Unpacking

 I returned from my camping trip a few days ago. I methodically unpacked the camping gear and clothes and food and other items. I thought I did a pretty good job putting things away and getting organized but I was wrong. Today I was running some errands. I bought some groceries at the Super One Market and at the farmer's market. I handed the Super One employee my shopping bags. I noticed he didn't put much in each bag. People are funny that way. I tend to put more in bags than most people so I didn't say anything. He hardly put anything in my yellow bag. When I unpacked the bag I found out why. Oh, the utter embarrassment. No wonder he didn't want to use the yellow bag.

There, under my canned goods, is a pair of my pink underpants! How could this happen? I used the red bag for socks and underwear. The yellow bag was for shirts and pants!

The Most Wanted

 

One advantage of living in the city is being able to walk to places like a grocery store, a bank, the library, a farmer's market, or, as in tonight, a concert in the park. "The Most Wanted" played at Chester Creek Bowl tonight and the place was rocking. They played Journey, Guns N Roses, Heart, Johnny Cash, Rick Springfield, and a little Taylor Swift. People could buy ice cream or soft drinks. Some people danced and others sang along. I was happy to walk the six minutes it took to get home rather than try and get out of that very crowded parking lot.

Passing

 Passing was published in 1929 but has been made into a movie in 2021 and will be released on Netflix later this year. I plan to watch it. The author is Nella Larson. The story takes place in Harlem. Two girlfriends, Claire and Irene, have a mixed racial heritage. Both girls live comfortably in the upper middle class but they take two different paths in life. Claire's father dies and she is taken out to state to live with two Caucasian aunts. Claire marries a rich white man and has two children while living in Europe. Irene stays in Harlem, marries a physician, and has two children. Ten years later Irene is having tea at a hotel in Chicago when Claire approaches her. Irene and Claire reconnect. Claire is desperate to reconnect with Irene and her old neighborhood while Irene is reluctant. Irene senses something reckless and dangerous about Claire. Eventually Irene meets Claire's husband who turns out to be a loudmouth racist bigot who spouts venomous speech not comprehending that he is the only white person in the room. He just assumes everyone there is white. Claire's decision to pass herself off as white has tragic consequences. The book mentions the 1925 trial of Rhinelander versus Rhinelander. Mister Rhinelander sued Mrs. Rhinelander for not telling him of her mixed heritage before marrying him. Mrs. Rhinelander said her racial identity was obvious and did not need to be stated. Although the court found in favor of Mrs. Rhinelander, neither one of them won because their most intimate details were out in public. Mrs. Rhinelander even had to partially undress so the jury could see the color of her skin. I really enjoyed this book and I can't wait to see the movie.

Agate Lesson

This morning I parked my car in a turn around area near the railroad tracks to monitor my streams. After working with the stream I put my stuff back in my car and went for a walk on the gravel road that leads to the snowmobile trails. Along the way I saw this traveling painted turtle. She had just come out of the ditch on my left where the dew was so heavy her shell had drops of water on it. She was crawling across the road toward the stream that I monitor. As I squatted down to take her picture her face struck an attitude of "What are you looking at?" I left her alone. Not many vehicles come down this way so she had plenty of time to cross the road without my help.

An hour later, on my way back to my car, I was lucky enough to get several pictures of this yellow rumped warbler. If you look closely you can see the beak is open because the bird is singing. Photographing warblers is very difficult because they are so  twitchy and hyper and unable to sit still. I was lucky this one was singing from a dead tree. When I came back to my car there was a man in a green safety vest looking at the ground near my car. I wondered what he was doing. As I got closer to my vehicle he started walking down the road a ways. I saw a white truck with railroad wheels on the train tracks. This guy was a railroad employee. I was curious. I walked up to him and asked if he was looking for agates. He was looking for agates. I asked him to show me how to find them because I am not good at finding agates despite being shown several times. He suggested I look for transparent surfaces on the rocks. He found a little red one for me and showed me. Then he pulled twenty larger agates out of his pocket to show me his findings. He said his wife loves to polish them and make jewelry. I laughed and said I would prefer an agate ring to a diamond ring. He said hunting agates was one way to spend his lunch hour. Maybe the next time I walk down that road I should keep my eyes on the road for agates and turtles and not up in the trees for birds.

 

Door County

 

After leaving Muskallonge State Park we drove south and west towards Wisconsin. This is a picture of a swimmer statue leaping off of a rock in the river that separates Michigan from Wisconsin. This was a nice spot to stop, relax, and eat the rest of the pizza we got in Michigan yesterday. Wisconsin is shaped life a left hand. We proceeded to drive south along the shore of Lake Michigan down the pointer finger of Wisconsin. Green Bay is where the thumb of the hand branches off so there is we we turned north to travel up the thumb.

We camped in Fish Creek, Wisconsin at a state park called Peninsula State Park. This park had lots of trees and the camp sites had a lot of privacy compared to the one in Michigan. Oddly we had no mosquitoes, horse flies nor deer flies here but we did have some other bugs. See this dramatic black and red flying insect? I thought it was beautiful and Spanish looking.

This state park was much larger than Muskallonge State Park. We took several hiking trails including this one that went past.Eagle Bluff light house. We stopped along the shore to watch the waves come in and try to skip some rocks.

Peninsula Park has beautiful scenery. Despite being right in the town of Fish Creek we had no cell service. Many people brought or rented bicycles. Peninsula state park has an outdoor amphitheater. A performing group called Northern Sky Theater puts on regular outdoor performances here. This would have been a fun and unique camping experience but dogs are not allowed to attend the theater. 

In the afternoon before leaving we stopped at local winery for an expensive glass of red and white. Our waiter brought us bread sticks, a bowl of water for the dog and a dog bone. This plus a huge campfire seemed a fitting way to end our camping trip. The next morning we packed up in the rain. We drove across the palm of Wisconsin while listening to the soundtrack of Hamilton on Spotify. We made it back to Minneapolis before rush hour. Our camping trip was a success. We saw lots of new places, no one got hurt or sick, we ate all the food we brought, and made many new memories.

Twenty One Months

 Today I planned a picnic lunch at a public swimming beach. We're bringing watermelon, pasta salad, brats, iced tea, match ready charcoal, lawn chairs, a blanket, sunscreen and birthday presents. I last saw my grand girls twenty one months ago. I am going to have to moderate my hugs so that they can feel how much I missed them without causing pain. The pandemic is over! I can be a Grandma again! 

Winnie The Pooh Pooh Bear GIF from Winniethepooh GIFs

Last Day In The U.P.

On our last day in Michigan we drove to various spots on the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to see the sights. This is Log Slide and it is located on Log Slide Road east of Grand Marais, Michigan.

The storm that brought rain and thunder last night was still blowing this morning. The waves were amazing.

We walked to Sable Falls which was 168 steps down and 168 back up again.

 

We woke up on our last day in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to cold, rainy, and blustery weather. I wore socks, two pairs of pants, and my fleece jacket to bed inside my sleeping bag and my shins and feet were cold. Neither one of us wanted to go out in the rain to make coffee. Finally Offspring #2 made coffee so I felt obligated to make the oatmeal. It was still raining when we left about 10 a.m. to go to Grand Marais, Michigan. Look at me all matchy matchy in an ancient yellow rain suit sewn by my mother-in-law about 30 years ago and yellow umbrella. Although we had to go ten or fifteen miles out of our way we found a paved road out of Muskallonge State Park. We were so happy to avoid the bone-jarring gravel roads.

The wind was blowing gusts up to 30 miles per hour in the morning. We parked by the beach and the sand blew into our eyes. Serious agate hunters disregarded the wind and waves while they searched for treasures washed up by the storm. We stopped for coffee and drove around town for a while. The rain stopped around noon so we walked a short path to miner's rock (as seen in the photo above).

Doesn't Sasquatch look surprised to see a fox hound under his hand? We decided to splurge and have lunch in town. Only one place was open and it was super busy because all the campers wanted to get out of the elements. We ate outside on the patio. The pizza was delicious! I liked the upper peninsula of Michigan but it was one of those places like Wyoming. You had better buy gas when you got the chance because you might not see another gas station for a couple of hours. Cell service was rare. Unlike camping near Hayward we had absolutely no mosquitoes, deer flies nor horse flies. The campsites near Black Lake State Park in Hayward were secluded and private. The campsites at Muskallonge State Park in Michigan were packed closely together, few trees, and no privacy. Most of the campers had off road vehicles or dirt bikes to play with. I was really grateful we came here. Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore was on my destination list ever since I heard about it 15 years ago.

Pictured Rocks Cruise

 

Here we are on our cruise. The beauty of the pictured rocks is breathtaking. Our campsite was 30 miles east of Munising so we didn't cruise as far as where we stayed. We cruised from Munising east. When we got the the beginning of 12 mile beach we turned around and cruised back again.

The cliffs are made of sandstone. Some of the sandstone is softer which is how the caves and arches are formed at the water line from the action of the waves. The wind was fairly calm on our cruise. We had two foot waves. The next day the wind was blowing all the way across the lake from the Duluth area toward us and the waves were 20 feet high! I was glad we went cruising on this day instead of the next.

The sandstone is beige in color. Mineral deposits add the color. Iron deposits made yellow, orange, red and purple splotches. Copper deposits make blue and green splotches. Manganese makes black splotches. Limonite makes white splotches. Gulls also make white splotches.

Look at the cool arch. A boat ride is essential to appreciating the beauty of this place.

I could not stop taking pictures.

Michigan is beautiful as long as you are not driving on gravel roads. The gravel roads were the worst I have ever driven on. Even driving at 12 mph the road was so bumpy my teeth felt loose. I couldn't even talk without the bumpy ride affecting my voice is a funny way.

I really enjoyed our cruise. The $40 cost was well worth it. See this pine set on a rock? It is a great example of resilience. The land on both sides of it fell away. The only way the pine gets sustenance is through it's roots which have formed a bridge to the left of the rock and burrows into the land. Nutrients carry across the root bridge and feed the tree.

At one point toward the middle of our trip our captain took the boat into a narrow cove. I kept thinking he's going to put the engine in reverse now but he didn't. He got so deep into the cove one of the assistants, standing on the prow of the boat, lifted his muscular (he was wearing shorts) right leg and pushed his foot off the rock face. Wow. We just idled there for a few minutes soaking in the experience. The water was only six feet deep and was a tropical blue green color like you see is Hawaii or the Bahamas. What a moment!

This is a picture inside the narrow cove. Everybody on the boat was impressed.

We were so close to the walls.

You can see some copper deposits here about half way down the cliff.

The water looks tropical.

Gorgeous natural beauty!

Camping!

We just got back from a 1900 mile camping trip which was a ton of fun. Our first night was at Black Lake National Forest campground near Hayward, Wisconsin. Although the wind was blowing 20 plus miles per hour the mosquitoes, horse flies and deer flies bothered us. It was so windy (and the sky was clear plus it was hot) we decided not to put the rain tarp on the tent. We regretted that decision at 2 a.m. when rain began to fall and we tried to put the tarp on in the dark.

We had a nice private campsite right on the lake shore were at least fifty green frogs sang us a chorus all night long. In the morning we made hash browns, fake bacon and coffee before heading out to the upper peninsula of Michigan. We had a longer driver than we thought it would be. We arrived at Muskallonge State Park around six in the evening.

The next day we drove west to Munising, Michigan to take our boat tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Here is a picture of a dock. In a distance a large boat of offloading something black, perhaps coal?

Two boats were leaving for the 1 p.m. cruise. This is the boat we didn't take which was larger and faster than our boat. Our boat had only two decks. In the end we were glad we took the smaller boat. The boat charter service had boarding facilities for dogs so we brought Clover into the kennel room. She wasn't  happy about staying in the kennel but she did very well in there. We picked her up two and a half hours later and she was fine.

This is our view from the lower level of the boat. The upper/outdoor level was completely full by the time we boarded. Just wait until you see the pictures! Pictured Rocks rocks!

 

The Life Of The Mind

 Dorothy is the main character in The Life Of The Mind by Christine Smallwood. Dorothy is in her 30's. She is an adjunct professor in New York City barely getting by financially. She lives with Rog, her boyfriend, who seems like a great guy. Dorothy has a miscarriage and the book starts on day 6 after the miscarriage and goes on for 6 weeks further. Dorothy describes what happens to her body as a result of the miscarriage at length. Other than Rog and her physician, Dorothy hasn't told anyone about the miscarriage. She hasn't told her good friend, Gaby. She hasn't told her therapist. She hasn't even told her back up therapist who she is seeing temporarily to find out if she should continue with her main therapist. Dorothy lives in her head quite a bit. Like other academic types she has her head in the clouds. I think Dorothy is depressed and nature deprived. A week camping in the woods would do Dorothy a world of good. This was an interesting but somewhat depressing book.

Mushroom Caves

 

Tonight my old chapter of Master Naturalists held a zoom training by Dr. Greg Brick on the mushroom caves of Saint Paul. If you drive along Water Street between Robert St. and Lilydale you will drive by the mouths of caves facing the river. At one time this area was known as Mushroom Valley. The caves were made by humans to harvest sandstone to make glass and mortar. The City is worried about teenagers getting into trouble in these caves and have collapsed several and covered the mouths of the rest of them. The cave in this picture is in Minneapolis. It too was constructed to mine the sandstone. After mining was complete this cave was used to store beer. Now this cave has city sewage running through it.

This cave on under West Seventh Street where the old Schmidt brewery used to be. Beer was stored here too.

This is the entrance to the Wabasha caves. Years ago I took the gangster tour of this cave. The biggest money maker for this cave was hosting weddings. With Covid cutting back on weddings and the advancing age of the current owners Wabasha caves are now for sale. Asking price was $800,000.00 but you might be able to get it for less.

This advertisement was for the Wabasha caves in the 1930's.

Besides using caves to cool beer to grow mushrooms, caves have been used to age blue cheese. This picture was taken during World War II when France wasn't able to make Roquefort cheese. So that is when the cheese was made here in Saint Paul. The people in France got very upset with Minnesotan's calling their cheese Roquefort so the name was changed to blue cheese.

Behave

It took me a while (26 hours) to finish the audiobook Behave: The Biology Of Humans At Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky. This was a very technical book looking at behavior from various angles including neurobiology, psychology, endocrinology, genetics, neurology, chemistry, and culture. The author is a neuroendrocrinologist and author. He teaches biology, neurology, neurological sciences and neurosurgery at Stanford.  He starts off talking about what he would do to Hitler if he had the chance. I thought his choices were creative and frightening. First he would take away Hitler's ability to move and communicate. Then he would inject him with slow-growing, painful cancers so he would have to suffer terribly for years without the ability to complain. He also mentions Hitler towards the end of the book. Have you heard of the Christmas truce during world war one when the German troops and the British troops called off the war for the Christmas holiday? The truce gave them a chance to pick up the dead and wounded soldiers and they also played a soccer game together? According to Sapolsky, there was one German soldier who objected to the truce. The objecting soldier was Hitler. This book tackles opposite behaviors. Liberals and conservatives are one example. The author claims that if a liberal is mugged they become a conservative. Reading this book was tough at times but he added enough interesting anecdotes to illustrate his points to keep in interesting. If I had to sum up what I learned about behavior in a few words, I would say, "Behavior is complicated." Behave was challenging but challenging can be good for me sometimes. I have always been fascinated by people and their behavior. When someone does something that surprised me I try to think about what could have happened in their past to account for their decision. He mentions one patient in the book who had a brain tumor. One of his symptoms was that every time the patient told a lie, he had a seizure. That kind of stuff just fascinates me. I liked this book even though I'm not going to remember all that I learned.

Windy Ride

Today was a nice day so I decided to get the kayak out of the basement again and take a spin after running a few errands. I headed to Minnesota Point on Park Point peninsula. I parked next to the airport just like last time. To get there I take Lake Avenue downhill through town. My kayak is sticking out of the back of my car. I have it securely tied down with rope and a bungee cord. Lake Avenue is very steep in between blocks but flat as I cross other streets. This pattern of steep/flat/steep/flat makes for some serious bouncing of the kayak no matter how slow I descend. In his photo my paddle is pointing to the airport in the distance. The water is fairly calm in this little bay. A spit of land with a few scrubby trees on it blocks the wind and the waves from the Saint Louis River.

At one time I thought it would be nice to live on Park Point but now I have changed my mind. Traffic from the lift bridge backs up frequently for lakers and sail boats and tour boats. Today the back up was because of maintenance work being done on the bridge. There was a employee in a cherry picker parked on the lift bridge. Every time the bridge lifted for boat traffic the worker in the cherry picker had to descent, get in the truck, back it up off the lift bridge, wait for the bridge to come back down, drive back on the lift bridge, get into the cherry picker and get back to work. There is a job I would not care for.  I turn my car off but many cars sit idling for ten or minutes waiting for their chance to cross the bridge. Although it would be scenic to live near the bridge, I wouldn't want to be exposed to all the pollution and noise of idling cars. In this photo you care barely see my yellow car at about 11 o'clock.

Here is the spit of land protecting me from the wind and waves. There is a guy in this bay in a paddle board. He has a life jacket but is not wearing it. When not looking at his phone he is either paddling or napping. I try to make sure I don't bump into him accidentally.

This picture doesn't do it justice. Once I got past the spit of land the waves were white caps. My boat is bobbing up and down so severely water is splashing me in the face and breaking over my bow. Yee Haw! Yippie Kay Yay!  My kayak is taking on a little bit of water. This is like a mini roller coaster!  I paddle and I paddle but I'm not really moving forward. I try to keep my kayak pointed to cut into the waves. The more I paddle the more I am being pulled away from that spit of land but I'm not making any forward progress. Actually this is kind of fun. This is not the day to explore the rest of the peninsula. After 15 minutes of strenuous paddling, I quickly turn around and let the waves take me back to that spit of land where the calmer waters prevail. 

Golly, that was fun. Back in calmer waters I look back towards Wisconsin to see where I was. 15 mph winds really make a difference. Lucky for me this is a pleasure cruise. I don't have to actually get anywhere except back to my car. What a fun ride!

 

Walk To Enger Tower

If I am going to go for a long walk from home one of my options is a 2.5 hour walk to Enger Tower and back again. I start out on 10th Avenue which is a quiet side street. I cross a major street and I am back in a quiet neighborhood again. Eventually I end up on Seventh Street. There is this one spot on Seventh Street that is a little tricky. The sidewalk is 3 feet higher than the road to the left of the sidewalk as I walk west. There is a stone wall on my right. It's almost impossible for two people to pass on this thin stretch of sidewalk. This is also where water collects and turns into an ice rink in the winter which is why I wear my cleats. Plus there is this low hanging shrub that has pushed off my raincoat hood in the rain, taken off my knitted cap in the winter, and pushed my sun hat right off my head in the summer. I have to block that shrub with my arm when I go by so it doesn't poke my eye out while it steals my hat. I never know what kind of shrub this hat stealer was until today. 

Now that I know the hat stealing shrub is bridal veil spirea I am more forgiving.

Catch 22

 Joseph Heller wrote Catch 22. Although his satirical novel didn't win any awards the idea of catch 22 caught on and is used to this day. I never read this novel before and I think it is a classic. In this story, set on a fictional island near Italy during World War II, an Army Air Corp. Captain named John Yossario tries to survive life as a bombardier. The year is 1944 and Yossario (nicknamed Yo Yo) is trying to survive so he can go home. The rule was once you flew 35 missions you could go home. When Yo Yo and his buddies complete 34 missions, the number of missions rises to 40 and so on and so on and so on. By the end of the book the number of missions it takes to go home is 80. Yo Yo has witnessed the deaths of nearly all his buddies. He wants to live. He wants to go home. He fakes illness. All the Army Air Corp captains fake illness from time to time. The word is if you are insane you can go home. All the captain had to do to be declared insane was to ask to be declared insane. If he asked to be declared insane he would be determined to be rational and therefore had to fly more missions. All of these crazy "no win," absurd scenarios are discussed repeatedly in the book. The situations are too strange to be fiction. I just knew the author had to be a member of the Army Air Corp. I was right. He was in the Army Air Corp. during World War II and evidently he had a great memory and some resentments he has been nursing for a long time. Heller's interpretation of the military mind set is honest and real and he upset a lot of people for expressing his opinion so eloquently. Another concept he writes about is the dangers of profit-seeking. One of his Captain friends is Mile Mindbender. Milo's missions are more about trading goods and making deals than fighting the enemy.  Milo keeps justifying his deeds by saying his work if for the good of all. When Yo Yo tries to comfort another Army man who is dying in the back of his plane, he opens the first aid kit. Milo has taken all the morphine and left a note that this act is "For the good of all." When a plane crashes into the Mediterranean Sea the men don life jackets. The life jackets don't inflate because Milo has taken the gas canisters out in order to sell frosty treats is the mess tent. Again he leaves a note that this if "For the good of all." In this book Heller skewers the military industrial complex with his writing. This is a good book but long. My reading app on my phone is Libby and Libby tells me I spent 9 hours and 38 minutes reading this book.

Colorful Flowers

Today I took a walk to the library to pick up a book I  had on order. I saw an orange poppy blooming. The poppy was so beautiful. After seeing that poppy I decided to take a picture of all the pretty flowers on my walk today. The rule was to stay on the sidewalk. These might be pinks. They still have morning dew on them.

I don't know the name but I like this oddly shaped blush colored blossoms.

Lupine patch.

Iris

I don't know the name of these but the color is saturated!

This is a chive flower. Some people use them as herbs and others use them as flowers.

I don't know what these are but the delicate yellow flowers contrast with the deep purple leaves.

White bleeding hearts

Pink azalea




bush.

 

 Here is a pink bleeding heart.

This iris reminds me of Grandpa Stenger's iris.

This is a non-native columbine.

These are coral bells.

I don't know the name of these but firework flower seems appropriate.

This rose was pretty but it had no smell.

Common Lilac

These are gorgeous but I don't know the name.

Yellow and purple iris

Yellow iris alone. For this shot I am standing on the sidewalk next to a tall wall. I am reaching over my head with my phone inside the metal slats of a fence while standing on my tip toes.

Allium

Marigolds

A dandelion flower gone to seed by Tishcher Creek.

This is a wild flower near Tischer creek. The yellow flowers are waxy and almost look like plastic.

A pretty shade of purple.

Ever since I saw this plant I have been intrigued. The leaves stay green all winter long. I am dying to know what it is. This house has the same shrub on both sides of their front door. The shrubs are about 7 feet tall.

Snow white iris.

This could be lavender but I'm not sure.

I don't know the name but I like the flower.

An innocent daisy!

I think this is bunchberry. Bunch berries come in bunches. I learned that the white things that look like petals are not the petals. The actual flowers are tiny and are clustered in the center of the white things that look like petals but are not actually the petals.

Last, but certainly not least, the yellow begonia I planted in my flower pot in front of my door. You can see the shamrocks coming up around it. My colorful flower walk is complete.