Old Bonnevile lake

Provo!

Wish we had our snowboards.

Yesterday

We lost cell phone coverage pretty quickly yesterday, and so the goal of posting pictures along the way went out the window pretty quickly.  It was an eventful, beautiful day, though.  We went west across South Dakota, and then dropped south into Wyoming through the Black Hills, and then a little bit west across Wyoming into Casper.  Along the way we saw some pretty incredible scenery and landmarks.  (Incidentally, the temperatures also climbed pretty steadily through the day, at least until the sun went down).

Some iphone pictures from the day...

Sioux Falls:




The famous Corn Palace of Mitchell, South Dakota (this brought back definite childhood memories):




The even more famous Wall Drug of Wall, South Dakota:




And Crazy Horse, which has undergone some significant changes since I've seen in last, about... 17 years ago.




We also stopped by Mount Rushmore, but I only took pictures with the real camera, and so I don't have any easy way of uploading them right now.

If you ever want unfettered access to any of these tourist sites, I recommend going on a weekday in January.  I don't think we actually saw any other tourists at any of these sites.  We had our own private viewing of the informational video about Crazy Horse Memorial.

Tim and I had a great time on the road yesterday.  The landscape was constantly changing, and absolutely beautiful along the entire drive.  Today the plan is to keep going through Wyoming, go through Salt Lake City (and visit the Salt Lake City Library, which is a building I've been really interested it), and then stop for the night somewhere near Winnemucca, NV.

The drive we made yesterday mostly retraces a trip that I went on in high school with my best friend Meredith and her family, and so it brought back lots of really good memories.   The drive we're taking today will retrace a trip that my mom and I made together when we were moving from Denver to Reno.  Lots more good memories.  Tim and I are having a great time making new memories together.

If we have signal along the way, I'll post, but I'm not expecting much...

Location:  Rawlins,United States

9:17

On the road at 9:17.
Temp: 0 degrees
Miles: 246.6

Location:Mapleton,United States

Ah, a real bed

Nothing feels better then a real bed after a few nights on an air mattress - no matter how good that air mattress may be.

As I was finishing up in the house yesterday, and packing up the car, I figured out a few theories of moving:

First, if you're going to do the mass of your cleaning at night, then don't expect to inspect it by the light of day without having to redo a significant portion of it.

Second, and a close corollary to the first. Don't ever, ever, ever think that glasses or contacts are optional when cleaning out the house.

Third, no matter how empty the house feels after the professional movers leave (and let's take just a minute to thank goodness for professional movers), there's always a shocking amount of stuff left behind to deal with.

Here's a picture of the car full of trash and recycling before a trip to the county waste center:





By the time I got to packing up the car for the trip, I was on decision overload. I'm sure that more organized people don't have this problem, but by the time I got to the point of figuring out what to do with the growler of Scotish 80 beer that Tim got as a going away gift, I just stuffed it under some linens, and hoped that it wouldn't be that final straw that prompted the question of whether we had enough room to bring the dog along with us. Eventually we were able to get everything into the car, and head down the road.

Tim has his own addition to my list of moving theories: Always inflate an air mattress before you have to use it.

And yes, this is a lesson we learned the hard way.

Location:Northwest Ave,Sioux Falls,United States

Pointing west

We took off this afternoon at around four. We've been imagining that moment for over a year, and it really was everything we hoped it would be. We got into our hotel just in time to catch the tail end of the state of the union address.

Tomorrow - Wall Drug, Mount Rushmore, and 10 hours or so of driving. We'll keep you posted...

Temp: 8 degrees
Mileage: 270 miles
Time on the road: 4.5 hours (ish)

Location:Sioux Falls,United States

Planning

South Dakota it is then.

Current temp: 10 degrees

Location:Wooddale Ave S,St Louis Park,United States

Off we go...

We went to bed Minnesotans and we're waking Californians. Today's the day. I've got a few last things to finish around the house, and Tim has the last day of his conference, and the plan is that we'll drive out of town this afternoon around 4.

After one last weather check over breakfast, we'll decide whether we'll go north through South Dakota, or take the safer route through Nebraska (which we've already traveled many, many times).

This blog is just our way letting people know where we are and what we're up to. Once we get to California, it may morph into my explorations of our new home. We're looking forward to sharing all this with you!

Last weekend in Minneapolis

On this last Sunday in Minnesota, we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to watch the football game, since our TV is packed up on the truck. We have, unexpectedly, found ourselves to be Vikings fans.

The list of things we should have been doing was a long one, but yet... We found ourselves driving out to Best Buy, looking for some gadget to use our laptops to watch the game. We finally decided to go the low tech route and watch the game over a beer at a local bar. Now we've just got to hope for a win...

and so it begins...

The movers came and took our stuff away.

There's nothing quite so disorienting as watching packers come in and box up all your worldly possesions in a matter of hours. Although it's far preferable to doing it yourself.

If I had to guess, the truck's somewhere in Nebraska by now. In the meantime, Tim and I are camped out in the empty house. He's got a few more days at work here in Minneapolis, and then we'll be driving out on Wednesday afternoon.

Current temperature: 33 degrees F

transitions

Okay, so I'm reinvigorating this poor abandoned blog. Shortly after my last post, I found an architect intern job in Rochester. Once I started the long commute and the job, I left the weekly photo expeditions behind. Since then, a lot has changed. After working at that firm for a year, the firm shut down it's Minnesota office, so I found myself out of a job. Then Tim's company offered to relocate us to California.

So now I'm dusting this off so we can use it to document our move, the drive across the country, and our explorations of the Sacramento area. Join us for the ride...

Life's adventures....

Do you ever have the feeling that life is knocking you over the head with some lesson or another? Like it's saying, listen here, doofus, pay attention before I has to break yer kneecaps? I mean, life could be a little more subtle – I'm not that oblivious.... I think.

We went camping last weekend up near the Boundary waters. We made plans with some friends of ours, and while Tim and his friend T– worked in the morning, C– (T–'s wife) and I and our two dogs drove up early to get a jumpstart on the weekend frivolities. I have to say that the drive was really enjoyable. It's the most I've seen of Minnesota, and it really is a pretty state. We spent a fair amount of time along the shores of Lake Superior, and the fog rolling in over the water was quite picturesque. As a bonus, we saw a family of moose and a fox on the last leg of the trip. The two dogs tried to intimidate the moose with barks and growls, but the moose seemed completely unimpressed.

Things started to unravel a bit when we got to the campsite, though. We were immediately covered with mosquitoes and flies, and various other tiny biting creatures, and it was hot and muggy. Now I can deal with heat decently well, but I am a complete wimp when it comes to either bugs or humidity. Particularly bugs. The two dogs were wigged out by the new situation and the bugs also, so the process of unpacking the car and setting up camp was much more complicated than it really ought to have been. By the time Tim showed up, I was covered with mud, compulsively slapping myself to ward off mosquitoes, and frustrated.

By the next morning, we were seriously reconsidering our options. It had rained all night long, our camp site was deteriorating quickly into a mudpit and insect breeding ground, and the forecast was calling for increased wind and storms that night. We decided to make the most of it and go out on a quick hike and then re-evaluate when we got back. But then C– locked the keys in T–'s car. His beautiful, polished BMW. His baby. Just so you know, BMWs don't mess around. If you don't have a key in hand, it's next to impossible to get in and unlock it. This is no put-a-coat-hanger-in-through-the-window type of situation.

At this point, I was feeling complete sympathy for C–. I have been in a similar situation so many times in my life. The early part of my adult life was rife with one episode after another of me locking myself out of something or other. I tended to obsess about setting up contingencies for lock outs, and at least one friendship was formed when I had to ask an acquaintance for a ride when I had locked myself out – she told me that if we were going to be friends it would soon enough be the other way around, and we might as well get used to it. And so a friendship was born.

The funny thing is, I suddenly got better about the whole thing when I discovered that if I knew that there was no back up, no spare set of keys, no convenient window to crawl through, then I tended to not lock myself out. Which made me realize that I could choose to be better about it in some situations, and if I could in some, then I should in all situations. Voila! It's not to say I'm cured, but I've only had one incident in the last five years. Not too bad.

And so we found ourselves waiting for a tow truck driver in a campsite twenty miles from the nearest town. Which is when I did the sketch of the flowers that you see up above. I could do the sketch from the relative safety of our mesh-walled canopy. I had also brought my camera, but there was no way I was going to go traipsing around while the bugs feasted on me. So this sketch is the sole evidence that we were up there. Unless you count all the bug bites.

So what's this lesson I brought up? This is my ultimate conclusion. That you can make of a situation whatever you want to make of it. It's your choice. I was really impressed with T– and C–. If ever there was a situation oozing with opportunity for marital strife, this was it. C– clearly felt horrible, and T– was obviously frustrated, but they held it together with love and consideration for each other. And dang it all, we managed to have a good time anyway. On our way back home, we managed to watch the tail end of a Harley parade in Duluth, find some great barbecue, and enjoy a tasty dinner on the shores of Lake Superior in good company. If you equip yourself with patience, adaptability, a heavy dose of humor, and good friends and even better spouses, then you can find enjoyment no matter what string of bad luck you encounter.

All in all, I had some great food (there's nothing like breakfast when you're camping), a chance to sketch, an opportunity to see Minnesota, and we cemented some new friendships. Life's not half bad, when you're open to it....

Happy Fourth everyone! And congratulations to Meredith and Gerrit, who have a beautiful newborn baby girl as of 6:07 Monday night!

Rock Stars

We felt like rock stars. As we taxied away from the runway after landing at the Buffalo general aviation airport, men with orange vests and official looking flags waved us to our parking spot. He shooed families in fold-out chairs away so that we could turn the aircraft off the taxiway and onto the grass strip that became the parking ramp. Strangers came up to help us push the plane into its spot. Okay. So writing this really doesn't convey the excitement of the moment, but honestly, we felt like rock stars.

To back up a bit, Tim started working on his commercial rating while we were still in Albuquerque, and a few months ago he started up again here. He's been flying longer than he's been driving – since he was fourteen. It's part of who he is. In the months when we first got here and he wasn't flying again yet, it was like a part of him was withering away. As soon as he started again, he was a new person.

Or maybe it was just the weather.

Anyway, we rented a single engine airplane from the FBO where he's been taking his lessons. If you ask me what the letters FBO stand for, I'll have to shrug my shoulders. I'm working on my fluency in pilot-speak, but I still have a long way to go. Buffalo is only about a half hour flight from Flying Cloud airport, where our plane (and the FBO) is based, so almost immediately after we got off the ground we started hearing radio traffic out of Buffalo, and the traffic controller managing a fairly heavy load of traffic. Maybe it was that tension of merging into so much air traffic that heightened our sense of excitement and made us feel like rock stars.

Apparently the french toast at the airshow was phenomenal, and a major draw in itself. Although we were hungry, by the time we got there the line was enormous -- it would have taken over an hour to get to the front. We weren't that hungry for french toast.



So we wandered around and watched the comings and goings of all the people at the show. It was surprisingly crowded – families and couples, pilots and young men yearning to be pilots, old and young. Most of the people came by car, not plane, and we heard that they had run out of parking.



Our timing was impeccable. By the time we wandered back over to where we had our seats in front of our plane, we didn't have long to wait before the airshow started. The airshow itself wasn't huge – only two airplanes. But man, they put on impressive shows. The acrobatics were astonishing.



We're planning to head to Oshkosh this summer, which is the mega fly-in. We're planning to stay there for a few days at least, so we'll have to drive. Rental airplanes are pricey enough to begin with but they get really expensive really quickly when you're talking about overnight trips. Man, we've got to figure out how to get our own plane someday.

I was moderately interested in going to Oshkosh before our trip to Buffalo, but now I'm really excited about the trip. And the even better news is that my parents are planning to join us there. I think they'll love it too, and it'll be fun to share it with them. Without the airplane, maybe we won't feel like rock stars, but I think we'll have a great time anyway!



See the rest of the photos here.

Saturday Morning In Uptown

A few years ago I wrote an essay for one of my classes that attempted to answer the question, “Why do I travel.” Although I've always loved traveling, it was a question that I'd never really thought to consider and writing the essay was thought provoking. To me it was like asking the question, “Why do I breathe?” Because if you're living and loving life, that's what you do. I love taking in a new place, figuring out what makes Sydney different from Boston. Berlin different from New York.

One of my favorite ways of immersing myself in a new place is what I've come to think of as a deríve – basically a long, meandering walk. Typically I'll have couple destinations in mind, I'll know the rough direction I need to travel to make it from one waypoint to another, and then I'll just set off. See what adventures waylay me along the journey. On my first weekend in London, I set off from my bed and breakfast at around 7 after a full English breakfast of tomatoes and beans and sausage, and didn't get back until long after dinner. By the end of the day, I'd been to Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Westminster, Trafalgar Square, the Tate Modern, and Shakespeare's (newly rebuilt) Globe Theater. I had even climbed to the top of St Paul's Cathedral to admire the vistas of the city. Many of those destinations were places that I returned to over and over during the two years I lived in England, and the mental map I built on the weekend was the foundation upon which I built all the rest of the knowledge I eventually acquired about the city.



But for all the spatial knowledge that these walks provide about a new place, I feel like the real soul of a place is revealed in the chance encounters you have along the way. That same weekend in London, I took the Tube from near the end of a line into the center of the city. When I got on, I was nearly the only person in the car. A couple of stops later, an older gentlemen got in and sat down a few seats away. We sat in silence for a few stops, both of us watching the scenery of brick suburban row houses flow past us. Suddenly he turned to me, and said, “You never know what will happen in the blink of your pretty little blue eye.” Then he turned back forward, and continued on as if he'd never spoken.



I took in his statement with a little bit of confusion mixed with a fair bit of delight. Although I didn't know what to make of it, I felt like the encounter had somehow given me a small glimpse into the soul of the place. I would never see the man again, but I felt as if he had set me off onto my adventure in London. I felt connected and rooted and even though I knew the feeling was illusionary and ephemeral, that chance encounter opened my eyes to see the mystery, energy, and timelessness that I now associate so closely with the city.



All this to say that I truly value the chance encounters you have while getting to know a new place. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when I went to visit Uptown for my weekly photo expedition. I came early on a bright spring Saturday morning. Tim once described the Uptown area to me as having all the atmosphere and energy of a campus area, but without the campus. After getting to know the area myself, I completely agree. In afternoons and evenings, most of the people walking around look like the too-cool-for-school kids – studiously not fashion-conscious. It's lined with popular hang-out bars and cafes, and I imagine it's pretty busy on a Friday night.



But on this Saturday morning, the streets were nearly empty. I like to wander around places like this early on weekend mornings. In some places, you see people out cleaning the streets, and vendors getting their wares ready for sale. But in Uptown, I saw homeless people, vagrants, transients. I'm not sure what the respectful word was, but they all seemed kind. When I stopped a waited for a bus to come because I wanted a particular shot, one man came over to make sure I was okay. He said that I looked lost.

But an encounter I had with another man was what made me start thinking about the man that I met on the Tube in London. When this man in Uptown walked up to me, I nearly turned him away before he could even speak. I usually prefer not to give money to individuals on the streets, and there was something of entreaty in his face as he walked up to me. But it was a beautiful day and there was also something joyful in his face, so I decided to listen to what he had to say. He was a homeless man, trying to earn money to pay for his medication to treat diabetes. He said he doesn't like to ask for money directly, saying he'd rather earn it through poems or a song. Would I let him earn some money? At first, I tried to stall, having not yet decided what I wanted to do. He offered to show me a good place to take a picture, and so we started walking down the block. While we were walking I decided to give in to the moment, and told him I rather hear a poem than a song. Gospel or Love? Gospel. With that he started reciting a poem and his steps subtly changed cadence to match the rhythm of his verse. I wish that I could remember the words of his poem. I am no judge of poetry, but his recitation had soul and sincerity that brought joy to my morning. After he pointed out the photo viewpoint, I gave him some money and a bus ticket I had. I was all the richer for our encounter.

I'm not sure what my time with that man can tell me about the soul of Uptown Minneapolis, but I know that I had a happiness and a fundamental belief in humanity that morning after meeting him.



A note. This essay is very, very belated. I took the photos over three weeks ago. When I started the writing to accompany the photos I took, I ended up going a completely different direction than I intended, which (I suppose) is one of the joys of this forum. I've included some pictures from a 2006 trip to England that Tim and I took, just to set the mood. If you want to see other photos from that trip (and a few others), go here. And if you'd like to see the rest of my photos from my morning in Uptown, go here. I'll be publishing a few more posts very soon, as I've got photos from two other photo expeditions.

a Flickrwalk....

This week we went on a Flickrwalk and I counted that for my photo expedition for the week. Tim and I met up with a bunch of other photographers from the area, had dinner with them, and then we all went on a walk around St Paul. Everyone from Flickr was super friendly, and we enjoyed meeting everyone. I'm truly awestruck at the quality of photographs produced by this bunch of people.



We met a little before sunset so that we could catch the light of twilight and then do some night photography. I've done very little nighttime photography, so that was a lesson in itself. I also wanted to try something called HDR – I won't get too far into the technical details (if you're interested, there are many, many tutorials available by googling HDR), but the basic gist is that you take multiple exposures of the same image, and then digitally merge them. The result is more like what the human eye sees, because the human eye can adjust to see the details of both the dark and light areas of a scene. HDR images can be fairly subtle, or absolutely fantastical, and there's definitely an art to producing the image you intended.

Either way, I definitely broke most of my photo expedition rules this week. I didn't worry about how many images I took -- I just concentrated on using my tripod, taking photos in low light, and setting up shots for HDR images. And HDR requires a lot of post-processing work with Photoshop, something I'm usually loathe to do. So there's your disclaimer (as if anyone's particularly bothered by my self-imposed rules beside me....)



The area we explored was called Harriet Island Park – an interesting name considering it's not actually an island. It was once, but in 1949 the small channel that divided it from land was filled in, making the name a misnomer. The park once held a bath house and a petting zoo that were very popular summer attractions, but they were closed because of chronic flooding problems and the pollution of the Mississippi River. The flooding was fixed when levees were built, and the park now hosts docks for steamboats.



Across the river, you can get spectacular views of the St Paul Cathedral. So far, this is as close as I've come to the cathedral, but I've heard that it's far more beautiful from the inside than the outside. I read that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the cathedral looked like a bull dog sitting on its haunches – in other words, aggressive. Nonetheless, it seems to dominate the St Paul skyline, and I really like it. Especially in twilight. Maybe I just like it because it makes for such a good waymarker to help me find my way around the city.

Tim and I weren't dressed particularly well for the chilly Minnesota evening, so we called the walk a bit short. I'm hoping to meet the folks at from the Flickr crew again soon. Some of these images are HDR, some are just straight. I've got a lot I can learn about HDR, but for now I think I'll concentrate on reinspiring my photographic eye. Here are some more photos from the evening....

Mother's Day Farmer's Market

This morning I went over to St Paul to go to the Farmer’s Market to satisfy a definitive hankering for fresh, locally grown strawberries. I’m not sure where that particular desire came from, but for some reason, the California grown strawberries I saw in our local supermarket just wouldn't satisfy, even though they smelled fabulous.



Tim told me that it was too early here for strawberries, but I couldn’t be dissuaded. After all, what’s a Farmer’s Market without strawberries? Well, I found out this morning, because the market was filled predominately with flats of flowers and herbs, and not fresh produce. Ah well. Tim’s right again.



But I did have my camera in hand, and it turned out to be a spectacular (though slightly chilly and windy) morning, so I continued on my photo expedition, despite my strawberry purchasing failure. We came to this part of town a couple weeks ago for an Arts Crawl, so I wasn’t particularly on new territory. But aside from these two trips, I’ve only been to St Paul one other time, so I don’t really know how this area fits in with the rest of the city. At any rate, there are beautiful old brick buildings throughout the area. When we went before, we saw the insides of the buildings, which have incredibly beautiful old-growth timber structures -- huge beams that are a foot or two deep. Those kinds of buildings just don’t get built anymore.

It looks like the area is just on the cusp of becoming a hip new part of town. There are a lot of developments turning old buildings into new lofts, some restaurants (one particular udon place that was out of this world -- Tanpopo), some night clubs, and of course the Farmer’s Market. I’ll be curious to see if the area takes off or not, but I’ve heard that the mayor is doing all the right things (whatever that means), so people are expecting good things to happen.



In the meantime, I’ve heard that the area always has the feeling of a desolate ghost town. All the time. I definitely felt that today. Even a half block away from the Farmer’s Market, the streets were deserted, with maybe one or two people walking about. It’s strange to see city streets that quiet. I wonder how it feels during the week?

Happy Mother's Day everyone! Here's the full set of photos. Have a good week!

An experiment

Just a quick departure from the usual program...

Yesterday I spent some time experimenting with a drawing from one of my school projects. I took this drawing (the original hand drawing I did in the fall of 2005)



I tried doing the same drawing (front elevation of the row house project) in sumi ink instead of a line drawing. After doing four iterations, I ended up with this:



I had so much fun playing around and trying different techniques, brushes etc. I'm sure I could do fifteen more iterations, and still have room to improve. But for now, I enjoyed the process, and I'm happy with the result.

I'm still planning to do a photo expedition tonight, and publish it tomorrow sometime, so come on back. I'm not sure where I'll head with the camera, so we'll see.

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!