California Adventures....

This weeks adventure... the family adventure taking my daughter Sarah to begin her freshman year at Humbolt State University in Arcata, Ca. She and her big brother drove her car, which she wanted at school, and I followed in mine. It is quite the drive to Arcata. The first 8 hours landed us in Reno, Nevada, on a day that, convieniently, was Matt's 21st birthday. We stayed at a casino where he got to drink a beer and gamble a little to celebrate his big day. I think he rather enjoyed geting carded by casino security, which allowed him to proudly pull out is license that said he was, indeed old enough.

From Reno to Arcata is where the drive gets long as it is 6 hours of 2 lane highway. First throught desert rangeland, then through the forest up around Lassen Volcano National Park, then dropping into a valley were the city of Redding Ca. After that it seemed like we were home free.... only 140 miles to Arcata. As it turns out highway 299 is 140 miles of windy and steep mountain roads with lots of hairpin turns. It was quite a beautiful, but exhausting drive. I would have loved to take pictures, but since I was following the kids and couldn't stop with out loosing them I never had the chance.

We got to Humbolt last night in time to check into her dorm, a spacious (by dorm standards) campus apartment nestled in the redwoods. It's quite a beautiful place, with the campus on the hillside in the redwoods, with some spots overlooking Humbolt Bay.

Sarah, who was really nervous about starting school, made friends right away and spent her first night in the dorm. I joined her in the morning for orientation, while her brother checked out the town and local skatepark. By lunch time she decided she didn't need me at orientation after all, so Matt and I left to drive north along the coast. Wow, talk about beautiful!!!... and this time I was able to stop for pictures!!!







And what trip to the forest would be complete with out stumbling upon a giant Paul Bunyan statue?

The end of Minnestota...

Back to the Minnesots quaintness.... smack dab in the middle of my brothers town Minnitrista, is the tiny town of St. Bonnifacious. A tiny mile square town totally surrounded by Minnetrista. Main street sports 3 bars, a gunshop, a laundromat and a gas station. The St. Bonny ford dealership has been around since 1912, and it doesn't look like much has changed since then! The town also has the cutest little library that I have ever seen. What a quaint little step back in history.


Now for the less then quaint side of Minnesota we had to take our token shopping trip to the Mall of America. Sure enough, it was huge. So were the lego sculptures at the lego store. And yes there really is an amusement park in the middle of the mall. The mall was built on the site of the old Metropolitan stadium, where the Vikings and Twins once played. If you are observant you will find an old chair from the old stadium hanging high up on a wall overlooking the amusement park. According the wikipedea the seat is at the exact location (including elevation) that it occupied in the stadium, andto commemorates a 520 foot home run hit by hall-of-famer Harmon Killebrew on June 3, 1967. Interesting. I'm not exactly a mall rat so I found the place a bit overwhelming. Fun to see once, but not someplace I'll need to go see again.

Back to Minnesota

One wonderful treat we had while visiting Minnesota was my brother taking us on a brunch cruise on Lake Minnetonka. We could not have asked for a more lovely day for a boat ride!!!!
Alligator Alley. Why? As we passed through it the captain said it would be obvious why the channel was called that. Guess what, it wasn't! Maybe because of the cattail? We never figured it out. LOL

The sailing club.

Matt and Sarah

Uncle Jeff

Horoscopes

I'm never sure what I think of astrology. It's interesting and fun but being the the science nerd type I can't help but think "show me the science behind it".

Then every now and then I read my horoscope and it is so "holy crap unbelievably spot on" that I have to wonder if maybe those astrologers really do know their stuff

Today was one of those days.

Today is my "unniversary"... would have been my 26th wedding anniversary had my marriage made it past 23 years. I try to make the best of it (tonight is martini night with the girls), but it is always a sad day for me.

Here's a screenshot of my yahoo horoscope today... I guess today was one of those "holy crap unbelievably spot on" days for sure.

More Minn.....

One highlight of our trip was stumbled upon by accident. After driving through downtown (or is it uptown?) Minneapolis, we found our way to a parkway along the Mississipi that my brother had yet to discover. We spied a sign for Lock and Dam No 1, and turned down the drive to investigate. It was the first of 29 locks on the Missippi River. The cool thing was is that it had on observation deck with a little self guided tour. None of us had ever seen a lock in action, so we stayed and watched the lock operate in both the upstream and downstream direction. I guess we're all a little nerdy because we all thought it was pretty cool. I liked seeing the kayaks come through the lock; they seemed so dwarfed by the operation, I think I would have felt a little intimidated by the big walls ang giant gates of the lock.

Back to my Minnesota travelogue

One of our stops while we were out touristing around was the sculpture garden. There were lots of interesting sculptures there, ranging from ones that were really cool, to ones that really had you wondering "what the heck was the artist thinking? (or smoking - LOL)".
The there were the ones that had you thinking "That was really cool, but what was the artist thinking? Like the huge bent spoon, sitting in a pond, balancing a misting cherry. Cool, but why?

I didn't take pictures of everything, but here are a few...

***Pause***

I interrupt my vacation travelogue to report on todays hike. I took the dog walking up Porter Fork in Millcreek Canyon tonight. Porter is one of my favorite summer time after work hikes, as it low enough in the canyon that I can get there quickly, it's shady and cool, as spring fed creek run alongside the trail. Well, trail isn't right, as it's really a one lane asphalt road, which is kind of nice if you end up coming back in the dark. Does pavement makes it a walk instead of hike? Or does the fact that there's about a 1200 ft elevation in the 1.5 mile walk to the end of the road make it a hike? Either way it's pleasant after work workout.

The road services an area of about 40 summer homes - rustic cabins, quaint cottages and a few new summer homes that make my real house look shabby. It's still pleasant up there despite the homes. Most are tucked back into the trees, and it seems rare that more than 4 or 5 are occupied at anyone time. Usually there are more hikers and dog walkers up there than summer home people.

I had a laugh when I walked by one cottage that was right alongside the road. I'd never seen a lemonade/dog treat stand when I was out hiking before! Too bad the stand was abandoned when we walked by, I'm sure Daisy would have liked a treat!

Minnesota Travelogue

I have always wanted to go to Minnesota. I'm not sure why, other than it is a cold weather place and I'm a cold weather person, or because I enjoy Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" Radio show or liked his book "Lake Wobegon Days" or maybe I wanted to see the 10,000 lakes. My brother moved to the Minneapolis area a few years ago, the kids and I each had a $100 Delta airline that needed to be used by August I had a holiday weekend and the kids were both in town, so we jetted off to Minnesota for a long weekend.




My brother lives way out in the western country/suburbs In the little town of Minetrista. The area is every bit as lovely as Garrison Keillor portrays it in Lake Wobegon Days. Green trees and idyllic farmsteads with waving fields of wheat and beautiful old barns. Lots of lakes, the biggest being Lake Minnetonka. We stopped along the lake at the cute little town of Wayzata, an old historic railroad town. The old train depot is now a museum, and outside the station they had this cute model train running outside.

Lucky Week

A butterfly I saw while hiking Bowman fork tonight

I am not quite sure what happened in the universe recently, but apparently last week was my luck week. I checked my facebook page and found that I had won a little contest a friend of mine sponsored. She owns Creekside Creations, a company that makes all natural soaps and lotions etc. and I one some of her marvellous products. Thanks Caryn!

Monday was also "dumpster day"; the one day a year where the county places big dumpsters on the street for us to discard "big stuff", so it's a good time to trim trees etc., One of my friends recently purchase a very high quality, professional pruning saw, and he let me borrow it to trim a tree who's branches were whacking my house. Thanks Jamie. I spent most of Sunday using that saw, and had piles and piles of branches lining the street by the end of the day. I snuck out of work early Monday, dreading that I had so much stuff to toss in the dumpster. Imagine my surprise when I turned the corner toward my house, and all my piles of branches were gone! My neighbor was out hauling her branches to the dumpster, so asked her if she knew who had taken care of mine. It turns out the county sent a big truck and scooped up all my branches!!! Talk about good luck! I may as well have won the lottery! I'm sure my poor neighbor wished she'd hauled hers to the curb the day before. You can bet we'll all be trying that strategy next year!

If that wasn't enough luck for one week, I actually won a subway gift card during a vendor show at work. I am simply not accustomed to having such good fortune!

Farmers Market

This morning my daughter, her borfriens and I went downtown to the farmers market. Peppered amunst the produce and craft sellers are musical acts. My daughter stopped to listen to a piano player, who interestingly, had the top of the upright piano open so that you could watch the mechanism. I walked up toSarah and said "Do you find it more interesting to listen when you can see inside the piano?" No" she replied, "it's more interesting when tha piano has been pulled behind a bicycle." I look over, and realize that in my fascination with the hammers hitting the strings, I never even noticed; that the piano, whick was on wheels, was attached to a bicyle! I'm not sure how much a piano weights, but I can't imagine pulling one with a bicycle. I can only presume that the owner must live in the flat part of the valley.

4th of July Weekend....

Saturday I went out with the mountain bike group for my first ride of the year. We road Pipeline trail out, which, by mountain biking standards is a relatively mellow trail; fairly flat, not too technical. I pretty such suck going up the big, steep uphills, and the big steep downhills can be a little scary, so for me this is an excellent ride. I did manage to successfully ride a few "technical" spots that are challenging to me so I was pretty pleased. I love this picture that Mike, one of the group organizers (and coach, cheerleader and total enthusiast) took. It really makes mountain biking look like, well, MOUNTAIN biking. I am the middle rider.


Sunday was spent at a creek side picnic with a friend. We were supposed to join other friends at the beach at Pineview Reservoir, but were turned away, for crowd control reasons by a cop doing his best "Dirty Harry" imitation. So we found a lovely picnic spot instead.


So the weird thing about Utah ... 4th of July fireworks are held on Saturday the years the 4th falls on a Sunday. No one here seemed to get the message about "separation of church and state". Two exception (that I know of)... the Salt Lake Bees has a big fireworks display after their July 4th game, and The Country Club did theirs on the 4th. Luck for me I get a great view of The Country Club's fireworks from my deck.

Divorced Fathers Day

Holidays are one time being divorced kinda sucks. Turns out father day is no exception. For Fathers Day Sarah made her father a cake... a flourless chocolate torte topped with chocolate ganache. Beautiful isn't it? But I didn't get any! See what I mean about holidays sucking when you're divorced?

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood....

I think the pictures say it all.....

Sightseeing...

I had a nice surprise this week. My brother came and spent a week here in Utah on business. He flew in Sunday early afternoon so I stook him adventuring. First stop was Antelope Island, where we climbed to the top of the Buffalo Point ocerlook to take in the views. I think the views of the Great Salt Lake fron here are amazing. I did learn a valuble lesson though... don't go there in the spring. The bugs were terrible. We were totally swarmed with little tiny biting flies, which made for a quick trip.

From there we headed up north and due to a detour to grab something to eat we drove by the old Union Pacific Station, where there is train museum. Jim saw the old engines outside and wanted to stop and play and climb on them. They were pretty cool to see close up, especially the really old ones. It's great to have a brother who wants to play!

Our real northern destination was the hot springs, where we had a nice soak. I liek to take visitors there because hot springs are a rarity in most places. I'm not sure anyone every likes them quite as well as I do (I'm a hot springs nut!) but it's always a nice day.

But were are the pictures you ask? I snapped one while walking ot the top of Buffalo Point. When we reached the top I went to snap another and realized my camera was gone. It must have worked it's way out of my pocket as we hoofed it up the hill. I was traumatized. I've been carrying my little Pentax Optio S5I (it's the one that fits in in the Altoids tin) practically everywhere for the last four years. I love my little camera, have no desire for another one, it is my trusted friend! We scoured the trail on the way down, but didn't find it. There was a couple hiking down as we went up, my hope is that they found it and turned it in. We checked on the way out, no such luck. Sigh. Monday, I started researching new cameras, then realized I should check with a park again. I made a call and low and behold my camera had been turned in. So Monday after work I drove the 40 miles back to park and now I have my baby back. Maybe I shouldn't get so attached to things, butyou know newer isn't better if love what you have.