was an inch of snow clinging to every small twig on that plant – and when I looked half an hour later – half of the branches of this twelve foot high liloc bush had fallen over! They weight was just too much – it broke off in the roots.
With the school closed because of the snow, the boys enjoyed playing outside and building snowmen and forts and having snowball fights – not often that they see snow this wet here in Minnesota!
Winter Parade
Every year the Winter Parade is one way Minnesotans thumb their noses at the winter weather – well, some Minnesotans. The rest of us make sure we stay warm.
In these photos you can see were we observed the parade from – we were invited by a Company who had rented a passage of the Skyway for their guests for the evening. Normally these passages connect all the buildings in the city center, so that you can walk round the whole city and not once go outside. And to prevent you from having to cross the road in this way, these passages are all on the second floors of every building and connect the buildings with eath other way above street level. All the shops in the builsings are also on this Skywalk on the second level.
The big thing about the parade is of course the fact that all the floats carry thousands of small lights and even people in the parade wear costumes with lights on. (Remember, in winter the sun sets here before five in the afternoon!)
Christmas 2003
At the Kuhn’s house! A most happy accoasion. And so grandly hosted! And everybody’s contribution makes for delicious eating – even the pie says so!
