NAGAAA World Series Day 1

Our day got off to a bit of a late start, which is always a good thing in softball. Rather than getting the 7:55am game like our poor roommate (Orlando from Tampa) we were fortunate to have games at 12:20 and 2:30 this afternoon. That allowed us to stay out a bit late last night and enjoy some adult beverages and socializing. I joined the Edge (the other Minneapolis C division team) at a great restaurant called Elsa's for dinner, as my team hates me and tries to avoid being seen with me in public. Somehow I convinced my teammates to meet me at the hotel bar later (probably because I promised to buy them beer) and we would up having a good time. Dan and I were amazing at darts and won by a lot. I won't divulge the final score as it's a bit embarassing for the losers (Jay and Jason) if everyone knows they lost by about 200 points.

On to softball: we had a good warm-up/practice which didn't really carry over to the first game. After falling behind 4-0 after one inning, we played Nashville Fury even the rest of the way but lost 7-3. Not many games will be won if we score 3 runs, so hitting will have to improve if we're to do well.

Game two was close (5-5) until we went ballistic and scored 9 runs in the 5th inning. Our defense held them to 3 runs over the next 2 innings and we won 14-8 to finish the day at 1-1 overall. Tomorrow we play at 1:15 against Philadelphia TBD.

We're off to the opening ceremonies in about 1.5 hours. I'm pretty sure there will be more adult beverages consumed and more stories to tell, although I doubt many of the stories will be suitable for this blog. I'll stick with the basics as that's safest for all involved.

Updates on other Minneapolis teams: really, who cares? If you're reading my blog you shouldn't care about them. :)

No photos from the day. I was hoping to take some shots of a few other team/players that I'm friends with, but was busy playing and our schedules didn't really mesh very well so I have nothing. Perhaps when bracket play begins I'll be able to get my camera out.

Off to get ready for the ceremonies.

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

One thing I love about my new apartment is the location: it's close enough to downtown I can walk there, it's near the Wedge so I'm in the middle of lots of stuff, and there aren't drug dealers and prostitutes prowling the streets and alleys all day/night. Now I just have random hippie people wandering the alleys, but those don't bother me. :)

I walked to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden (next to the Walker Art Center) today. I've been there before but hadn't paid much attention to it as I was only there for the mini-golf that time. It's an interesting place, although the roving gangs of schoolchildren this morning detracted a bit from the experience. I was mostly able to keep away from them and really enjoyed wandering around and taking my time to look at things.

The north end has a small garden/walkway area which was pretty cool. Not a lot of sculptures down there but very pretty nonetheless.

One of the sculptures slightly south of the garden area:

The famous/iconic spoon with cherry:

At the south end is a rectangle formed by marble topped benches, each with a different inscription. Some are a bit bizarre, but I laughed out loud at a bunch of 'em. They're so random that they catch you by surprise. I'm still laughing because they're just so random and kind of stupid - but that's what makes it so great.

I think these 2 are linked in a way.



This one is serious, timely and oh-so-true.

And this is one is just kind of random. Not much more I can say about it.

Since the Walker is only 10-15 minutes away on foot, I'm sure I'll get down there again on a routine basis. More photos are here.

Green Day concert

Not really a trip but definitely an adventure. Thanks to Bryan's friend who couldn't go, I got a free ticket to one of the best concerts ever.

After the four of us had dinner at Buca, we walked over to the Target Center and took our spots on the floor. The opening act was The Bravery and were actually pretty decent, with a lead singer who sounded like Robert Smith from the Cure. Their 30 minute set seemed much shorter than that.

After a 30 minute break to change out the stage and stuff, Green Day took the stage and went crazy. I don't even remember all the songs and the order, but they were awesome. One of the more political bands around, they've still retained their sense of humor (unlike Bono and U2). They pulled random fans onto stage to sing and play guitar and just generally enjoyed themselves up there. Even the obligatory covers they did ("Let's Go Crazy" by Prince, "Shout", "Stand By Me" and others) were fun and entertaining instead of distracting and indulgent. The show lasted about 2.5 hours, including a 40 minute encore, and I believe they could've played awhile longer without dragging things out.

I don't have photos - not much point in that as a concert is all about the music and the moment and a few random snapshots can't convey that spirit. If you ever get the chance to see Green Day live, go for it.

SW Minnesota road trip

Pipestone National Monument is (and has been) a sacred place to Native Americans for hundreds of years. Wonder how they feel about this sign prominently displayed less than a mile away?



Let me backtrack a bit: I made it to the prairies of southwest Minnesota finally. I love the wide open feel of the prairie with its never-ending skies.

Before I got there, I made a quick stop at Fort Ridgely State Park as it was on the way. The Minnesota Kite society was supposed to be flying some huge kites there - those plans seemed to have been cancelled due to high winds. A (Civil War?) re-enactment group from Sleepy Eye was on hand, camped out and doing cultural demonstrations and such. I was bored.

South of there, I stopped in at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site. As always, petroglyphs and other rock art interest me. This site has over 2000 petroglyphs, most of them very hard to see in broad daylight. When the sun is lower in the sky, it creates shadows making the outlines easier to spot. Of course, I was there in broad daylight so I struggled to see them. Even with a tour guide pointing them out, and in some instances tracing the outline with a stick, it was hard to see some of them. This is a bison petroglyph:


She was good, and very helpful and believable, so I took her at her word that the spot she was tracing really was a bison or thunderbird or whatever. The hike around the rest of the grounds was nice - the sun was out and it was a beautiful day with some nice fluffy clouds that cast some occasional shade.



Onward to Blue Mounds State Park, home of Minnesota's only bison herd (at least in a state park). It struck me as funny every time it was mentioned (and it was a rather frequent occurence) that this was the only state park in Minnesota with a resident bison herd. I think most people understand that a bison herd is a pretty unusual thing to have in a state park anywhere.

After setting up camp in a nice shady walk-in site, I took off on a 4 mile hike to try to spot some bison. I saw a tick (on my leg), some birds and a few bunnies, but the bison were safely out of sight. Nevertheless, it was a good hike, about 2 miles to the visitors center where I took a break in the shade. A nice woman warned me of some approaching storms. The skies went from this:


To this view of the visitors center about 15 minutes later:


To this about 5 minutes later:


Not even halfway back to the campground, it started to rain a bit, off and on. Not a big deal for me, but I hadn't put the rain fly on my tent so I ran back as best I could carrying a camera, camera bag and water bottle. It was a nice workout and the tent was mostly dry.

Other than some drunk people deciding to leave the campground at 2am, it was a nice quiet night. I declined to get up early to shoot sunrise and was thankful I slept in as the clouds and bison were non-existent. I did eventually spot some bison off in the distance - I had hoped for photos of bison babies frolicking on the prairie, and all I got was this.

Heading up to Pipestone National Monument, I stopped and took some photos of a few bison on a neighboring farm. At least they were somewhat cooperative.

Pipestone NM is (as I said above) a sacred place for Native Americans. It contains several quarries used to produce pipestone (surprise) which is carved into pipes (shocking!) and other ceremonial items as well as artwork. There's a nice trail to walk and see a few quarries as well as rock formations. The visitors center is actually more interesting than the outdoors as they have cultural demonstrations - people are working on pipestone, carving it into art or other things and available to answer any questions. I declined to ask how they felt about Jesus being Lord of Pipestone.

I left Pipestone and settled on Flandrau State Park for my Sunday night stay. After deciding I wanted to pay the extra $6 to stay in the modern campground with a shower building and water from the tap (as opposed to the rustic campground with no showers and a hand pump), a ranger came around and informed everyone one of the water mains had broken and they were shutting off the showers and drinking water. He *hoped* the toilets would continue to function until the could fix the system the next day. Yay for no showers!

I just sat around getting some sun and reading, then went into town for some food and water. Nothing exciting or eventful, just a relaxing evening doing nothing.

You can see more photos (3 separate albums) here.

Birding at Fort Snelling

It's been awhile. I intended to finish up the Ramsey/Hill house post but my personal life took a rather unseen turn and I never got back to edit that entry. Looking at it now, I've decided to leave it as is. There's much left unsaid and undone but I can't always edit the past, so it's time to move on and get back to living.

Today I went to Fort Snelling for a beginner's introduction to birding. I used to think of birds as being basically all alike - sure, they come in different sizes and colors, but basically a bird is a bird. The more time I've spent in the outdoors the more I realize how silly that sounds. I've decided to put a little more effort into watching them and learning about them so I have more of a clue.

It was a beautiful spring day - the trees are starting to leaf out, the grass is finally green, the sun is out and the birds are back for the summer. In other words, winter is just around the corner.

The park naturalist sat us down and explained some things (how to use binoculars and a field guide, how to spot birds and explain where they are to everyone else, what to listen and look for), and then we got outside. We stopped several times as she pointed out various birds before getting even 100 feet from the visitor center, which was a bit of an eye-opener for me. I've always seen birds, but this was the really the first time I deliberately saw birds, and there was quite the variety. Turkey vultures, mourning doves, cardinals, robins, great blue herons, mallards, wood ducks, chickadees ..... clearly a bird is not just a bird.

The highlight was finding a barred owl. The naturalist had seen this bird perched on a tree on the edge of a small clearing in mid-day for a couple days, so we set out to find it again. Alas, it was not where she had last seen it, but after giving herself 5-10 minutes to scan the immediate vicinity, she found it about 50 feet from it's last position. Owls are generally not seen in broad daylight so it was pretty cool, not to mention it was the first owl I've seen in the wild ever. I'm going to go back with my camera a time or two and see if it's still hanging out in that area - if I get a photo I'll come back and post it.

That's about it. An hour or so of meandering around, looking at the trees and sky on a perfect spring day - I could get used to this.

Ramsey and Hill house tours

The Alexander Ramsey and James J. Hill houses in St. Paul are former residences of men who had a great influence on early Minnesota. Alexander Ramsey was first appointed governor of the Minnesota territory and later elected governor of the state. James J. Hill built a massive business empire, with the Great Northern Railway at the center of everything.

A warm winter weekend on the North Shore

With a late winter storm dumping up to a foot of snow on northern Minnesota, I knew this was the last weekend for any sort of winter fun. I headed up to the North Shore to snowshoe and meander a bit. My first stop was Gooseberry Falls State Park, where I got some info on the wolf that had been seen wandering around the past few days (mornings before 9, either on the lake north of the river or along the highway). With that out of the way, I headed up to Split Rock Lighthouse State Park and meandered a bit.

The trails absolutely sucked up there, either slushy or icy depending on whether they were in the shade or full sunlight. Not that it mattered, I was being more of a photographer than snowshoer today. I drove to Tettegouche State Park and walked partway to Shovel Point, slipping and sliding as I went. The views near the arch rock (not sure if it has an official name) were cool.




That was about it for the day. I've never really found a great spot for sunset along the North Shore - seems like the clouds never really cooperate and this day was no exception.

Next morning, I got up early and went to Gooseberry for a chance to see the elusive wolf. The snowshoe trail was quite icy but doable, deer and seagulls were everywhere but unfortunately no wolf. I suppose some day I will see one but my camera will most likely be stashed away at that moment.

I did some more snowshoeing up at George Crosby Manitou State Park. This park is pretty primitive, no campground or visitor center, but some nice trails and very few visitors. No staff either, so the road in was plowed only to the park entrance, adding about a mile to my trek altogether. To be consistent, I didn't enjoy the trail very much - lots of forest views, little in the way of wide open scenery, and basically no wildlife. Some day I'll learn.

On my way home, I stopped and took some photos of the ice piled up on the shore of Lake Superior near Duluth.

The rest of 'em are here.