A hint of winter to come

Mother Nature is amazing! After a beautiful, clear fall day - clear blue skies, golden sun-ripened crops being harvested, some green left in the trees but also some gold and red - we awoke to a dusting of snow. It was a gorgeous day for our drive to Lincoln and back, but as we neared home at sunset, the low cloud bank in the west was obvious. Within an hour the wind came up, leaves rustled and the temperatures dropped. While the roses are hardy, the rest of the annuals in the garden have ended their glorious show.


Gromit here... I jumped outside to see this snow. There isn't much, but my favorite summer flowers got nipped by Jack Frost. Can you see how dark the leaves are? Their edges are curled, too. Good thing Marilyn made me a fleece vest to keep me warm!

Changing Seasons

Fall has been really nice - until late this week. Now the wind is howling and rain is common. The high temperature was only in the 40s. So, it is a good time to reflect on the nice days of last weekend.

We took the pop-up and the bikes to Lewis and Clark State Park just west of Yankton, South Dakota Saturday afternoon. Unlike summer weekends, the park was quiet and the bike paths almost empty. With leaves turning, crops ready for harvest, and blue skies - it was feast for the eyes. The temperatures were perfect for cycling, with the increasing winds on Sunday the only downside. Here are some photos...

Note Gromit's ears. It was windy!
John's latest bike - a Lightning P-38 clone.
Marilyn - is pink as visible as day-glo green?
A soybean field in shades of green and yellow, not quite ready for harvest.
Gromit playing in a soybean field ready for harvest.

Meeting Rover

If you haven't met me before, I'm Gromit. Marilyn takes me along on trips and sometimes lets me ride on her bike.



Through Marilyn's reading of journals on the Crazy Guy on a Bike website, I met Rover who travels with Denise. Rover is quite good at playing around on the computer keyboard so he often helps Denise write journal and blog entries. We've been corresponding via email for about a year or so. Denise and Rover write great journals and Denise's photographs are breathtaking. Check them out at from the eyes of Denise Goldberg.


Well, when Rover heard that we were planning to visit New Hampshire and would be flying into the Manchester airport, he suggested we meet. So Marilyn used her gps and Google maps to locate an appropriate Dunkin' Donuts and we all got together. I brought my friend, Hutch, who usually rides with John and the three of us had a nice time. Marilyn, John, and Denise spent a lot of time drinking coffee, nibbling on goodies, and talking about cycling, hiking, national parks, travel - and who knows what else. It was really fun to meet in person (or in dog!). Here is a picture of Rover, Hutch, and me.


You can read Rover's blog entry about this event here. He's about to go on a great trip to Newfoundland. Lucky dog!

Minnesota Sampler, one more ride and home

After picking raspberries to take home, it was time to leave Jo's hopitality (Thanks, Jo! Wasn't grad school just a couple of years ago????), we started for home planning a stop near Mankato for a bike ride on the Sakatah Singing Hills trail. With just a few missed turns we managed to find a trailhead and hopped on our bikes. The tailwind made for a quick five miles east. Knowing we still had at least five hours of driving ahead of us, we turned around and rode the five miles back to the car.

The ride was short but a nice way to break up the drive – we just wish it had been at the half-way mark instead of only an hour or so from Minneapolis. So back in the car, and home we went arriving in time to unload, eat a grilled cheese sandwich, and unwind.

All in all, we were pleasantly surprised with all that Minnesota has to offer. There are many more bike paths to explore – long enough, perhaps, for some credit card touring!

Minnesota Sampler, Minneapolis

Jo's house is conveniently located a short block from a commuter bike path. We hopped on our bikes and were soon pedaling toward Calhoun Lake. The tailwind was nice but we knew what we would face on the ride home! We stopped at a nicely designed map to get our bearings, but why wasn't there a simple sign to indicate where to turn off for the lakes? We went too far but were given great help from the one recumbent rider in a group o 'mature' riders. He was going our way and just had us follow him. Once at the lake, just a couple of minutes' ride, we were glad to find public restrooms, then we headed off around the lake.

We quickly learned that the bike and pedestrian trails around these popular lakes are separate and that there is one way traffic for bikes. We enjoyed the nice houses, relatively light bike traffic (It was a weekday.) and watching the sailing lessons on a very choppy lake! The best part of riding in a circle is that the headwind was difficult for only a short time. Then we rode to Lake of the Isles where we discovered the REALLY nice houses. We also noticed funny green bags around the small trees. Since you simply cannot read labels from a moving bike, we stopped and learned that they were inverted cone-shaped plastic bags with a zipper down the side and completely open at the bottom to be filled with water. Apparently the water stays in the 'bag' long enough to provide fairly slow watering. It is labor-saving and only needs to be filled once a week; maybe we'll get some when we plant our new trees at home!

After a tour around Lake of the Isles, I decided to ride a bit farther. A look at a map showed me where I wanted to go but once again, with no signs, I ended up in the wrong place. Suddenly we were back at Lake Calhoun. Huh? Well, knowing that we had a headwind in our future, we decided to head back to Jo's house.

After a shower and a sandwich, Jo took us to the new Guthrie Theater for a tour. The architecture was fun and BLUE, and the views of the Mississippi were excellent. We saw another bike path and dedicated bike/pedestrian bridge just waiting for us on another visit. There was also a good view of the rebuilt I-35 bridge that collapsed two years ago.

The new bridge

A well-designed window at the Guthrie

The evening included supper at Panera Bread (I LOVE the chipolte chicken sandwich...) and a trip to REI to pick up some pants I'd ordered. Shipping is free to any REI retail store and Minnesota has no sales tax on clothes!

Minnesota Sampler, Duluth and onwards

We woke to gray skies and quickly packed up camp. Then we walked along the breakwater on Artist's Point and purchased breakfast at the 'best doughnut shop in the world' and the Holiday gas station (that iced coffee!). And, yes, they were pretty good pastries!

Even though the skies were gray, the drive back down the North Shore was beautiful and we made a couple of short stops. We headed into Duluth hoping to see a big ship or two. Canal Park had easy parking and a very good Army Corps of Engineers museum. There we found out no ships the were scheduled to pass under the bridge until early evening. For anyone who has read the book, The Shipping News, it was fun to see the free, daily bulletin of the shipping news. As we walked back to the car the gray skies opened up and we quickly decided that putting up the tent in the rain wouldn't be fun, so we called Jo in Minneapolis to see if she would let us visit a day early! Thank you Jo! Our drive was a few hours longer than planned but that was just fine! We later learned that we would have endured 1.5-2 inches of rain if we had camped. No thank you.

Minnesota Sampler, Grand Portage

This is the actual trail the voyageurs walked!

Part of the reason for the side trip up the North Shore was to visit friends, Barb and Bern, who spend summers at the Grand Portage National Monument. Bern is a seasonal employee who does interpretive work being a voyageur or Northwest Company agent. Barb volunteers and usually works in the library. Our visit coincided with their day off so we were treated to a personal tour of the new visitor center and the reconstructed fort, Ojibwe camp, and voyageur camp. We saw how birchbark canoes are made, though the resident canoe builder was off in the Boundary Waters on a 1,000 journey with one of his creations. We even learned how to start a fire with flint and steel. Barb and Bern took us to lunch at the local senior center and then for a hike to High Falls, where the other side of the Pigeon River was Canada. Along the way Bern could tell us the name of every plant. Wow.

It was a wonderful, sunny and warm day. Visibility was good and we could see Isle Royale in the distance from several viewpoints. The Park Service does a wonderful job with reenactments and many locals are hired for interpretive work including teenagers in a great program. It is off the beaten path for many tourists but a delight to visit with no crowds and plenty of opportunities to get questions answered and learn about the area's history.

When we left Grand Portage it was in the low 80s and we never glanced at our car thermometer but as soon as we opened our doors there was a noticeable difference. It was about 20-25 degrees colder with a real nip to the breeze even though the sky was still a clear blue. Huh? Good, old NPR came through with as short feature story about the unusual weather for the day. Apparently, it was warmer on the North Shore than in the Twin Cities, a rare occurrence due to the wind patterns. Then, in less than an hour, the temperature dropped 25 degrees and things were back to normal. That temperature drop had happened to us during the 35 minute drive and we never realized it. I'm quite happy that the unusual weather was NOT some ice storm or snowstorm in July!