Fixing the Street -- at last!

It all started when I heard the continuous beep=beep signal of a vehicle backing up. I looked out the patio window and found at last that 11th Street is being repaired. The previous winter was so hard on streets. It was bump, bump, bump on many of them, and often the way the car handled would make my electronic stabilizer come on.

Above is a video of how this is being done. And it goes quickly.

In less than a minute the equipment had moved forward the width of the gas station. (Note: the large building pictured just a bit in the left of the picture is the Minnesota Revenue Building -- a place all my state taxes end up, and the buildings that occupy most of the background in this picture are those of Region Hospital.)

After the asphalt is laid, a roller comes behind to smooth it down.

This street leads to the entrance ramps for Highway 94 East and Highway 35E North so there is always a lot of traffic about. The process was blocking the cross traffic from Robert Street just below my window. I thought one vehicle had rather an interesting load.

Lately when I drive some of the streets that have already been repaired I feel like I've gotten myself lost. That's how different it seems from the bumpy streets.

Hope you enjoy this little glimpse of life in Saint Paul, Minnesota

New Things on the Street

Perhaps this posting will fit the definition of mundane as promised once in awhile on the heading of this blog. However, I'm anxious to share the new things on the street.

The door of the new building where I live finally has its sign!

And for a long time I had been wondering what was to appear on the corner of 10th and Minnesota Streets. There was a concrete pedestal there that looked like something electrical was to be attached. Then in the past couple of weeks the mystery has been solved with the Spirit of Mississippi.

In the daytime it looks great, but in the evening it is lighted from within and changes from red to blue at intervals.

Here is a close up of one of the panels.

The City of St. Paul built this building, much to criticism. The property was originally to be a high rise condo building, but that idea tanked when the housing recession hit around 2008. The city finally decided to build a market rate apartment building. Then everyone said no one would live here. Well, now the building is 85% occupied within 8 months of its opening.

One part of the ground level is a grocery store. It is very nice to live "over the shop." And we are one block from Light Rail station and one block from a bus stop for numerous bus lines. What's not to like? And I've never posted pictures of the swimming pool and hot tub on the blog, either. That's a great feature, too!

Motion Poems Adventure

This weekend was a St. Paul Art Crawl weekend, evenings when it is possible to go to many artists' lofts and galleries. One unique feature of the weekend was Motion Poems displayed at Union Depot.

I walked the one block to the 10th Street Light Rail station, saying Hi on the way to the firefighters who were sitting on lawn chairs in the fire house door on this warm autumn evening -- there is a fire station between my building and the Light Rail station, if I haven't written this whole idea clearly.

I rode two stops to the Union Depot station. The idea of Motion Poems is that a short film illustrates the poem. There were five or six poems with the show repeated then about every 30 minutes if one watched all the motion poems. Below is an illustration for a poem about the time the hobos rode the trains. They created signs to mark towns and households, communicating to fellow hobos for example if the household was a good place to ask for food.

When I had enjoyed all the Motion Poems I hopped back on the Light Rail, rode the two stops to 10th Street and quickly walked the one block home. Love the train!!!

Walking at Gale Woods Farm

Thursday, October 9, was a splendid autumn day and I didn't want to waste it. I decided to try the walk at Gale Woods Farm. I really didn't know what this was other than a destination. This was a drive of about 45 minutes from where I live.

Upon arrival I went to the entrance for Educational Center.

Here I found the "walk box" and did my paperwork for this walk. But alas the box was missing the route directions and all I could locate was a sketchy map.

Upon leaving I took time to read a sign near the door and learned that the farm had been donated by the Gale family to serve as an educational and recreational site. It is now part of the Three Rivers Park District.

Opposite the sign by the door is a chicken coop.

 I walked by the barn.

Then I turned left and found a garden, now almost in the dormant stage. however I certainly admired the flower pot man.

At the end of this short trail I came to a locked gate for a pasture so I decided I was on the wrong trail. I backtracked and found the correct trail and started towards Whaletail Lake.

On the way I went past a display about Minnesota's State Soil. This was the first I knew that Minnesota had a state soil -- it's Lester Soil. Click here to learn more about that and even hear a ballad about Lester Soil. The map below shows the distribution of this soil type in Minnesota.

To my right on this trail is a forested hill. To the left --not cornfields this time-- but cattails.

Above is the first glimpse of the lake while walking on this trail. It is called Whaletail Lake. My names book is silent about the origin of the name for this lake, but I'm guessing from the air this lake has the appearance of a whale tail.

Walking out on the dock I found something new to me, perhaps because I'm not an angler.

This tube is for the disposal of fishing line. This prevents unwanted lines from being thrown in the lake where they could provide problems for both animal and plant life.

The view of the lake shore from dock was spectacular.

The map now showed I should back track a bit and then find a trail going off to the left.

Is this it? Without route directions in words I had to guess.

I walked steadily uphill for about five minutes. With that much effort put into the trail I surely hoped it was the right one! I was reassured by some posts with trail markers for the autumn walk. I kept following the trail markers, hoping it was correct, for the shape of the trail didn't match what was on the sketchy map.

The view within the forest was beautiful with the mid-afternoon sun.

Eventually I began to walk downhill and then walked across a meadow.

On the other side of the meadow I found a road and some people running. I turned right, thinking that was the correct direction to reach the farm buildings again. I asked a runner if I was on my way to the buildings and they affirmed my idea.

Soon I walked by a pig yard.

They had had a wonderful time rutting up this field.

And then soon I came to pen by the barn holding sheep and goats.

This one came over to greet me.

Approaching the Education Center I found several school buses and had also seen high school students on the last part of my walk, heading in the opposite direction. They are participants in a program called Junior Afterschool Farmers.

I really enjoyed this walk; it was a great thing to do a lovely autumn day.

Art Adventure in Lincoln

On my last day in Lincoln, NE, my friend and I had a quick breakfast and then headed off to the Great Plains Art Museum. I've never been to this museum even though I have visited Lincoln many times.

Outside the museum we found sculptures related to the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Inside we found two major exhibits. The first was called Narrow the Horizon and featured art that shows the Big Sky of the Great Plains.

Here is an example of the art we saw. I regret I didn't do a good job of documenting the artist for this piece.

The lower level of the museum has an exhibit related to the making of Western movies.

One piece which took our eyes was this sculpture called He Who Taunts the Enemy. The sculptor is Michael Boyette. One very interesting thing about this sculpture is how some parts are also painted.

For example, above is a moccasin.

And the delightful piece above is a Remington.

From this museum we walked across the street to the Sheldon Art Museum.

The first exhibit we saw was created by ///. This photographer has done photographs in Guatemala over a period of about 40 years. One interesting part of this exhibit showed the same people from two different times. The signage explained he made prints of his 1970s work and then went back to Guatemala recently to find the same persons.

Then we walked across the hall to another gallery which featured the work of forgotten women artists.

Interestingly both had Minnesota connections. Laging arrived in Lincoln when her husband obtained a faculty position within the Department of Art at the University of Nebraska. Her work centered on human figures.
Her first position was within a psychiatric facility in Lincoln. Thereafter, she always retained an interest in working with persons with disabilities even though she later became part of the Interior Design faculty at the University of Nebraska.

Another exhibit was called Things Speak.  Because we both like quilts we were intrigued by this one made from silk cigar wrappers.

Below is a close up of a section of this quilt.

The quilt is attributed to Henrietta Smith Nance and Mildred Nance Behrendt, whom I am guessing are mother and daughter.

Another interesting part of this exhibit related to telephones. A man who ran a mortuary was very upset when a friend died; he had promised to do this person's funeral. However, the operator connected the call from the family to another mortuary. This caused the mortuary director to begin the quest for telephones to dial to specific number rather than having an operator connect the phone call.

From the Sheldon we walked to restaurant called Sebastian's Table. This is a tapa restaurant -- tapas being something neither of us had tried before.

Our last stop was within a fairly new park in Lincoln, called Union Plaza. We wanted to examine the sculpture there better than we had been able to see why driving by.

It took me a bit of internet research to find out more about this. The name is Colossus and it the work a New York City sculpture, James Tyler. It is made of 300 specially shaped bricks.

Antelope Creek flows through this area. This is part of a flood control project in Lincoln. And this got a good test a couple days before my arrival when Lincoln received 9 inches (229 mm) of rain in 20 hours.

All in all a great day in Lincoln, made even better by lovely autumn weather and good company.

A Weekend in Nebraska

My friend in Nebraska asked me to shop for tulip bulbs when I passed through Schiphol airport. Last year she purchased some there but the squirrels ate the bulbs and she didn't see any flowers. So I had a successful shopping trip there and then the question began to be how to deliver them. At first I thought I might drive, but in the end I decided to fly down and back.

So Friday morning I set off to the airport via the Light Rail.

I connect with the Green Line one block from my apartment building and then ride it to the Downtown East station in Minneapolis. There I change to the southbound Blue Line which has the major destinations of the airport and the Mall of America. Once arriving at the airport one goes up two levels via escalators or elevators and then connects to a small blue tram that runs back and forth between the far distant location and the baggage level of the airport. Once there Delta has a two counters where one can check bags immediately. Then it was up through TSA security. My flight went out the C concourse. It had been a very long time since I had taken a flight from there. At the beginning of the C concourse I took yet another small tram which would take me to gate C24. I was amazed to see the digital display, new since my last time on that concourse displaying how many seconds before the next train would arrive.

The flight to Lincoln, NE was uneventful -- good news since before departure the pilot had told us to expect a bumpy ride due to the gusty winds in the midwest.

My friends met me and we went to a nice restaurant that featured flat breads. It was a great lunch. Then we were on to their home.

Our late afternoon activity was going to see their grandson perform a test for a Tae Ka Do level belt. This was my first experience in a gym for this and I was most impressed by the team work among everyone there.

From there we headed to Panera restaurant in downtown Lincoln, a destination selected for a quick supper because it was right next to the Lied Center where we were going to a performance of the Lincoln Symphony.

The Symphony performance was a quite different experience. The first hour featured a presentation of Beyond the Score media show created by the Chicago Symphony. Beyond the Score included pictures, music, and information designed to help us learn about Tchaikovsky as a person as well as the social and economic times surrounding the composition of the Symphony No. 4 in F Minor. I liked this very much and I think classical music groups might have more success if they would do more presentations like this before performing major works. The second half of the evening was a performance of the Symphony No. 4. Quite an outstanding event! 

On Saturday morning we really were lazy. There was mention of going to the Farmers' Market the evening before, but when the time was 11 AM and it closed at 12:00 and we were 30 minutes away, it seemed like a good thing to skip. Instead on this lovely autumn day, my friend and I took a neighborhood walk. Our primary destination was to see the renovation on the church they attend.

Upon return we headed off to find a new restaurant in Lincoln called Zoup. This apparently is a restaurant that began in Michigan. Franchises operate in 16 states plus the District of Columbia and Ontario, Canada. My state is not one of the 16 so this was a new place to me. This restaurant has 12 soups per day. Some varieties are there every day and others are only daily selections. I had a tomato cabbage soup with a lovely spring salad. It was a very nice lunch. Then we shopped for some groceries. If you know anything about Nebraska you may know the joke that the third largest city in Nebraska is the Husker football stadium. Nebraskans are great football fans, as evidenced by the large cookie I found at the grocery store.

The evening activity, of course, was watching the Nebraska-Michigan State football game, a game for which Nebraska came strong finally in the fourth quarter but not quite enough to win.

On Sunday morning my friend and I went to church -- held in an alternate location because their church is not ready for "prime-time" yet due to the renovation project. It was a very nice service. Home again, for a lunch with their son and a chance for me to meet his girlfriend. During the afternoon we watched the film, Book Thief. I had neither read the book or seen the film, so I enjoyed this very much.

Early Sunday evening found us at a soccer game to see my friends' young granddaughter play her last game. The game time was 6:15- 7:15 and so sitting there we saw quite a light show put on.

The combination of the  late afternoon sun and the clouds were quite dramatic. But soon I looked to the east and there was the moon.

And of course in the west was the dramatic sunset.

Home again found us enjoying a nice supper and then finding some favorites to enjoy on TV.

On Monday one of our major activities was designing a quilt my friend plans to put together as a gift for an upcoming baby shower.

Tuesday turned out to day of art in Lincoln, but that is another story that will be presented in a separate post.

Walking in Long Prairie

Yesterday was a day for cleaning the parking garage in my building and we had to have our cars gone from 9 AM to 6 PM. So that seemed like a very good day to go for a walk in place that was a good distance from here. So that is why I chose to do the one in Long Prairie, MN.

I wanted to do this walk primarily so I could mark off Todd County is my Walking the Minnesota Counties book. It is named after John Blair Smith Todd who was a commander at Fort Ripley. (This is now called Camp Ripley and remains an active site for the training of National Guard, primarily from Minnesota but also for other states.) The route map says he was a cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of Abraham Lincoln, but this fact is not noted in the Minnesota Geographic Names book. 

Long Prairie began as an Indian agency town. It is named for the Long Prairie River which flows through it. And the above book says the name came from the long, narrow prairie about a mile wide and 20 miles long that borders the river.

I meant to leave home around 7 AM, but frittered away time until nearly 8 AM. It was slow going on the freeway at rush hour in a rain shower. Then in the northwest side of the Twin Cities area I hit a big slow-down on the freeway. I spent about 30 minutes going at the speedy rate of 5 miles an hour. An ambulance went by so I thought the problem was a traffic accident. But when I finally got to the end of it all the slow-down was because the right lane of the three lanes heading west was being shut down for the road construction project. I had planned to get gas along the way, and for a bit I began to worry that I would run out gas in the midst of all this, but I successfully got to a gas station!

So the promised drive of a bit over 2 hours actually took most of 3 hours. And the promised weather of low 60s and sun didn't come true. Instead the temperature was in the low 50s and no sun, only clouds.

This walk started from a Super 8 motel. Again the desk attendant knew exactly what I wanted. I was walker # 54. The walkers ahead of me were from Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Because I had a late and then slow drive and then had about 100 miles to drive to get back home, and because of the weather, I was interested in only the 5 K route. This did get me stamp, too, in my Lakes and Reservoir book, but other "things" I am collecting were on the second 5 K.

But within 5 minutes of walking I was the city water tower.

The rule for this is that one must be able to see the water tower from the route and I surely did. I went back at the end of the walk and stamped off my Water Towers book too.

I turned towards the west on a quiet residential street and soon discovered what I was sure was a community garden, gardens now clearly becoming dormant. .

And when I got to the end of the block I found I was indeed correct.

 

Near this corner I turned to the south to walk to Lake Charlotte. A bit of this walk was through a residential neighborhood and then onto a bike trail. 

This was such a pleasant walk.  As I progressed I realized part of it had been constructed just this year for there was bare ground on both sides of the path. 

It was nice to see the fall colors up close. 

Soon I was down to Lake Charlotte. 

This lake has a different appearance since there is wetland right along side with cattails and other plants. My names book says this lake is named for Charlotte O. Van Cleve. It further explains she came to Minnesota when she was a few weeks old. Her parents were attached to Fort Snelling and she continued to grow up on Army posts. She also married a military officer. The name book continues that as an adult she lived in both Long Prairie and Minneapolis and they she "was much loved." 

The walk took me by shelters, a bit of beach, a playground and finally to last shelter. Here I had to find who was remembered by this shelter -- a name to report as a "check point." 

From there I turned around and followed the bike trail back to the community garden. There I turned towards a walk way into Harmony Park. The route map said to admire the tile works. I had no idea what I was to find. 

First I found this planter. 

Below is a close up of some of the mosaic I found on this. 

I turned left to walk around a pond-- a sign at the start of the park called it an "existing pond." 

Then I found a long piece of tile works. 

 

Here is a close-up of the mosaic on this. 

 I particularly liked the baseball cap on the middle figure. 

A few steps more I found another planter. 

 If you look carefully you will see the piece of mosaic below says, "Walk with me." Seem highly appropriate! 

 

The trip home went much faster than the trip out. Got home at 4:30 and found I could still not enter the garage. Drove to park and hung out for awhile. Came back and still locked out. Went to buy some cough drops and drove around the garage and still locked out. Finally a few minutes after 6:00 I was able to park again. Glad to get this walk done and check off Todd County in my book.