Recently in Minneapolis Area Category

Northern Minnesota is ablaze with color at the moment, but there are spots of brilliance to be found in the greater Twin cities right no w as well. I took a walk through the local Blaine Open Space preserve, and found numerous stands of deep, luscious red.

The forest here was hit hard in the storm a couple of weeks ago that produced an F2 tornado. In addition to the tornado, which hit west of here, 70-80mph downdrafts snapped many trees in the forest. But 95% survived, and the colors are beginning to show.

Yesterday I was treated to my first scary Minnesota weather episode, if you don't count the twenty below when I was here in January, which you probably should.

The gist of it is that a massive blackish-green wall of doom stretching for miles in either direction advanced on my humble office. I went out and took a couple of pictures, and while I snapped away the air was completely calm, but moments after I went back inside it hit like a giant leafblower (us being the hapless leaves).

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Apologies for the radio silience, so to speak. Been madly busy finalizing arrangements for my new home in the Minneapolis area. To celebrate the move, and the fact that for one brief moment the weather here in Minnesota (80 degrees, sunny, low humidity) is actually far superior to the weather I left back in Northern California (raining, in my hometown, even pouring), I took a lovely walk around Lake Harriet. Let's get down to business:

Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis offer some of the loveliest walks you'll find in a city, beautiful lakes, lush foliage, and a wonderful arrangement in which the bicyclists and roller bladers are on one dedicated path, and you're on another one, so you don't get run over. Someone give the genius who thought that up a medal, please.

There is only one drawback to these idyllic settings, and that's the air traffic. Yesterday the drone of landing planes at nearby MSP was deafening. But perhaps different wind patters would have them coming down over a different part of the city on some days.

Bathers didn't mind, as kids splashed in the water, the bandshell stuck out like a fairy castle in the background, and the whole thing seemed like a different universe from the Minnesota I saw at twenty below in January.

The bandshell looks like it needs an army of elves to guard it.

But the other castles loom in the distance, and the tops of their towers are one of the only landmarks you can use to discover at which point on the very round lake path you have landed. I got lost at one point and ended up driving around it twice, even after I had walked around it once.

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