Posts Tagged ‘northern lights’
Pizzas Gina
It was with heavy hearts that Cyndie and I recently learned one of our most revered pizza restaurants back in Eden Prairie, Gina Maria’s Pizza, had abruptly gone out of business, closing all four of its locations. It felt like another indicator of our aging was being manifest before our eyes.
“Remember the good old days when we were able to buy pizzas from Gina’s?”
Back when I was working in Plymouth, MN, I would order a half-baked version of our favorites and bring them home whenever it was my turn to cook dinner.
When Cyndie would come home to visit the year she worked in Boston, MA, she would order a pizza while still at the airport and pick it up on the way, carrying a fresh deep dish in the door when she arrived.
Well, to our great relief, news got out that a manager from two of the locations had acquired the recipes with the blessing of the former owners and arranged to reopen the Eden Prairie location under the new name “Pizzas Gina,” which I think is brilliant.
I happened to be in EP yesterday to attend the funeral of the mother of one of my high school classmates, and the church was just down the road from our cherished pizza place. From the parking lot of the church, I ordered a rendition that, back in the day, Cyndie would have been able to speed dial her phone and ask for “the usual.”
With 30 minutes to kill, I took a slow drive to the cul-de-sac location of the house I lived in during my middle school and high school years. I almost remembered the family names for each of the houses along Cedar Ridge Road. It’s been over 45 years since I lived there, but plenty of the same trees I used to mow around were still in the yard of our old house.
Dinner last night was as delicious as ever. Maybe even more so, after a period of thinking we would never be able to taste our old favorite again. We are so grateful that the previous owners supported the new family’s efforts to keep the recipe alive and reopen the restaurant under a slightly different name.
If you ever find yourself in Eden Prairie and are a fan of pizza with an incredibly rich tomato sauce, make a point of ordering from the new Pizzas Gina on Mitchell Road.
As our typical (early) bedtime approached last night, Cyndie’s phone received multiple alerts from an app monitoring the intensity of the aurora in our location, so we took Asher out for a late walk to check it out. At the high point of our driveway, we lay down to ease the strain on our necks while staring at the sky.
We expected to see the radiating colors to the north, but we found that the display was happening straight up over our heads and stretched across the sky from west to east.
Some lingering clouds infringed on our viewing a little bit, yet they also occasionally added some interesting drama to the spectacle. We experienced an impressive combination of reds and greens. The show we enjoyed rivaled some of the nights when we were in Iceland last year.
I also spotted a shooting star/meteor streak, adding to my wonder and awe.
It all seemed a fitting compliment to our special treat of a favorite pizza dinner. Pretty much out of this world!
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Jadar Farm
After the wonderful adventures at Glymur, we made our way further around the fjord, stopping at a scenic pull-off for a picnic lunch in the car. There wasn’t a drive on the entire trip that didn’t offer eye-popping vistas of always interesting landscapes with mountain views, glacier fingers, moss-covered lava flows, or grazing sheep and horses.
We were headed for Jadar Farm Villa, an Airbnb cottage, by way of a Bonus Grocery store in Borgarnes for foodstuffs. We had an inkling the farm would be a real treat, and we weren’t disappointed.
We were ready to get in a little sooner than planned, so Mike called to ask about an early check-in. We were accommodated without hesitation. However, when we showed up, the farmer, Eiríkur, was in the finishing stages of cleaning for our arrival. It appeared he stopped his farm work to meet our request. We barely saw him during our stay because he was in his fields raking hay, but he was a phone call away and very helpful and responsive to every query we had.
This turned out to be our first chance to get close to horses.
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They had a dog that quickly came over to greet us, too.
We were in our glory to be able to interact with their animals. We were also looking forward to another soak in a hot tub, but we couldn’t rush that as the water temperature was intolerably HOT! Eiríkur gave Mike instructions that included adding cold water from a hose, and soon the water was just right.
There is never a shortage of hot water in this country, it seems.
Dinner was burgers on the grill. It almost felt like I was back home for a day in the middle of our travel adventure.
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Despite some clouds as darkness moved in, we enjoyed some flickers of Aurora in the sky before heading for our beds to close out our seventh day.
I can’t imagine any way that day could have been any more of a rewarding experience than it was for us.
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Aurora Watch
We go from Trillium observation on the ground to glowing ionosphere in the sky. Last night, friends Pam Knutson and John Bramble drove out from the Cities to join Cyndie and me in an Aurora Borealis watch party on the hill in our hay field.
We closed gates to temporarily constrain the horses to the paddocks and back pasture. Then Asher and I walked up to the high spot just after sunset to scout our location for sky-watching.
Cyndie packed our zero-gravity recliners and blankets in the car and we set up to await the show.
After reading the multitude of reports getting posted about fantastic sightings in locations well to the south of us, I was prepared for a spectacular event. Cyndie has an app that gives an aurora forecast and it was sending alerts of the increased activity. As Pam and John arrived, the percentage of likelihood was indicating 33% in our location.
We had a great view of constellations and saw satellites move across the sky in addition to regular airplane traffic. As far as Aurora goes, we saw very little with our eyes. However, I had read that using Night Mode on our iPhones would capture more than our eyes perceive.
Bingo!
There was some color showing up through the camera lens around 11:30 p.m. that our eyes could barely see.
This was around the same time Cyndie took another look at the app to see what our chances were up to for a visible spectacle. It had changed from 33 down to 4%. That was good enough to help us all decide to call it a night.
Fatigue helped me easily get over a fear of missing out on even more dramatic viewing after we stopped watching. Our warm and cozy bed was calling my name loud and clear.
At least our iPhones saw something pretty cool.
I had fun watching the night sky with friends for a few hours and listening to the calls of an owl serenading us. I had even more fun climbing into bed and falling instantly into Sleepsville. By that hour, it didn’t matter to me if the viewing outside was becoming better than ever.
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Relative Something 