Linden Hills

When we were in England, we lived by the saying that if you wait for the weather to be good to go do things, you'll never go do anything. In other words, don't wait. But after four years of living in New Mexico, where the weather is good for about 350 days of every year, I think we got out of the habit of ignoring the weather. It's going to take us a little while to adjust. All this to say, I was a little surprised when it started snowing Sunday afternoon, about 45 seconds before I stepped outside to go do my weekly photo expedition.


Tim and I went to a nearby neighborhood called Linden Hills on Sunday afternoon, to enjoy a local coffee shop. I did a little sketching while Tim studied for his commercial pilot certificate, and then I picked up my camera to brave the snow.

Linden Hills is about a mile or so from our house, and is typical of the neighborhoods in southwest Minneapolis. These neighborhoods are predominately single family homes, mixed in with schools, parks and libraries. Interspersed into these are small commercial areas with neighborhood grocery stores, hardware stores, boutiques, cafes and restaurants. Linden Hills edges up to Lake Harriet – one of two lakes that dominate the landscape, real estate and social life of this part of the city.


I like Linden Hills in particular because it has a charming library (it's very small, without a big collection, but it really has the feel of a community center), and the whole area feels welcoming. Picture the atmosphere of Cheers, except that it welcomes families & kids, and extends across a two block area, instead of a single bar. Okay, so maybe it's nothing like the atmosphere of Cheers. This area is also a little unusual because it has a cluster of small apartment buildings that are very close to the lake. The mix of people is a little different from the areas that don't include apartments, and the resulting mix is more eclectic.


The first week we were here, I stopped by the library in Linden Hills and picked up a book of local recipes, and then stopped by this co-op, so I could make a hot dish (the midwestern term for a casserole) that night for dinner. It was surprisingly tasty. Ever since then, I've been envisioning a springtime bike ride over to the Linden Hills area, and particularly a local ice cream shop. But the low temperatures meant we chose to drive and drink tea instead. The ice cream parlor still looks tempting though, and I'm looking forward to trying it when the weather is a little warmer.


Tim and I had a fantastic weekend, despite the snow and the temperatures in the low forties. I think we'll eventually readjust to force ourselves out and about no matter what the forecast says. We ended the weekend by stopping by another restaurant in Linden Hills called Famous Daves. It's a local barbecue chain, and the one in Linden Hills comes with all the requisite kitsch of a barbecue joint. The meats are fantastic – melt in your mouth brisket and juicy chicken.


As usual, if you want to see the whole series of photos from Linden Hills, here's a link to the full set. Have a good week!

River Falls, Wisonsin

Yesterday we took a drive away from the Twin Cities to a town called River Falls, about an hour east of here in Wisconsin. The original idea had been to take a leisurely Sunday ride on Tim's motorcycle. The goal was to make our way over to a festival in Ellsworth we had heard about and to check out some flyfishing spots in River Falls along the way. But when we woke up the forecast said it would be drizzly in the morning and windy in the afternoon, so we decided to scrap the motorcycle part of the plan, and instead we loaded up Hogan and the camera and some snacks into the Subaru and headed out.

So. This week I'm deviating from the normal scheme of things in a few different ways – I'm not writing about the Twin Cities, I didn't limit my photos (instead I just took pictures of whatever interested me – a subtle difference, but an important one to me). Maybe I'll go later this week to do a “real” weekly photo expedition. We'll see – it's going to be another busy week with interviews, and my priority is on preparing for my interviews, oddly enough.

At any rate, we decided to stop to check out River Falls, and we never quite moved on from there. The town has a population of about 14,000, which is about the size of the town where I lived right after college, Mountain Home, Idaho. Apparently, people commute from here into the Twin Cities for work. I imagine the property values must be much better in River Falls and the job opportunities much better in St. Paul, but the idea of that kind of commute is pretty daunting to me.



It looks like the community was originally founded at the waterfalls along the Kinnickinnic River (I love river names). According to one historic marker we saw, River Falls once had more milling capacity than Minneapolis. There's a smoke stack that was built in 1896, and is still part of the municipal power plant still operating at the waterfalls turned into dam.



We found a park behind the waterfalls and took Hogan down the slope of the riverbank to get down to the tailwaters of the dam. We walked around the area and had some fun exploring. Hogan had a great time chasing squirrels and splashing around the edges of the river (she's still too finicky to actually get into the water, but it does make it easier to clean her). She found this nest of goose eggs for us:



After exploring around a bit, we decided to stop at a restaurant for some lunch, and then head home. It was becoming obvious that the forecasts were wrong. It was turning into a gorgeous day for Tim to ride the motorcycle, and for me to continue my experiments in gardening, so we felt drawn back home. And it did turn into a beautiful lazy Sunday afternoon. If you'd like see the rest of the photos from our trip, here's the Flickr set.

East Bank

It's been another dismally cold weekend, with temperatures for most of the weekend in the mid-30s, and snow still on the ground from our latest snowfall last week. We were beginning to think that the 12 hours of sunshine we had last Saturday was our spring and summer, and we were somehow back into winter again. (Patience is not our best virtue) But the sun came out this afternoon, and we had not only blue skies, but temperatures in the mid-forties. Within an hour, the natives were out with motorcycles, bicycles, strollers, dogs, and kayaks. We decided to follow their lead.

I have another interview tomorrow, so we decided to go scout out where I needed to go, and see if that led us to anywhere interesting for the weekly photo expedition. It turned out that it was actually an area we'd been to already, directly across the Mississippi from the Mill Ruins Park and the Guthrie Theater. So we decided to keep walking around the area and see what we found.



This area (like the Mills Ruins Park area) is abounding with juxtapositions between the city's historic dependence on flour mills, and vibrant new developments. However, the east side of the river is adjacent to the University of Minnesota, whereas the west side is adjacent to the downtown commercial district, and those adjacencies leave the neighborhoods feeling very different from each other.

We started along the banks of the river. Like Tim said, it was really nice to be near water in liquid form again. From this vantage point, Tim and I could admire the views of the Guthrie across the river (again, one of my favorite contemporary buildings), and Hogan could admire her proximity to her arch-enemies, squirrels.



The new Guthrie Theater was designed by a French architect, Jean Nouvel. In 2008, he won the Pritzker Prize, partly for his design of the Guthrie. The original Guthrie, which opened in 1963, was designed by Ralph Rapson, a leading modern architect of the time, and an extremely influential leader of the Minneapolis architecture community. He passed away on March 29 of this year, and the entire community seems to be mourning his loss. The original Guthrie was torn down to make way for the new one. Although I truly admire the new Guthrie, it sounds like it was an unnecessary waste to tear down the old one.

We climbed back up the river bank and continued along the neighborhood adjacent to the river. The name of the neighborhood is Marcy-Holmes. It still seems dominated by the old mills, grain elevators, and train tracks that demonstrate the historic identity, but new developments are pushing in.



We passed by some older supporting structures that looked like they were in imminent danger of being replaced by shiny new condo buildings. For now, they had been taken over by a younger crowd for night clubs or workshops – it was hard to tell what in the brightness of the day. They had a texture and layering of time that was far more interesting than any of the new developments.



As we were heading back to the car, we passed by this construction. The more we looked at it, the more we liked it. We assume it must be a float, but we're not sure what for. In a place like Minnesota, it seems reasonable to think that the whole world is the refrigerator. This was Tim's favorite find from our walk, aside from the glorious sunshine.

If you'd like to see the rest of the photos from our expedition, go to the Flickr set. I have to say, this is the best so far – I haven't gotten the hang of taking good photos in the even light of an overcast day, so the direct sunshine of the afternoon, and the bright colors of the neighborhood really helped. Have a good week!