Finding Fall

Candy: We found fall today. It exists everywhere in Minnesota.

We took another road trip today, this time to Stillwater and the St. Croix River area. We were hoping to find lots of colorful trees, maybe see a bunch of pumpkins or an apple orchard, and mostly just experience the river valley area and the blue skies.

We forgot it was Saturday.

It seemed that everyone else in the state had the same idea, so we decided to forego the pumpkins and apples in favor of exploring both the Minnesota and Wisconsin sides of the St. Croix River from Stillwater to Taylors Falls on the Minnesota side and from Osceola to Houlton on the Wisconsin side.

We had hoped to spend some time at Taylors Falls State Park, but it was so jam-packed that we couldn't even find a parking spot. Instead, we headed back south a few miles to the Franconia sculpture park.

Some local artists have built quite an unusual collection of sculpture out of scrap metal and other found objects and the sculptures are installed in a field with grass trails leading to each of the pieces. I was looking for abstracts today, and so unfortunately I can't show you any pictures of the actual pieces, with one exception (below). The sky was amazing today.

One sculpture was especially interesting. It was named "Lost" and was a chicken-wire fence maze with a concave reflective piece installed at the end of the maze. Tim and I had fun posing above it while I snapped away.

This is a view inside a sculpture that featured several giant balls made of curved wood inside an old, stripped-down Airstream camper.

This piece was a stucco-covered lath and wire tower. I liked the mix of textures, color, and cloud.

This unusual piece was all cast iron, and I liked the way the curlique sort of framed the tree in the distance.

My mother's family is from the Houlton area, just across the bridge from Stillwater, and I haven't been there for many years.

Stillwater seems to have undergone quite a rejuvenation in its downtown and although it was way too packed with cars and people today to really stop and take anything more than a snapshot, here's a glimpse of part of the downtown. A lovely little town.

Late in the afternoon as we traveled back to Albany, we stopped at Achman Lake near the town of St. Joseph, which is just southeast of Albany. This little lake can be seen from I-94 and is ringed with birch, poplar, and maple trees which are just beginning to show their fall brilliance.

Strangely enough, and yet not surprising to us given our recent history, what we were looking for today was really the best right close to where we are living.

We had a great day outide and I hope you did, too. I'll leave you with myriad fall images from my time at Achman Lake this afternoon. Enjoy.

It's a Beautiful Life

Candy: We spent a good share of Thursday at Albany's city park. It was just before sunset and the long shadows were beautiful. The pictures are from that day. These are beautiful days in Minnesota. The fall foliage is just beginning to turn out in full color, and now that the rain of the past weeks has passed through, the skies are beautifully blue with crisp, white clouds.

Temperatures around here are supposed to hit the 80s over the weekend and into next week, so we're planning to spend as much time outside in the summer-like weather. Here's hoping you have great fall weather and sunshine this weekend, too.

I'll leave you with a translation of a saying found years ago on a brass plate on a Peking, China garden wall. It read, Enjoy yourself. It is later than you think.

The North Shore

Candy: Yesterday was the first partly sunny day after three days straight of rain, so Tim and I decided to trek upstate to Duluth.

I hadn't been to Duluth since I was in college, and Tim had been to Duluth during his stint at Pillsbury, but only to whatever college campus his teams were competing against. He had never been to Canal Park and the lakefront area on Lake Superior.

We took some back roads from St. Cloud heading northeast so that we could pick up I-35 into Duluth. The trees were probably 70% clothed in their fall apparel, and the trip was lovely. The sky became progressively more clouded the farther north we traveled, but when we reached Duluth there was still a bit of sun peeking through.Canal Park is a fun little area right by the two port lighthouses, one of which is featured in this posting. Visitors to the park can walk out to either lighthouse, though the only one that seems to get any foot traffic is the one featured in most of this post's pictures.

I guess this lighthouse pier's popularity is helped because it's much easier to get to and it's quite a bit more picturesque than the other one.The park area has a three-mile boardwalk for foot traffic and paved paths for tourists renting bicycles, carts, or horse carriages for rides along the shore.

The port is also highlighted by the city's famous Aerial Lift Bridge, seen behind Tim in the picture below. Tim and I joked about how fun (or not) it would be to be the person operating that bridge all day long. While we were at the lakefront area, we saw several sailboats as well as a large freighter pass into the port under that bridge. The park was an old warehouse district that was converted in the 1980s into trendy restaurants, shops, cafes, and hotels. The Great Lakes Aquarium is located in that area as well as the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center.We walked through the area, enjoying the sunshine, and when we got chilly stopped in the local Caribou Coffee shop for a Hot Apple Blast, one of our favorite hot drinks.

When the light began to fade we headed back to the El and drove home, enjoying our time on the road almost as much as we did Canal Park.We both hope that you will have a terrific week and that you didn't spend too much time looking at the picture above to see what it is.

Need a Road Trip?

Candy: We sure needed a road trip.

So we piled into the El with Chase and took off for the "Gateway to the Pines"--Nevis, Minnesota, my hometown.

When we arrived in Nevis we spotted the boat launch and fishing pier (above) and decided this would be the perfect place for Chase to test the water. Lake Belle Taine holds a unique place in my heart, as it is the site for both my learning to swim and my almost-drowning in high school.At any rate, Chase really enjoyed the water and jumping off the boat launch. You can see the famous Nevis beach in the distance.This is my old high school in Nevis. It looks very similar to the way it did when I was in school way back when, except that a few more additions have been added behind the original building.I was also drawn to photograph the pier with its seagulls. As I was exploring it with my camera, I came across several spider webs that were lit just right by the late afternoon sun. I like this one best.We drove around town as I reminisced about my high school days and pointed out the location of my parents' first place just north of town, the place where the neighbors grew ginseng back in the day, and Danny's now-closed ice cream shop in town.

We decided to head toward Bemidji so that Tim could see what it was like. They have a huge Paul Bunyan statue and a similarly huge statue of Babe, his blue ox. Tim wanted to see it, so we took off for Akeley, the next small town to the east of Nevis, so that we could pick up County Road 64 north and take the old back roads.

As we entered Akeley, I pointed out the town's Paul Bunyan statue, and Tim rushed out of the El to pose in front of it.After sitting in Paul's hand, Tim decided he didn't really need to see the Paul Bunyan statue in Bemidji, so we headed back to Park Rapids (PR, as it's called by the locals) and from there eventually back to Albany.

Oh, I forgot. As some of you know, Minnesota is filled with towns that boast "The World's Largest _______ (fill in the blank)." Akeley's claim to fame is the statue shown above. Nevis' way to fill in the blank is this Tiger Muskie fish statue. If you look closely, you'll notice that it even has its own shelter to protect it from the elements. :)Here's a glimpse of Tim outside the El as we stopped to let Chase catch up on his business.

It was a nearly-perfect day. We had such a good time driving, talking, and looking at things we hadn't seen in a very long time. It was just what we needed.

Tim has an interview tomorrow with an insurance company in Burnsville, an opportunity that arose out of the blue this week. Not much else is new.

Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the last week or two of September. The leaves are just beginning to turn colors here and it looks as though it will be a lovely foliage season in the upper Midwest. We'll do our best to capture it with the camera and share it with you.

Take great care of yourself and enjoy the rest of your week.

Pictures and some thoughts from the weekend

Tim: Candy asked me to post tonight, so here goes. The picture above was taken by our six-year old nephew Isaac. The picture is of his younger brother Levi. Isaac is an aspiring photographer thanks to his Aunt Candy helping teach him some things on Grandma Joy's digital camera.

I had the chance to go to a coaching clinic this weekend down near the Twin Cities. The coach who presented the clinic is Don Meyer, arguably the best basketball coach in the nation, if not the world. A friend made a call to the clinic to get me in for free.

The clinic really focused on the peripheral aspects of a basketball program instead of the X’s and O’s. It was really something to hear Coach Meyer talk about the things he values in his program at Northern State University. Most of these values were the same values I taught in my program at Hiram. It made me feel a lot better about what I attempted to do as a head coach. Maybe that chance will come my way again.

The weather here in Minnesota is starting to cool down a bit and today was a day tailor-made for Northeast Ohio: dark, rainy, and stormy. Here in Minnesota the “month of fall” is progressing. Candy calls it this because in this state there are not really four seasons, but rather three seasons: winter, fall, and “road construction” season.

We are anxiously waiting for what’s next. It has been an interesting time for us and we have learned a lot from the last six months. We know God has something good coming, we just do not know when or what it will be. Whatever happens, we will keep you updated. To be honest, we have not had a lot going on recently that has been “post worthy.” Hopefully more will happen shortly that will be.

Well, that’s all for today. We hope you had a good one and we will leave you with another of Isaac's pictures of me "horsing around."

Ranjeet Deserves a Raise

Candy: I've been working all day with technical support for my friend's hosting account and have been very frustrated.

Finally I was able to connect with Ranjeet, who seems to be the only one at the company who could fix anything, and who ought to get an enormous raise. However, even Ranjeet couldn't fix everything I needed.

The one thing that made today's tech support hassles bearable is that we finally have a high speed internet connection at home again. For two web surfers like us, that's the equivalent of spending all day on the big waves off the coast of Venezuela after being stranded in the desert for months.

On another note, I was in downeast coastal Maine this week. What a beautiful part of the world.

I interviewed for a position with the University of Maine at Machias (pronounced with a 'ch' rather than a 'k' sound) on Tuesday. The people were super friendly and the place extraordinarily lovely.

Machias is located on the coast of Maine, about two hours northeast of Bangor and about one hour from New Brunswick, Canada.

In my one hour of exploration with my camera I managed to snap a few shots of the area. None of these photos show the true beauty nor the essence of the area, but I didn't have much time.

The lead photo for this post is of the tidal area where the river meets the ocean at Machias Bay.

This is the downtown. This is a building I saw in my rearview mirror while parked near the water. I love the flag on the pole.
Finally, this photo was taken while resting my camera on the wheel of my rental car while heading southwest toward Bangor on Tuesday night. The sky was pretty and I like the way the headlights illuminate Route 1.

On yet another note, last week while visiting my younger brother and his family in Fargo, we were caught in an evening storm and saw these beautiful scenes afterwards.

Of course, the sky was lovely, but so were the reflections on the wet pavement of a supermarket parking lot.

These power lines struck me as really graphic against the beautiful sky and I hope you enjoy the beauty in the simple lines of this image too.

I know it's been a while since we posted, and we'll do a better job of writing now that we have web access at the house.

Last night we spent some time with my Mom and found these old photos from my childhood. Tim and I enjoyed them so much we thought you might also like this peek into my youth.

Here I am with my younger brother Clint and two of our German Shepherd dog Cindy's mutt mix puppies.

One of my first loves as a young girl was horses, and this is the pony on which I learned to ride. Sunny was her name and she was a Shetland pony. This photo shows my older brother Jim and me on Sunny and was probably one of the only times we rode her with a saddle.

Tomorrow we celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary, and on Wednesday Tim flies to St. Louis for an interview.

We always love hearing from you and hope that you're enjoying September where you are.