Category: nature

Summer Day

Today was a wonderfully busy day. I went out with the girls for our usual Saturday-morning coffeeshop breakfast, which we cut short so that we could head down to the Rice County fair, where we looked at a lot of animals and had delicious milkshakes. After the girls’ naps, they and I went to the city pool, which was ridiculously fun and capped by both girls leaping uncaught into the pool – a first for them both, I think. After dinner, Julia was tuckered out from all that activity, but somehow Vivi caught a second (or fifth) wind, and so she and I went out for a short bike ride and visit to the playground. I was barely dragging myself around, but I did manage to take good shots of the amazing clouds in the distance
Summer Sky

and of the beautifully linear division between fields of corn and soybeans
Summer Fields

F-Ride-Day

Without really realizing it, I’ve created a habit of going for long rides on Friday afternoons. It’s not a bad way to spend a few hours, especially if work has been squared away, and it’s sure a good way to kick off the weekend.

This Friday, I ventured south and west of town, toward Shieldsville, a little town on one of the several lakes down that way. It was a great ride. I saw quite a few things that I didn’t or couldn’t photograph:

  • three motorcycles carrying burly dudes up front and women in bikini tops in back (is this a thing now?),
  • hundreds of cows and scores of horses,
  • the highest heart rate I’ve seen in years, at the top of a nasty climb near the end of the route,
  • hypnotically linear fields of corn and soybeans,
  • a rather stout farmer who, when I encountered him a second time on the road a few hundred yards from where I’d met him earlier (but after an hour and many miles of riding), yelled, “You didn’t get very far!”
  • a huge auto junkyard hidden out in the middle of nowhere,
  • glimpses of four or five sizable lakes, all just about a half-mile from the roads,
  • birds, butterflies, and dragonflies that (stupidly?) flew directly down the road away from me, so that I caught up to them over and over, forcing them to flee and flee,
  • the immense deliciousness of a strawberry-flavored slush drink at a convenience store near my turnaround point.

I also saw some things that I could and did photograph:

Turkeys both domestic and wild (just at the edge of the brush, to the left of the evergreen):
July 16 Ride - 1

A stately old red-brick silo:
July 16 Ride - 3

A familiar street name, but no #8 bus:
July 16 Ride - 2

Many odd little triangular patches of grass at various T intersections.
July 16 Ride - 4

Quite a few sections of Rice County pavé: rumble strips along on quiet rural roads (note the strip on the white line: that’ll wake you up if your front tire wanders!).
July 16 Ride - 5

A lof of gravel beneath me (and increasingly on me) and skies like this above me:
July 16 Ride - 6

Black River Harbor

Maybe the recent trip to Iowa has activated my travel jones, but I’m dying to get up to the U.P., even though such a trip is pretty much impossible this summer. I particularly want to see the great New Deal-era suspension bridge over the Black River, north of Ironwood at the far western tip of the Yoop.

If I’m recalling things correctly, the bridge connects a small campground to a beach along Lake Superior – one of the few sand beaches on the lake. I distinctly remember the thrill of walking over this bridge: the gaps between the planks, the shudder as everyone stepped on it, the view of the water below…
Bridge At Black River Harbor
“Bridge At Black River Harbor,” by Siskokid via Flickr

Andy Goldsworthy, “Prairie Cairn”

Goldsworthy, "Prairie Cairn" (top)
Goldsworthy, "Prairie Cairn" (top)
Goldsworthy, "Prairie Cairn"
Goldsworthy, "Prairie Cairn"

I was really, really taken by “Prairie Cairn” sculpture at Grinnell’s natural reserve. It’s a gorgeous piece of art, for one thing, but it’s also perfectly suited to its setting – even though there’s nothing shaped quite like it in the reserve itself. Grinnell’s art gallery has a nice page on the sculpture, and Goldsworthy has a big write-up in Wikipedia. A couple more of my pictures of the cairn:

Grinnell Scenery

I saw lots of great stuff in or near Grinnell today, both during an excellent tour of the Conard Environmental Research Area, Grinnell’s natural preserve, and afterwards, around campus.

Oak savannah on the south side of Conard.
Conard Oak Savannah

Ants on the underside of an oak leaf, harvesting sugar-rich fluids secreted by the tiny aphids which the ants “farm” and which gorge on the leaf veins.
Ants Farming Aphids

The Environmental Education Center building in the middle of Grinnell’s Conard Environmental Research Area, with the “Prairie Cairn” by Andy Goldsworthy in the foreground.
Conard Lab and Prairie Cairn

The summer-evening sky above the Rathje dorm, at the northeast corner of campus.
Dorm Sky

The sunset the trees around MacEachron Field on the north side of campus.
Grinnell Sunset

Muddy Gravel Ride

Rather than heading south and east of town for today’s ride, I rode north and west over some wonderfully muddy gravel roads. As it turned out, my die occupied most of a ninety-minute interlude between downpours. Among other things, I saw scores of “red admiral” butterflies (a half-dozen hit me in the face!); a raccoon, oddly wandering around at 2:30 in the afternoon; and some pretty impressive thunderclouds gathering to the west. It was a great last ride for a while – tomorrow I head out of town for a conference in Iowa, where I hear the riding’s great but where I’ll have neither time nor a bike.

Campout!

The girls wanted to camp out on Friday night, so we did! It went pretty well: we actually did sleep out in the tent. Nobody freaked out at nighttime sounds, though we did have a spot of bother when the sprinklers came on. Poor Vivi got soaked, but after some clothing improvisation, she snuggled into my sleeping bag and went back to sleep! Next time, we’re going to try camping away from home – hot dogs! a fire! s’mores! Camping Has Begun

I Heart Sufferfests

With the weather promising to be decent and my body hankering for a tough workout, I decided to do a long ride today, one based on this route. The weather actually varied from cool overcast to light rain to cloudless sunshine, but the ride would have taken a long time in any conditions, and it sure did. I have never felt more trashed after a workout or race. Over the last half hour the only distractions from my screaming back were the expectation of cold Coke at home and the cramps in my forearms.

But the ride was also felt really good: fun to do and satisfying to have done. Training is weird like that. I hope I can go at least this far again a couple more times this summer and fall. A few pictures to illustrate the ordeal fun.

This shot’s from late in the ride, but the view is perfectly typical. It’s wonderful, wonderful riding.
Gravel Grinding

Fairly early on, I found this gorgeous ruin – probably of a mill – south of Cannon Falls.
Mill Ruins

I also saw a beautiful old headless brick silo. The farmstead was gone.
Headless Brick Silo

I loved this sign, versions of which I saw several times on the twisty, rolling country roads. It made me think, somehow, of zombies.
Deaf Cycle Past

Riding through farm country, it was no surprise that I saw lots of livestock, like these very sleek cows:
Horse Country

About halfway through the ride, I hit this climb, which was the toughest “ascent” of the route – though not because it was either long or steep. I was just tired and needed some food and water. The fuzzy black zones in the corners were caused by my camera lens failing to open all the way, but the blurry half-view pretty much suggests how I felt.
Uphill Struggle

I looked like this when I finally took that much-needed break:
Halfway Through

My rig, which I realized needs a good name, also enjoyed the rest. I have to remember not to lay it down on the derailleur side. Something chainy/cranky rattled all the way home.
At Rest

Not long after my break, just after I passed through the tiny town of Sogn, I found a stretch of road through these beautiful rock walls. After this picturesqueness, I pretty much stopped taking photos because I was back in the pain zone and because the remainder of the ride was in the wide-open country, where the sun was unrelenting and the wind was pretty tough, too.
Rockside Rocks

I looked like this after all that cycling. Not pictured is the giant bowl of ice cream I’m going to eat now.
Completely Done

You-Picked

Facing an early bumper crop of strawberries, our CSA farm put them on “u-pick,” meaning we could go and pick as many as we wanted. We duly spent an hour and a half there this morning, picking at least six quarts of strawberries. We would have had more, but some members of the harvesting party operated on a “two for me, one for us” basis:

Strawberry Muncher - 1

At least she acted cute after getting caught!
Strawberry Muncher - 2

Welcome to the Rumble

As impressive as the sky can be on a breezy summer day, with towering clouds that – as my boss said the other day – look like something out of a Netherlandish painting, a prairie storm is even more impressive.

Around dinnertime today, we started following radio and TV coverage of the huge storms blowing north out of Iowa.* When the anchors on Minnesota Public Radio (motto: “We really are as calm as we sound, unless we want your money”) start sounding agitated about the weather, it might be time to start paying attention, even for a weather agnostic like me.

Sure enough, things went sideways fast – and not just the rain. The sky went purple-black, the wind started whipping our backyard trees in tight little circles, rain came and went, lightning, thunder. Name a summer weather condition short of hail and tornadoes, and we had it. We did get an alert siren, though, and dutifully headed into the closet, where Julia instantly complained of being bored and Vivi instantly started playing a game on my iPod.

After a few minutes, the siren went quiet and we came out, whereupon we played a long game of “mummy,” which involved me lying on the sofa under a blanket while the girls guarded me from tomb robbers. Later, during the extended bedtime routine, the weather went crazy again, sending in one of the scariest clouds I’ve ever seen. Now, more than an hour later, the wind is still whipping the trees around, rain is still flying laterally, and the sky is an amazingly weird shade of gray-orange. Summer in Minnesota!

Summer-Storm Sky
Summer-Storm Sky (courtesy of my friend Richard)

* Southern Minnesota Weather Rule: Bad cold-season weather comes from the Dakotas, bad hot-season weather comes from Iowa.

Money-Making $cheme$

In an effort to “juice” the endowment with cash revenues, the College has converted the upper level of the Rec Center into a greenhouse for producing Minnesota folding chairs (Chaairus folderol prairie). Conditions are perfect for growing, as you can see from this shot of the bumper crop. College officials hope to get three or even four crops from the greenhouse before it’s converted back to its intended purpose, holding ultimate frisbee tournaments.
Field House Farming