X-C skiing and winter camping

I picked up my ski rentals from REI and went over to Fort Snelling on Saturday. This would be my first time cross-country skiing. I've downhilled but it's been over 10 years since the last time I've had skinny boards on my feet. I was determined to stay upright the whole time, something which I never did in my previous career as a downhill skier. Unfortunately, I fell about 5 minutes into this new career, mainly because I thought I was doing so well I could just look around and not think about what I was doing.

But after that it was all good. Well, mostly all good. I skied about 8K at Fort Snelling, twice around the 2K loop on Picnic Island and then a 4K loop of sorts around Pike Island. There were a bunch of deer on Pike as usual. The skiing was relatively flat and easy and perfect for someone who doesn't know what he's doing. I don't think I looked any worse than some of the other people I saw. Of course, they were probably using my form to gauge how they were doing and undoubtedly felt good about themselves.

My clothing worked well - running tights under my nylon hiking pants, and a long sleeve shirt covered with a short sleeve shirt and a long sleeved fleece. The wind didn't cut through like I had feared and I was perfectly warm once I got moving. The new baclava and gloves were great too.

I drove to Wild River State Park on Sunday to camp overnight and ski some more. Wild River has 35 miles of X-C trails and supposedly some trumpeter swans that hang out on open water of the St. Croix River in winter. While paying for my campsite, a woman inquired about the best place to see otters, and from the ranger's response I deduced there must either be otters in the park or he was humoring her. Either way, I planned to look for 'em.

I also learned the shower building was still open - nice to know, even though I hadn't brought anything for a shower. At least I would have access to a warm bathroom close to my campsite. I chose a campsite which had recently been home to a partial snow shelter, so the snow was fairly well packed and it was easy to walk around. That was nice for moving around but not so nice for setting my stakes and anchors in the snow - they really need 6 inches or more of decent snow and I had maybe 2 inches, so I wound up shovelling snow over them and then waiting while it set up.

Campsite prior to setting up the tent



It took over an hour to get the tent up and I wound up only having about 1.5 hours of skiing on Sunday. My clothing worked out well again, even though I forget my running tights at home. I subbed in my fleece pants for the tights and was fine. Got to try out my goggles in the wind and they worked well, although they probably look like major overkill for X-C skiing. I didn't care.

Snow covered prairie along the trail



Back at the campsite I made some dinner and put all my gear in the tent while it was slowly getting dark. The clouds had cleared up after sunset and the stars were out, temps were still decent and all was well. I made a fire and read a book until about 8:30 or so, then got ready for bed. Temps were probably still close to 20 so it was still comfortable, although my toes were a bit cold as usual. Once in my sleeping bag, I read some more and tried to warm up my feet - they were cold for a few hours and finally warmed up after I fell asleep.

Around 3 am I woke up and remembered why I don't really like winter camping - aside from the long nights, extra time and effort to do almost anything, I really hate the way my breath condenses on my sleeping bag overnight. It's kind of disgusting to wake up and have this wet fabric right by my face.

At least it only got down to about 10 degrees or so - it wasn't too difficult to get up in the morning and get things started. I went over to the bathroom and let my extra clothes warm up, then dressed and got some warm water to boil for my breakfast. Once I got my fuel warm enough to light, it didn't take long before I was eating and then getting ready to go skiing again.

I skied down to the river and followed it for about 0.5 miles. No otters, but I did see 1 trumpeter swan. And I gave up on the one big uphill I had and just walked it up. Other than 3 fingertips being painfully cold at the start, the skiing went well. I opted out of the longer loop that continued along the river as I knew I didn't have enough food to make it without crashing on my way back to the campsite. I'll most likely go back this winter and take some extra food so I don't have to cut things short.

Frozen St. Croix River


Swan on the opposite side of the river



While skiing, I thought about what to do for my March vacation and mostly decided I wasn't all that interested in what I had planned to do: namely, drive to Voyageurs National Park and snowshoe for 3-4 days while winter camping. I discovered I like skiing more than snowshoeing, and camping just takes so much more effort in the winter. I'm leaning towards going up to the Gunflint Trail to ski during the day and stay in a cabin at night. I'll do some more research and figure out where I want to go and what I want to do for lodging.

Anyway, back to this weekend: once back at my campsite, I tore things down and packed up the Jeep. I briefly thought about getting a sandwich outside the park and and going back to hike the river trail but decided I'd rather just head home. I'll save that for another weekend when I'm a little more prepared and ready to spend most of the day out on the trail.

Pics from the Wild River are here, nothing from Fort Snelling this time.

Bloomington NWR

I spent a couple hours walking around at the wildlife refuge in Bloomington today. Mostly I just wanted to get out of the house, get some exercise and test out my brand new fleece pants to see if they'll be warm enough for snowshoeing and winter camping. I'm happy to report they are quite warm, maybe too warm if I'm going to be exerting myself very much.

I saw some woodpeckers, hawks and bald eagles. The eagles hang out near the river because it's reliably open water in winter. I didn't get any decent shots of the bigger birds but I got a relatively good shot of a woodpecker.


I only saw one other person out there, and that was as I was leaving. Sunset was not really this dramatic but it makes for a good picture.

More Fort Snelling

SPAM

On our way back from visiting family in Kansas City, we took a short detour and visited the Spam Museum in Austin, MN. It was amazing - we even saw the Minnesota Wild's All-Star goalie (Niklas Backstrom) there. I managed to get this shot of him walking up to the musuem.



Here's us with Sponge Bob and the SPAM can's illegitimate love child.



And one seriously angry pig:



The display at the entrance has thousands of cans of SPAM. I don't remember how many, but it's enough to clog your arteries just by looking at it.



It was a pretty cool museum with a lot of historical exhibits and some games and stuff. Best part was the free samples of Bacon Spam, which convinced us to buy a couple cans for later. And we bought some Spam clothes too. Yay for Spam!

Some more photos are here.

Fort Snelling State Park

Fort Snelling State Park is a short drive away, near the airport and the National Wildlife Refuge in Bloomington. I've been there before and wandered around Pike Island, but today I wanted to walk up to the historic fort and see what that's like. I stopped at the state park visitor center first to figure out which trail went up to the fort.



There were some birds and squirrels dueling at the bird feeders by the visitor center, but my photos were less than spectacular. I'm going to go back and get some better ones some day. On my way to the fort, I was behind a couple of snowshoers. We've had some snow recently so conditions were good for that.



Conditions were also good for me to ignore the obvious trail leading up to the fort in favor of the other trail which simply led me around and beneath the fort without ever catching more than a brief glimpse of the walls. I plodded on, thinking the trail would circle around and go uphill any minute now until I finally caught a clue and turned back. Once back at the trail intersection, a 2 minute walk up the hill got me to the fort. Nice way to waste an hour or so - at least I got some exercise.

Up top the wind and cold combined to make things fairly miserable. I walked around for a little bit and took some photos, then headed back down to the state park. (The fort is actually a state historical site, separate from the state park but directly adjacent to it. I would later learn the fort is closed in the winter so you can only see the outside now anyway.)






I did drive over to the deserted parking lot at the fort entrance but it was getting late so I didn't do anything over there. I'll pick a warmer day with less wind and go walk around some more yet this winter.

You can see a few more photos here.

North Shore to Grand Portage

Every year on November 10, there is a memorial service at the Split Rock Lighthouse commemorating the 29 men who died when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in a massive storm on Lake Superior. After the memorial service, the beacon is lit and the lighthouse is open for a couple of hours. Since I wanted to see the lighthouse in action and hopefully get some photos, I took a long weekend and drove up and down the North Shore, ending with a sunset view of the lighthouse on Monday the 10th.

I had never made it past the turnoff to Ely on Hwy 61, so most of my trip was uncharted territory. I planned to stop at several of the state parks before getting to Grand Portage. That undertaking proved a bit easier than anticipated - Saturday was the opening of the deer hunting season, and most of the state park lands were temporarily closed leaving me with few hiking options. I did make brief stops at Temperance River and Cascade River and came away with some waterfall photos. I must admit, I wasn't blown away by either park although I'm sure they are both much nicer when fully open and with some fall color on the trees. The cold temps and occasional snow flurry didn't help much.

Continuing on, I made it to Grand Portage State Park before sunset and managed to get some shots of the state highest waterfall, the appropriately-named High Falls. The state park is on the Grand Portage Indian Reservation and is leased to the state by the Bureau of Indian Affairs - the only state park not owned by the state of Minnesota. It is also on the U.S./Canada border with the Pigeon River Provincial Park just across the way. I did not cross the border but did say 'aboot' and other funny Canadian words every time I could.

I wanted to hike Mt. Rose before it got dark, so I headed down to the village of Grand Portage. Mt. Rose is part of Grand Portage National Monument. I made it to the summit just before sunset and had barely enough time for a couple shots of Grand Portage Bay with the stockade in the foreground. I made my way down in the growing darkness and drove over to the Grand Portage Lodge/Casino where I was staying for the weekend. There is little to do after dark except gamble - instead of that I went up the road to the gas station and bought some food, then went back to my room to figure out what I wanted to do on Sunday.

An overcast sky in the morning meant one thing: I would go back to sleep for another hour or so instead of getting up for an attempt at sunrise photography. After a nice nap, I headed back to the state park and hiked up to Middle Falls. The falls were decent but I noticed with some chagrin I could've driven to them from the Canadian side and skipped the rather dull hike.


On the way back out I stopped at High Falls to attempt more photos and was driven away by the incessant mist covering everything in ice. I guarded my camera as best I could and came away with a couple shots, more interesting as comparison shots to the previous day than anything else.


I made a semi-pathetic attempt to drive to Partridge Falls. It's located at the end of a 5 mile long 2-track road, and I gave up on that idea after maybe 100 feet. It had taken probably 15-20 minutes of driving to get to there (I saw a fox on the way!) but I wasn't up for crawling along the narrow, crappy road just to see another waterfall. Perhaps in better weather and in a better season I'll try it.

From there it was back to Grand Portage National Monument where I wandered around the outside of the stockade and tried to imagine what it was like when the voyageurs were still around. I'd really like to get up there for the Rendezvous in August if I can. I also walked up the Grand Portage trail for a little ways - another thing I'd like to do next summer. It would be really cool to backpack to Fort Charlotte and spend a night there.

Another night of excitement in the village gave way to morning and sunshine. Finally. I made a quick run up to the state park and shot a few photos of High Falls (again), then stopped off at a viewpoint on Hwy 61 and took some photos of the Suzie Islands with Isle Royale way off in the distance. Yet another place I'd like to get to in the near future. After checking out, I went back to the national monument and wandered through the visitor center. It's only open Monday through Friday in the off-season.

This is from the same spot as the first photo:


And then I was off, headed for the lighthouse. I stopped off at a State Natural Area (Sugarloaf Cove) south of Schroeder and walked around a bit. There's a short interpretive trail which is interesting, although probably more so had I consulted the trail guide. Beyond that I also stopped at Tettegouche State Park and hiked part way to Shovel Point, stopping when I was near the little arch on Lake Superior.


Time was on my mind so I got moving. I pulled into Split Rock with my plan already in place. I would hike up to the campsite Terp and I stayed at and wait for sunset, then take some photos and get out of there. My lord there were a lot of people there. I passed about a dozen photographers at one spot, all in a line waiting for the lighting. It seemed kind of silly and boring for all of them to shoot basically the same shot, but nevertheless they did. I wound up sharing my space with 3 other photographers, although I did make a point of staying a little ways from them. I also made a point of photographing other stuff while waiting, which seemed like a better way to pass the time than just standing there staring at the lighthouse.


Once the moment was finally upon us, I realized it really wasn't all that exciting. Kind of like waiting and waiting for the sunset, passing up chances to do other things and then being disappointed when the sunset is a washout. But I dutifully took some shots, then took some more of the full moon over the lake before walking back to the Jeep and heading home. I did learn one thing though - shoot lighthouses when it's still somewhat light out, otherwise the long exposures necessary to get a shot make the light itself a big blur. Doubt I'll use that lesson again at Split Rock, but it may come in handy for something else.

More photos from the weekend are here - 2 albums, one for the Grand Portage area and one for everything else.

Murals on Nicollet

The Walldogs on Nicollet group came together this summer and painted eight murals on Nicollet Avenue. We saw them working on the project and I've noticed a few of the finished murals since then. Today I decided to get out and take some photos while the murals are still relatively fresh and clean. The weather was perfect so that helped motivate me to do this now before the cold and snow gets here.

The first mural is about 3 blocks from our house - I walked over, then continued on south along Nicollet to the last one about 14 blocks down. My wide angle lens allowed me to (mostly) stay out of traffic while I was photographing. I was able to get an unobstructed shot of most of them. Notable exceptions: Salvation Army mural was partially blocked by cars in the parking lot, the TNT mural had a lovely foreground consisting of a picnic table, shopping cart and grill, and the mural at 3537 Lyndale was almost completely gone. Either it had never been completed or it was painted over at a later date - possibly to cover graffiti? In either case, there was just a small postcard mural on one corner with the rest of the side of the building outlined and primed but otherwise blank.

My favorite murals are these:



All my photos are here. The last three are not part of the Walldogs project, just random photos I took on Nicollet today. If you want to see what the mural at 3537 looked like, you can go to their website and search around 'til you find it.