Posts Tagged ‘road trip’
Striking Scenery
The day started as brilliantly as it ended yesterday. The timing of the sunrise has moved late enough that our morning walk with Asher on the way to feeding the horses brings some wonderful displays in the sky.
Early in the afternoon, I met Mike at the Flying Cloud Airport, where I parked my car before climbing into his SUV for the drive north. The fall scenery was looking pretty impressive, a couple of hours north of the Cities, despite the sputtering rain from a gray cloud cover. If it had been clear and sunny, it would have really popped.
The clouds to the north of the precipitation put on a show of their own, which I captured through the windshield.
One of the chores during this trip was to move their boat into town (Grand Rapids) for winterization service. We arrived to hook up the trailer with time to spare for a walk in their woods. The scenery around the pond, with its glassy surface, was particularly photogenic.
It’s a little past peak for brilliant reds and oranges up here, but the tamaraks are just short of reaching their peak fall beauty.
Our plan to fly Mike’s plane home today is teetering on the edge of acceptable weather, which is exactly why they had to leave the plane here the last time. It will be disappointing if we have to drive home, but we will return today one way or another.
It would be a first for me to view fall colors from a small plane. My fingers are crossed.
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Mountain Time
Drove through a torrential downpour that limited visibility down to about a half car length. We drove with hazard lights on.
We crossed into the Mountain time zone and gained an hour, making the 9-hour jaunt feel a less taxing in our minds.
Today, we ride south. The scenery around Hill City is beautiful. We are looking forward to the change from sitting on a car seat all day to pedaling down the trail.
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Long Drive
And… we are off! The adventure begins with a day of driving. We are leaving the Twin Cities and heading to Hill City, South Dakota. I laid out what I could think of needing and then stood wondering what I was forgetting. Have I mentioned how much I dislike packing?
I sent that picture to my biking partners on this adventure, Gary and Rich, and they questioned the upside-down footstool. Yeah, that’s not something I’m bringing. Cyndie was cleaning the floor around the bed while I was packing.
Cyndie and I took advantage of one more day at home without animal responsibilities and took in a matinee movie at the theater in Hudson. We didn’t need to ask for the senior discount. The attendant automatically gave it to us. Hmm.
We saw “The Roses,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman. With a great supporting cast of comedic actors, we hoped it would be a rip-roaring laugh riot. Being unfamiliar with the novel and the 1989 film this one is based on, we weren’t aware that a “tinderbox of competition and resentments underneath the façade of a picture-perfect couple” was the theme the humor rides upon. The mean streaks were a little harsh.
We capped off the movie outing with dinner at LoLo American Kitchen and Craft Bar in Hudson at such an early hour that it kept us on the theme of feeling like classic senior citizens out on the town.
Now I will be sitting in a car for most of the day today before trying to get my body going on Sunday morning to ride 60 miles of the Mickelson Trail. The motor and battery are installed on my bike, just in case.
I’ll be posting from my phone for a week if all goes as planned. Forgive me in advance if all you find is a single picture. That is an exercise I have long wished to try, picking just one image to feature from a full day of adventures. I have yet to accomplish that discipline, despite its offering the promise of a quicker and easier post.
I wonder if I packed the right charging cable. If I did, I wish I remembered where I stashed it.
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Fair Exchange
I have been given a chance for a mini-vacation for a few days this week in an advance payment for holding down the ranch solo next week when Cyndie takes a trip to visit friends. Cyndie arranged for a local contractor at our lake place in Hayward to do some work inside the main house and wanted to have someone here to let him in and be around while he worked in case he needed anything.
Her solution was brilliant, as far as I’m concerned. She offered me the chance to come up alone, and I accepted without hesitation. A solo road trip! Yahoo!
Not that I was excited or anything, but I packed the night before and snuck out the door at 5 a.m. yesterday for the drive to the lake. It felt reminiscent of my time commuting to the day job, except it took another hour and a half longer to get here than it did heading to the old workplace.
There had been just enough snow (you know, “nuisance snow” amounts) that I did a fair amount of shoveling to clean up walkways and stairs to both buildings for Brad, the contractor. He will also be doing some work for us in the little cabin while waiting for the sheetrock mud to dry.
Old seals on the hoses to the washing machine in the laundry room leaked when nobody was aware of it, and the resulting water damage included moldy sheetrock.
I took a picture while he was dismantling some shelving to show the yucky wall. After helping carry the frame and countertops out of the way, I gave Brad some space and listened to construction sounds from a distance.
With all obstructions out of the way, he made short work of ripping out the old and installing the new.
While Brad was doing real work, I enjoyed a leisurely day free of any animal duties and listened to my music library at high volume, set up a jigsaw puzzle, did some reading, took a nap, ate like a king (of course, Cyndie sent me off with oodles of good food!), and watched shows on Netflix that Cyndie won’t tolerate.
The hardest part of my day was learning that after a full day of the waterer in the paddock working fine and the temperatures moderating a bit from the most bitter cold, the line still froze again yesterday afternoon. Aaarrgh! Cyndie was able to melt it again and has the installer coming today, hopefully, to check out whether one of the heat tapes needs to be replaced.
I feel bad that the problem continued into her solo watch. One way to look at it though, maybe the added stress yesterday could help her to appreciate even more her vacation from animal responsibilities next week.
Giving each other separate turns to have an extended break from daily chores is a fair exchange. Right now, I’m soaking up my brief autonomy opportunity at the lake with maximum appreciation.
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Quick Turnaround
It was a novel adventure to hop Asher into the car to scoot up to the lake with little fanfare on Sunday afternoon and then return home the following morning. Cyndie met with a contractor to request a quote for some fixing up that is needed on the dwellings. The trip also gave us a chance to assess the status of the feared mouse infestation we discovered the last time we were up.
A mousetrap I left in a drawer had caught one, but the other trap did not snap despite obvious activity all around it. On the bright side, we found no other evidence of activity, particularly in the bed that was a mess when I climbed into it last time.
Asher was a very busy guy, scrambling to leave his mark everywhere we walked. I let him romp on the ice for a short distance, and he was thrilled to sprint around on the slippery surface, sliding, turning, and leaping in gleeful doggy fun. It’s too bad that our little ice patch in the paddock at home doesn’t offer him the same opportunity. It would be easier for him to leap over it than slide on it.
There were trace amounts of snow up north, but after we got home and went for a walk, it made the absolute lack of snow really stand out to me. Our property feels bone dry. Freeze-dried. Last winter, when we experienced a similar lack of accumulating snow, the temperature frequently rose above freezing. After our recent bout of extremely cold temperatures, the 10-day forecast shows a continued run of normally cold days and no hint of precipitation. This will be a very long spell of below-freezing, yet very dry weather.
So much for the prognostications of a snowier winter this year. At least for now. I have a suspicion there will be a couple of snowstorms here before winter is over.
The later in the season it comes, the greater the likelihood of a quick turnaround after a significant snow event.
In the meantime, I will admit to appreciating the lack of needing to plow and shovel. However, I’m at risk of developing an unhealthy attachment to sedentary pursuits on couches that lend themselves to easy snacking on deliciously salty and crunchy processed foods.
My quest for optimal health has developed a bit of a wobble, dare I say.
I should probably have a serious talk with myself one of these days about putting a quick turnaround on that trend.
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Different Lake
We are up at the lake again, but not our lake place. Last night we met our friends, Barb and Mike Wilkus at Marie’s house in Edina and they drove us, with Delilah, up to their cabin near Grand Rapids, Minnesota. We all agree that it is more fun to wake at the lake.
Very quickly, we recognized there was plenty of snow up here.
Maybe all that snow will provide insulation against the predicted deep freeze. We have a warm fire to keep us comfortable indoors, so we may be playing more cards than trekking in the woods as we mark the end of one calendar year and the beginning of the next.
Delilah traveled well for the drive that lasted an hour longer than our usual trips to Hayward and was thrilled over the new environments’ sights, sounds, mounds of snow, and exciting smells. She quickly gained a new friend in Mike, who likes to serve dog treats to good dogs.
There was a lot more sitting politely and offering of a paw in a shake happening last night than I usually see at home in a month.
Hope you have a wonderful last day of this year wherever you are!
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Like Ships
It’s funny how it can feel like I’m in a relationship with another vehicle on the drive home from the lake when it travels the same speed and direction as I am going. When they finally went straight through a roundabout that I turned south from, I felt as if I should send them off with some acknowledgment of the road miles we shared.
I arrived home yesterday around 11:00 a.m. and watched Cyndie prepare for a trip of her own. She left for a seminar in California, so I am on my own this week. We are like ships passing in the night lately.
Or, like cars on a drive home from the lake.
When she returns home at the end of the week, the plan is for us to head back up to the lake for the weekend. That will make three weeks in a row that I have been up there. I can’t remember the last time that happened.
It’s a treat, for sure, but it does require that I do the lawn mowing after work in the middle of the week and interferes with ever getting back to the lumberjack projects that linger in our woods unfinished. Small concerns, both of them, compared to the glorious beauty we get to enjoy up in the Hayward area.
I have a sense that a day is going to come when I will be facing long hours of labor with a chainsaw this fall. Too bad the hours of daylight get shorter as summer wanes. But, it’s the summer sunshine that is giving us all the more reason to be up on the water while the going is good.
You could say, the lumberjack projects and my attention to them are a little like ships passing in the night.
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High Points
After work yesterday, Cyndie and I hopped in her car and drove up to the lake for the weekend. Leaving on a Thursday night makes for easy driving, in the absence of the typical weekend traffic headed north. Our route took us through some of the damage from last week’s storms that produced near-hurricane force winds and some baseball-sized hail.
It was fruitless to try to capture a representative photo of the large scope of broken trees for miles, but I snapped a few shots on my cell phone through the car window at highway speed.
It was a little easier to capture a sample of some building damage that hadn’t been covered up yet.
The extensive damage to trees was a really sad sight. It gave me a whole new perspective on the comparatively minor issues we are facing at home with a few dead or dying trees leaning across our trails. We’ve got it easy.
High point of the day for me yesterday was finding a neighboring farmer working our fields to finally bale some of the cut hay that has been left on the ground for weeks, repeatedly being rained on instead of properly drying out. The past week offered the longest stretch of dry days that I can recall so far this summer.
The second high point was getting a chance to watch portions of Stage 18 of the Tour de France on the subscription TV channels when we got here. At home, we only pick up what is publicly available through the airwaves, and bike racing coverage is minimal.
Two big mountain stages remain, today and tomorrow, and I am thrilled to be able to view all the drama as it happens.
Maybe it will be rainy here as the morning progresses so I don’t waste sunny lake time sitting indoors in front of the glowing screen getting my bike racing fix.
Honorable mention high point yesterday goes to the Coop’s pizza dinner we devoured when we got to Hayward. Oh, so delicious.
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Poetically Anticipating
Cyndie and I are going up north with Barb and Mike for the weekend, leaving this morning to drive up to their lake place near Grand Rapids, MN.
For reference, that is over half-way to Canada from our home. Does that make it sound cold? Well, honestly, it’s not expected to be that much colder than down in the Twin Cities area on Saturday, but one recent prediction put the high at 34°(F) in Grand Rapids.
After temps in the 60s yesterday around the region, a high so close to the freezing point tomorrow will feel plenty brisk, I’m sure. The effect will be augmented by some wind, too, just in case we might otherwise miss the fact it was colder outside.
I haven’t let cold weather interfere with my anticipation for our adventure. Based on previous experiences, this is how I’m envisioning our coming time together this weekend…
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it starts
with anticipation
of the days ahead
embraced greetings
in the moments before
departure
friends traveling together
the hours on the road
as precious as the destination
smells and sounds
of a northern forest
in the waning days
before winter saunters in
colorful leaves
blue sky
reflected on the lake
laughter dancing on the breeze
all hands on deck meals
card games
and a crackling fire
turn up the tunes
then clean up and pack
it’s time to go home
and the hours
on the road
are as precious
as the destination
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Partly Smoky
Cyndie and I drove up to the lake last night. It was a long day in a car for her, because she started the day yesterday up at the lake. She had gone up on Wednesday with Melissa and daughters, in an original plan to have me drive up to join them Thursday night, but that changed when a memorial for Charlie Weller was announced for Friday.
Charlie was the husband of Cyndie’s close high school friend, LuAnn (Miller). The revised plan had Cyndie riding home with Melissa and the girls yesterday afternoon, taking a moment to freshen up from beachwear to something more appropriate, driving us through afternoon traffic to Eden Prairie from our house, and then heading back to the lake from there, after paying our respects.
LuAnn and Charlie were dating in high school, not long after Cyndie and I had begun our relationship, so my memories of Charlie are wrapped in fragments of events that I haven’t thought about in decades. Even driving on roads in Eden Prairie, now approaching only six years distant from when I drove them almost every day, was feeling a little fractured.
I had to ask if we turned right or left at the intersection by the House of Kai restaurant to get to the funeral home.
In our haste to pull off this plan, we left out one pertinent aspect of determining the optimal route back to northwestern Wisconsin. I was tempted to try the old way we always drove when our kids were little and we regularly made the trip on back roads, but construction and traffic made the city portion an unwanted annoyance.
We paused for dinner at Jake’s to give traffic more time to thin out.
In the end, we chose to skirt the metro area on 494 and head up toward Stillwater to cross into Wisconsin on the new bridge. The resulting country roads we picked provided a rich reward of light traffic, gorgeous rolling hills and spectacular scenery.
We chuckled over the MPR radio weather forecast of “partly smoky” from the many fires burning out west, but when changing stations to our old favorite WOJB as we got far enough north, we heard the same phrase used again. Maybe it is an actual authorized weather service term.
It sure made an impact on the setting sun. It was looking dusky a lot earlier than the actual time of sunset. I held up my phone through the open top of Cyndie’s convertible at 7:52 p.m. and experimented with capturing it at 60 miles an hour.
Then I tried zooming in. It looked like a cartoon drawing of the sun.
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The optics of my iPhone seem to have added special effects without my input. Yes, that’s the sun glowing through the smoky sky.
Between the funky looking sun, my grasping at recollections of interactions with LuAnn and Charlie back in the 1970s, and finally, unexpectedly stumbling upon a portion of our old back roads route, but from a different point, my mind was feeling partly smoky.
“We’ve been here before…”
Yes, we have.
And now we are up at the lake again this weekend.
Ahhhhh. I remember this.
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Relative Something 