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.