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Daylight Hours Diminishing: Summertime in Minnesota

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I think it was about a year-and-a-half ago that I decided to learn Celsius. The best way to do it is just turn your phone to Celsius and set your favorite weather site to Celsius. (I personally recommend using Weather Underground.) And just don’t use Fahrenheit at all. Don’t translate the Celsius numbers, because you just won’t learn it. Just dive right in to Celsius. One morning you’ll wake up and see that it’s 8 degrees outside, and your first reaction is, “Gosh, that’s cold!” But then you go outside and discover that it’s actually fine. A light jacket or a hoodie will do.

So, I turned to Celsius in the fall and got accustomed to what single digits in Celsius felt like, and they’re actually remarkably wonderful. Winter arrives, and even the negative numbers feel quite all right. I met my limit around -18 degrees Celsius, a temperature that I felt was a tad too much on the cold. Just out of curiosity, I cheated a bit and translated that number to Fahrenheit to discover that that number is more or less slightly under 0 degrees Fahrenheit.

As winter crystalized on, and as winter dripped away to spring, and spring blossomed to summer, I decided to play a game with myself. I continued learning Celsius without any reference to Fahrenheit. I long have told others that 70 degrees Fahrenheit is when things get a bit too warm for me, but I wasn’t sure if that was in my head. Nonetheless, I kept watching the Celsius numbers grow ever higher as spring continued its relentless march towards my least favorite season. I discovered my limit came at about 20 degrees Celsius, which happens to be 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

So there you have it. It’s not in my head. And to celebrate the summer solstice that just came and went and therefore the ever diminishing hours of daylight until the winter solstice, I’ve decided to write a top ten list of reasons why I dislike summertime in Minnesota. And do keep in mind that I’m only being slightly serious:

  1. Traffic on the Greenway: There’s something interminably irritating about all the traffic that builds up on the best way to get from one end of town to the other, biking on the Midtown Greenway. Now, I feel a little caught in a paradox complaining about this, because I wish more people would ride bikes and get out of their cars, but in the same token, it’s really frustrating when I have to wait to pass slower bikers because of oncoming traffic.
  2. Loud Motorcycles: They always come out in the summer. It never fails. Motorcyclists seem much too feeble to ride their loud contraptions in the winter (while I continue to ride my bike when it’s not too frigid), but once summer arrives, they have to start roaring around on their monstrosities. I can’t help but think that they think other people are reacting with, “Oh wow! I wanna ride around on a loud bike just like that!” but no one is thinking that, only that you’re being a disruptive asshole.
  3. Heat and Humidity: It always frustrated me when people would say, “Oh, I’d much rather it’d be really, really hot than really, really cold,” and I react with, “But, you can be absolutely naked, and it’s 25 degrees Celsius, and you’re still sweating and uncomfortable, whereas in the winter, you can just add layers and layers and you can always warm up.” Plus, nothing beats a nice cup of tea when you’re wrapped in a blanket, reading a book, wearing your favorite Christmas jumper, and it’s a cold dark night on the longest night with the fluffiest snow flakes accumulating on the ground as they form a heavy layer of white that shines crystals in the city light. Sadly, things are only going to get warmer as Minnesota’s climate becomes more like what Missouri’s is today.
  4. Mosquitos (and Insects in General): Granted, these annoyances start to appear in the spring and they hang about into a part of the autumn, but at least with the arrival of autumn you can rest assured that they’ll go away soon. No one likes these ridiculous creatures excepts birds and bats and so on, and no one likes smelling like insect spray, and they ruin perfectly wonderful evenings drinking wine on a restaurant patio when you have to go inside because they’re bothering you, and there’s a tendency to accidentally swallow them as you make your way around by bike. Plus it’s not just mosquitoes. You have to deal with some other really horrible creatures like dragonflies, wasps, locusts, craneflies, and grasshoppers.
  5. Hot Garbage: Garbage in general is really gross, but it’s only made worse when it’s been sitting outside in a plastic oven for a few days, baking a mixture of pizza grease, snotty tissues, and moldy food that emanates the most putrid smell ever, made only all the worse by the flies that congregate in this smorgasbord for their masses.
  6. Block Parties: Minneapolis has no end of block parties where, for example, entire stretches of Lyndale shut down to make way for whatever street festival, or, if you’re lucky enough, they might close down your block to make way for National Night Out where you have to quickly dodge your neighbors and turn out your lights to pretend you’re not home so you’re not forced to talk about boring things that don’t matter like hair cuts and shoes. Sure, the sense of community this builds is nice for those of us who are extroverted, but for us introverts, it’s an exhausting spot of bother, especially when all you’re trying to do is get home and Hennepin Avenue is all overpopulated with people and cars because Rock the Garden just finished.
  7. Tourists from the Suburbs: While the Twin Cities have lots of cool things for visitors to offer from theatre to music to art to sports to shopping to dining, the area never really makes lists for top vacation destinations. Our tourists tend to come from the suburbs where entire restaurants get filled with boring white Republicans talking about their real estate taxes or their dishwashers, and they all live in such uninterestingly named places like Hopkins or Shoreview or, my personal favorite for most boring suburb name, Blaine.
  8. Getting Into Hot Cars: Is there nothing more oppressive than this? Granted, my personal mode of transport is by car or bus or train, and the latter two are always wonderfully air conditioned as soon as I get on, but on those occasions where I do hitch a ride with someone whose car has been parked for awhile, climbing into that hot, metal contraption is never fun, especially when the AC doesn’t work.
  9. Everyone Loves It: I always have a hard time reacting to people who exclaim, “Isn’t it just gorgeous outside!” and I’m sitting there going, “Um, no not really.” With my friends I’m able to tell them this with the added qualifiers of, “I’d prefer raining and 12 degrees to 32 and sunny any day,” but when some stranger’s making smalltalk, I don’t want to get into all that, so I just pretend and say, “Oh, yes. It is quite nice outside.” I wish that meteorologists would also remember that when it’s “gorgeous” outside that there’s a small portion of us who don’t think so. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the next time we’re expecting grey skies and 8 degrees, the weather people would exclaim, “It’s going to be absolutely gorgeous the next few days!”
  10. You Can’t See Orion: My favorite constellation happens to be Orion, and you can’t see it in the summer. Whenever I look up at the summer sky, I always find myself missing the Greek hunter with his belt and arm outstretched as he aims with his bow, and that makes me sad. So bright and so visible in the winter months, and his stars are so vibrant and so blue! The constellation always had a bizarre calming effect on me, for whatever reason, and Orion always brings back wonderful memories of my oldest brother pointing out all the constellations when I was little, and I was looking up at the sky in total amazement, exclaiming to myself, “There is so much to this universe that I will never see!”

Just to be fair, however, here are three things I actually do like about summer:

  1. Flowers: I’ve always loved flowers, and I’ve always loved planting flowers and tending to them and watching them grow. Sadly, outside of the warmer months, we don’t get to adore lady slippers in the wild or admire begonias encircling people’s doorsteps or enjoy the fragrance of lilacs on the streets. Oh, and it’s pronounced LY-lacks not LY-locks. I can’t remember the first time I heard someone pronounce it LY-locks, but when I did, I was totally confused. (And I don’t care that Webster’s accepts both pronunciations. One’s right and one’s wrong, and no, don’t argue with me.)
  2. Camping and Campfires: For years and years and years, I thought I didn’t like camping. But three or four summers ago, I went with my dear friends Audry and Jeremiah to Wild River State Park to one of those fantastic hike-in sites where there’s no one around. It was so wonderful being outside for three days, reading, listening to birds, admiring the trees, cooking over a campfire. It’s then that I learned that camping isn’t just driving to a KOA site where there are families 20 feet from you, but it can also be finding somewhat secluded spaces where you’re the only people around for a good couple hundred yards or so. This is camping, I now know!
  3. CONvergence: There’s a wonderful, geeky convention that happens every summer called CONvergence. I went for the very first time last year, and it was absolutely wonderful! I dressed up as William Hartnell, attended some fun little panels, and listened to Marina Sirtis speak. This year I’m going as Tom Baker, and I can’t wait for next weekend to have a jolly old time once again! Maybe I’ll see you there! I’d say look for the one wearing the long scarf, but there might be several of us about…

Music Birds Make: Springtime in Minnesota

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Some weeks ago, I was explaining to my friend Amy my favorite birdcall. This particular bird usually sings the call in whole tones, but sometimes they sing it in semi tones and minor thirds as well. I tend to know the call in its whole tone form, though. In fact, I wasn’t aware of the other variances until I researched the call a bit more.

This call is one of the calls that belongs to the chickadee. Imagine, if you will, a bird singing E-D-D in a rhythm of long-short-long. (The short is barely perceptible.) Whether they sing those actual pitches is immaterial, but it’s not without reason I chose those specific ones as an example. Whenever I hear this call, I always hear the chickadees singing mi-re-re, in a way where do will never arrive. Just sing, “Three blind mice,” except since mice on the same tone as you did blind, and you get the idea of how much re just calls forth and announces do before it even arrives, and how unsettling it is to leave re hanging without a resolution to do.

(Of course, if we were singing in D-mode, we’d be imagining something else entirely, but for now let’s stick to C-mode.)

But the chickadee! How I love your music! How I adore your music! Your music announces spring in a kind of unending question that will never receive an answer except from other chickadees that will merely repeat the question, on and on and on, until forever, never resolving to a tonic, never providing us with that moment when the music comes definitively to an end.

For years and years, however, I spent my life reacting to this music in a kind of, “Oh! It’s that bird call I like!” kind of way, not really taking time to look up what bird made that music.

Until recently.

Which then led me to look up more and more birdcalls after I learned the chickadee’s, memorizing them, and quite remarkably, my morning bike ride became flooded with an added vibrancy, a vibrancy where not only did I get to listen to the wonderful music birds make, but I got to listen to them knowing the name of the bird that made the music and therefore also got to imagine the colorful patterns the birds might have on their feathers as they made the music.

The bold cardinal, for example, sings a melodious tune of several glissandos. The call I’m most familiar with starts with two glissandos ascending and then proceeds with five or so descending glissandos. It’s a much more energetic and bouncy call compared to the chickadee’s much more calming and relaxed nonchalance.

And on and on I went, learning more and more of all these wonderful sounds. And with learning all these songs came flooding memories, like when you smell baking cookies and suddenly you’re five years old and it’s Christmas. The blue jay’s somewhat harsh call, hawk-like, conjures memories of foggy mornings in the country, very early in the day.

Most surprising of all, was when I learned the call of the American robin. The robin always felt like a commoner’s bird. “Everyone can recognize a robin,” I’d always say to myself.  (And if you can’t, then you don’t get out too much.) For some reason, robins always felt like the peasants of birds, perhaps because it was these birds that I’d most commonly see bouncing up and down in grass scrounging around for worms. That’s the image I have in my head, these robins. For some reason, only robins do this. And it’s peasant-like. All other birds are in the trees, perched high above the robin, staring down at them, making fun of them. (Or so I imagine.)

But then I learned the glorious music robins make. Their music is marvelously calming and relaxed, but slightly more complicated than the calming and relaxed music of the chickadee. The robin sings a kind of tremolo, the pitches not as defined as the chickadee’s, but defined nonetheless. And this call (for whatever reason) reminds me of visiting my old grandfather at his home in St. Anthony, MN, where across the way from his house there was a wonderful slide, some swings, and monkey bars all painted blue and yellow. (I wonder if they’re still there.) And the times I had on that slide and those swings and those monkey bars, all the while inadvertently attentive to the music of the robin that, for all these years, I thought was the peasant of the birds.

But, a peasant no longer, the American robin. No living thing is a peasant. All are glorious and wonderful in their own right.

(Well, centipedes in my home might take some persuasion to get me to think so. And moths are dumb, too, and mosquitos are quite icky, but at least they’re food for birds and bats and so on. And I’ll probably never warm to spiders and snakes, but give me time. For now I’ll just lie to myself and say to myself that all are glorious and wonderful in their own right, which I suppose they actually are in the grand scheme of things.)

In the end, how vibrant the outdoors become when I open my ears to the music birds make. Biking along Cedar Lake, the birds are present but difficult to spot as I zoom by, but their music isn’t difficult to spot. Within a half hour, I’ll have biked by forests and lakes knowing that chickadees were nearby, along with blue jays, red-winged blackbirds, cardinals, orioles, and any number of other birds that I still have yet to learn their songs.

But most of all, I shall adore the robin, whose music conjures wonderful memories of visiting dear old Grandfather in St. Anthony, MN, on a cool, mild spring day.

Musicians’ fascination (well, anyone’s fasciation) with bird song is as old as time, and Olivier Messiaen will always come to mind as a famous example of someone who adored the music of birds.

As I finish up writing my current work, Cat Haikus, do watch out for some birds that might make an appearance.

Up North, Where Moments and Senses Delight

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No trip to Minnesota is complete without a visit to its northeast region, and I’ve always felt a special affinity for the region even though I feel at home in the Cities.

The state enjoys three biomes that all run roughly diagonally across the state from the northwest to the southeast.  The prairie grassland zone is the westernmost zone, its easternmost border a line from about the state’s northwest corner, all the way south to about the middle of the state’s southern border.  This part of the state is, frankly, boring, unless you’re into wide open spaces and like looking at tall grass and towns whose architecture mimics the flatness of the terrain.  The only towns I can think of that exist in this region are Moorhead and a town called Pipestone, I believe.

The next region situates itself immediately east of the humdrum prairies, essentially engulfing Interstate 94 and then Highway 52 in the deciduous zone (i.e characterized by mainly trees that lose their leaves in the winter).  Cities in this zone include Alexandria, St. Cloud, the Twin Cites, Rochester, and Winona.  If only because this is the region I grew up in (specifically St. Anna, a small town outside of Avon, a small town outside St. Cloud), this region is just kind of normal.  That is, when someone says “city park,” I imagine most people would imagine trees with leaves and not needles and then also would attach the word average to the description.  So this region, then, is just your average, normal area with trees that have leaves, a kind of suburbia of woods where the trees might be interesting, but only in a kind of cookie cutter kind of way, if you find inefficient residential design compelling.

But, my favorite zone that I just simply adore is the coniferous zone of the entire northeast part of the state.  These are no boring city parks but rather forests.  I imagine that when most people hear the word forest, they imagine dense thickets, tall evergreens, needles strewn about the ground, ferns, fallen logs slowly turning into soil, mushrooms of all shapes and sizes, birch trees defying the status quo with their enchanting pillars of light in the dark, shallow streams that every once in a while fall over ledges of rock into a magnificent and elegant display of mist, rainbows, foam, and gushing torrents of water.

This is where my friend Amy and I spent our weekend, 12-14 September, amongst all this, in a cabin.  There’s just something about this region, especially in the autumn, when the air is crisp, the scent of pine extra potent, leaves saturating from standard to brilliant.

Swinging BridgeOur first stop on our way to the cabin outside Finland, MN, was at Jay Cooke State Park, named after a major financier of the Union’s efforts during the Civil War and who developed a nearby power plant in the region, and the park boasts a swinging suspension bridge (and by “swinging” they mean the bridge barely mildly moves a bit when you walk on it) and a pioneer cemetery in addition to the usual hiking trails and things.  We only explored the immediate entrance, but that was enough to provide a prelude to things to come: fallen pine cones, rushing rapids and falls, desire paths through woods, skipping rocks, and testing temperatures of waters.

Lake SuperiorDuluth is only a small jaunt farther north from Jay Cooke, and we sadly arrived too early for the breweries to be open.  Bent Paddle’s doors seemed solidly shut, but Lake Superior (located in one of those ridiculously boring 1-level buildings shaped like a rectangle and made of grey bricks and grey doors and grey windows labeled with signs in sans serif of grey letters where you would expect an office where people sit around answering grey phones about grey questions like how much grey paint it takes to paint one of those ridiculous boring 1-level buildings shaped like a rectangle–in other words, the least likely place to find a brewery where you expect golden and red bricks, tall windows, and creaky hardwood floors) was open, but only to fill growlers.  What the building Lake Superior locates itself in lacks in any aesthetic awareness more than makes up for in the quality of its beer.  And there’s nothing quite like filling a growler at a brewery, where you can admire the artwork of all their various ales and beers and see how they decorate using burlap sacks with colorful designs imprinted on them.

After this, it was high time for lunch.  Sadly, the Duluth Grill had a line out the door as if it was lunchtime after the various cults in Lake Wobegon finished their Sunday ritual (I think it’s called “church”), but it was a Friday, which made the line out the door all the more surprising.  Still, I was happy to see the place getting their full due’s attention.

SunshineSo, we Yelped to find something else local in town.  I know that there’s Grandma’s, but everyone’s been there, and while I highly recommend a visit, be aware that it’ll be very touristy, so you may not get to experience the heart of Duluth’s people.  Yelp, however, suggested a quaint little place called Sunshine Cafe.  But, while the servers were very warm and welcoming and while you get to experience some of Duluth’s true people (namely a crazy old man talking about how times are tough and who wants to buy certain businesses and turn them into havens of healthy hangouts for youth, not to suggest that all Duluth’s true poeple are crazy old men) the food left you thinking, “Um… I’m pretty sure I can make this food much better without much fuss, using actual potatoes that you have to actually skin and to actually cut and to actually boil and to actually mash.”

Enger TowerThe next stop on our visit through Duluth was the Enger Tower, a 5-story stone sentinel that overlooks Duluth and the St. Louis Bay, 531 feet above the surface of Lake Superior.  You can glimpse some really fine views of the surroundings below from various vantages, including the famous lift bridge, Canal Park, and that bizarre 5 mile long sandbar (the longest in the world) called Park Point where people actually live.

By this point, it’s getting relatively late (well, 4:00 or so I believe, but we’ve still got an awful lot of driving to do), so we continue on northward along the stunningly beautiful North Shore Scenic Drive (confusingly dubbed North Shore All-American Scenic Drive by some, for some reason), which is basically a descriptive way of saying, “Drive on Old Hwy 61 then follow the real Hwy 61 after you go through a town called Two Harbors in order to see Lake Superior as you drive along with a smattering of little towns and sleepy shops.” Seriously, though, it’s a wonderful drive, and I highly recommend this route over anything else along the shore’s edge, unless you’ve got to be somewhere fast.

Russ KendallOne such sleepy shop that you can see along Old Hwy 61 in Knife River (yes, Knife River, the name of a town, and a town named after a river called, er, Knife River, a direct translation from the Ojibwe Mokomani Zibi, probably so-called because of sharp stones at the mouth of the river… I think the Ojibwe sounds better than the English, but whatever) is a fish shop called Russ Kendall’s Smokehouse.  (Well, I call it a fish shop, because that’s one of their main things to buy, but you can also buy beef jerky there, too, and other things.)  But, seriously… the best brown sugar cured smoked salmon and trout I think I’ve ever had!  Just buy a pound or two, get some expensive crackers, slice it up, and enjoy a most delightful snack!  It seems just the perfect thing to eat when you’re next to the majestic Superior amongst tamarack and birch.  We may not have fresh lobster here in Minnesota, but we’ve got some of the best fresh salmon!

Also, if you haven’t heard, this gem of the North Shore suffered a devastating fire earlier this year in May.  Fortunately they’ve re-opened, but I urge you to make a visit here to support their business.  It’s terribly sad, naturally, but I’m so happy that no one was harmed and that they have such a warm community around them and eager tourists passing by who are supporting them during some tough times.

Green DoorWe still had some ways to go, however, to our cabin in outside Finland.  A brief 40 miles after the fish shop, we came across a liquor store call Green Door, situated in Beaver Bay.  It was a modest affair, but one of those modest affairs where the liquor store was attached to and accessible by way of a bar, the clerk hovering back and forth between bar counter and liquor counter through a small doorway.  Modest though it may be, their selection of beers did not disappoint, and we were left having to make tough decisions rather than hold our noses and choose between stuff that’s not beer at all, by our definitions (i.e. Budweiser, Coors, and the like).  Actually, we probably wouldn’t have held our noses, but rather left and found something else.  Fortunately, if you find yourself quite far northeast and away from Duluth, there’s always Green Door in Beaver Bay, which will surely hopefully have something for everyone.

CabinAfter a quick trip to a grocery store curiously called Zups located in Silver Bay, we at last made our way to our home for the weekend.  This adorable little cabin situates itself amongst pines trees that are situated amongst sumac (and pronounce it the proper way, please: “schumak) that are situated amongst ferns that are situated amongst tall grasses that are situated amongst fallen needles and twigs that are situated above the heartiest, blackest soil, all next to a quaint little stream called the Baptism River.  And, there’s a sauna, too, heated by a wood burning stove.

Seriously, though: this is perfect.  It’s made all the more perfect when you slice up an onion, chop up some carrots, halve some mushrooms, peal some potatoes, cut up a chicken, create a broth of some kind of meat and red wine and whatever spices, do some simmering for a bit, and eat what my friend Amy calls, “Chicken Dinner,” a fantastic concoction of her own sure to delight the senses, best enjoyed when autumn is around the corner, temperatures hovering in the mid teens, with an IPA (or two or three).

But not too many IPAs.  For the next morning, let’s just say I felt a bit hungover from a bit too much wine and beer.  These things happen to people, you know.  And they sometimes happen when least expected, unfortunately, and it’s most unwelcome when they happen when on vacation Up North when leaves tell you in their own way that autumn is just around the corner.  On the other hand, however, they can be miraculously cured by some good old fashioned Finnish ways.

Seriously, though: this is perhaps even more perfect.  Heat up the sauna to somewhere about the range of the upper 30s, have a bucket of water ready to create steam over heated rocks, sweat things out for a good 30 or 40 minutes, dunk yourself into a river that can’t be much above zero, repeat.  And it’s best to do this with all your clothes off.

Headache gone.  Just like that.

(Well, the lying down in the cool breeze for two hours, a cup of coffee, and some Ibuprofen probably made a small dent in persuading the headache to leave, too…)

BUT… the dunk in the cold, cold river seemed to make the headache vanish completely and instantly, as if by opening a door that a headache can’t resist going through.  Fantastic, really, to be sure!

Incidentally, the Baptism River is the only place on the earth where you can un-baptize yourself.  This is especially important for fallen away Catholics like Amy and me who want to be excommunicated from the church, but find un-baptizing the next best thing.  This really is the only location on the earth where you can do this: the Baptism River outside Finland, MN.

(Am I joking?  I don’t know.)

So, our weekend was generally very much like this: admiring the cool breeze through the trees, enjoying salmon and trout on crackers, sweating out horribleness in a sauna and washing it off in a river where you can be un-baptized, and venturing out to more state parks.

CrosbyAnd the state park in question is George H. Crosby Manitou State Park.  Now, I’ve been to quite a few state parks in my time (and I have quite a few more to visit), but Crosby State Park is a real gem.  We approached the park from Country Road 7, which is a gravel road, and driving on gravel roads always reminds me of growing up outside St. Anna, because for many years that’s what our “street” was until it was paved: a gravel road.  Gravel roads also remind me of traveling to horse shows where I would ride upon my father’s horses while he plowed the field with a single blade.  And they also remind me of being away from something altogether: away in a way where there are fewer people per whatever measurement.

And Crosby State Park provides that.  These are some of the best hiking trails ever, and we happened only upon two groups of people total in our 2 hour woods trek.  These trails also aren’t for the amateurs, either, as there is much hiking up and down steepish hills over unforgiving rocks, through trails that look more like desire paths than proper trails, and in order to admire some of the more astounding sites, you have to delicately climb up and over semi-walls of boulders and smaller big rocks.  The Middle Trail (yes, that’s its proper name, the Middle Trail) takes you to a quite majestic cascades where the Manitou river plummets over jagged rocks in a display of mesmeric brilliance.  In order to really appreciate the full beauty of the cascades up close, you have to be comfortable jumping up and down some somewhat tricky spots between those semi-walls of boulders and smaller big rocks.  But, it’s terribly worth it.

Palisade HeadBut, forget semi-walls of boulders and smaller big rocks when you can visit Palisade Head, a proper wall of solid rock (well, semi-solid as you have to watch your step so you don’t fall into mini crevasses in the ground) that leaves those of us like myself with a weak grasp on approaching with confidence and solid knees sheer drops of quite a few feet, where you can fear for the lives of crazies who like to actually CLIMB ON THESE RIDICULOUS WALLS with nothing saving them except a harness secured to their body attached to a rope that they hope doesn’t lose its grip on whatever its attached itself to.

But, it’s fine.  Everything’s fine.  Because I’m not climbing on these ridiculous walls.  I’ll let others do that for me.  The fruits of the endeavors of these young men and women who were climbing Palisade Head showed in their arm and leg muscles muscles and the generally firm state of their bodies that Amy and I admired without allowing ourselves to drool hopelessly.

Apple PieOn our way back to the Twin Cities, we managed to find ourselves having to control our salivary reflexes once again when we finally had our chance to enjoy a late lunch, even though this time it actually was Sunday where you would expect ritual goers to be delighting in traditional after-idolization brunch.  I decided to try the Asian steak bowl, and it was fantastic!  They’ve also got some wonderful drinks, so I tried the beet lemonade, essentially normal lemonade with a couple tablespoons of beet juice floating atop that you stir around so that your lemonade turns a kind of vibrant purple-red and instead now has that wonderful rooty flavor of beets mixed in with the refreshing zest of lemon and tantalizing overabundance of sugar.  Again, do visit Duluth Grill if you have a chance and you’d like to stay away from tourists in Canal Park (as fun as that can be too).

Trips to the North Shore (or Up North in general) are a kind of staple for certain Minnesotans who live in the Twin Cities who require the hustle and bustle of many people, the myriad options for theatre, music, art, and dance, and just the general nicety of having so many amenities available where you can easily cure boredom.

Other trips are also quite welcome, too, especially if your curiosity’s appetite frequently requires much grander ventures to even more foreign lands to satiate its needs, as in just a few short hours I will be on a plane headed towards London, where I shall be enjoying the fantastic life and times of a wonderful people and a wonderful country.  I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post as I’m there, but I do intend to post when I return.

But, in the meantime, if London and the UK countryside isn’t quite your style or you need a brief weekend jaunt to get away from it all, make a trip Up North.  And perhaps you’ll find some hidden marvelousness in the form of a brilliant cascade of rushing rapids over jagged, knife-like rocks tucked away behind semi-walls of boulders and smaller big rocks.