Quick trip to the Minnesota North Shore with Maggie

Sunsetting on the Caribou Trail

Simply wanted to get out of town for a couple of days and it has been another year with very little snow, so I thought I would head up north to see what snow there was.

If you want to jump to it, click here to watch the short video.

This was also an excuse to take the new Ford Maverick on a road trip.

On the Monday drive up I saw at least 4 bald eagles - two soaring along I-35 and two perched in trees along Highway 61. Also, had a pheasant fly all the way over all four lanes of I-35 right in front of me!

Maggie and I stayed at Solbakken Resort in Lutsen, again. This is where we stayed last year with Bud. It is convenient to get to places and is right on Lake Superior.

After we checked in, I drove up the Caribou Trail hoping to see owls. The news had mentioned that there were lots of owls along the north shore earlier in March and February. Unfortunately, I did not see any other than the plastic ones that are put on the tops of telephone poles.

Tuesday, drove into Grand Marais to have coffee at Java Moose Cafe. The owner, Sarah, is an Instagram crush of mine. The day's adventure was a hike in Cascade State Park to the top of Lookout Mountain. I have never stopped at this park.

Lake Superior meets the sky

The hike was challenging as there was not so much snow but a lot of ice. And I had Maggie in her backpack which meant I really could not afford to fall. We did make it to the top and the views of Lake Superior are fantastic.

Coming down was even more treacherous and I made a miss-calculation on the trail and ended up on Highway 61 for a tiny bit.

Had a late lunch at Cascade Lodge Restaurant.

Wednesday morning on the way home, I had breakfast with an old boss from Nash Finch. I have not seen her in a long time. She and her husband live outside of Grand Marais. I really appreciated that she took the time to get together.

Wednesday was a stormy day. Not so much snow on the North Shore as wind. I stopped at Tettegouche State Park to take a break and watch the waves on the lake. I saw two Golden Eagles between Two Harbors and Duluth. They are amazingly big!

A friend met me in Duluth for lunch. This was a nice break and also allowed time for the snowstorm in the Twin Cities to move on. By the time I left Duluth, the roads were pretty clear and so was the sky.

The Ford Maverick was very comfortable and handled the roads and weather well. I think I got a little over 32 mpg. The bad thing was while nearly home a dumpster truck threw a stone and hit my windshield. The windshield now has about a 10" crack which means I will be replacing the windshield...and I didn't even have 1,000 miles on the thing 🙁

Link to video.

Another spell in Palm Springs

Had a few days free so went to Palm Springs again (2nd trip this year!). Stayed with my friend, Bud, who is renting a beautiful home in Palm Springs.

The full park.

We went to Joshua Tree National Park on Thursday. It is less than an hour's drive from Palm Springs. There are lots of Joshua "Trees" but what really is the draw are the incredible rock formations.

We stuck to the northern portion of the park where the "trees" are. We did drive to Keys View to take in the expansiveness. You can see the San Andreas fault where it splits into 2 trenches. You can also see the Salton Sea in the far distance. Apparently, you can see Mexico, too. 😉

Video of the Joshua Tree adventure is here. Best viewed in landscape. This one is short.

On Friday we went to Mecca, California which is east of Palm Springs -- California takes a big angle down this far. I had read about the Ladder Canyon and Painted Canyon Trails. These are 2 trails maintained by a local hiking club that are inside a Bureau of Land Management area.

These were two conjoined hikes in geology that is difficult to describe. The Ladder Canyon Trail requires a series of ladders (we went in the up direction) to navigate through very narrow slit canyons. Once you reach the top, you hike along the ridge until you descend quickly into a very wide Painted Canyon.

Both hikes are a kind of endless series of "what-the" and "oh-my" and "that's crazy" things to see and absorb.

Entrance into the trailheads for
Ladder Canyon and Painted Canyon.

The Painted Canyon hike does have a brief section of rope and ladder but if you were to start at the beginning you could just hike to there and return. It is spectacular.

The Ladder and Painted Canyon Trails video is here. Best viewed in landscape. This one 7 1/2 minutes because there was so much to see. It also includes the drive getting to the start of the hikes. There are some really good videos on YouTube on how to get to the trail head.

Other things we did before I left on Sunday:

• saw a very funny production of Avenue Q at Revolution Stage Company
• had a kinda wild time at PS Air Bar after Avenue Q
• had dinner with friends Bob and Dianne who are also spending the winter in Palm Springs
• played pickleball 2x with "the boys"
• lounged in the hot tub
• I went for a run!

Lowkey Birthday

This post is really just to note that I shaved my beard 😊 Have not been a very celebratory mood lately so kept this year's bday to a minimum. Thank you, Amy, for arranging but sad you could not be there. Thank you, Jane, Bunny, Jenny, and especially Loretta for driving all the way down to lift my spirits.

Palm Springs for the New Year

Decided to take my friend Chris' invitation to come to Palm Springs for New Year's. Flew Sun Country on the 30th. Chris made reservations at Trio for dinner with friends for New Year's Eve. It was very pleasant.

Chris and I ended staying up past 1am getting caught up and reminiscing. 

I went for a short run on the 1st to take in all the flowering bushes and the different cacti.

Chris' condo has a heated pool, and he swims every morning. I joined in a few times. It was very nice. On the 2nd hiked the South Lykken Trail with Chris' friend, Kevin. After the hike, Chris and I went to my friend's Bud rented house for wine and cheese. Bud's brother David and sister-in-law, Mabel, were there. We decided to have dinner at The Tropicale, a swanky place.

Before heading to the airport on the 3rd, Chris and I met Bud, David, and Mabel at Spencer's for a delicious prix fixe lunch. The return flight was an hour delayed (seems to be a thing with Sun Country) but overall a good flight.

Returned to super cold weather so it was nice to get away for a while.

Annual Cozumel Adventure

The video (best viewed landscape) is 7:30 minutes long.

My annual trip to Cozumel, Mexico was a week later than normal this year. Earlier in the year when I was booking this trip, I could not find ANY flights from Minneapolis to Cozumel even with connections. Our local air carrier, Sun Country, scheduled direct flights starting Saturday, December 7 and when I found out that worked for my travel companion, Jenny, then the deal was done.

It was Sun Country's season inaugural flight not that they did anything special. But two really nice things were it is direct flight, and it wasn't full, so we had plenty of room.

Jenny and I arrived on Saturday before check-in time so headed to the pool/beach for a welcome to Cozumel beverage. No need to go into any details because we pretty much did our usual stuff.... snorkeled every day, ate delicious food, relaxed, worked crossword puzzles, and did I say we snorkeled every day(?).

The one new adventure as renting bikes for the week. We went to actual bike rental place in town instead of using the hotel bikes. These were way more comfortable and cheaper! We rented from Monday to Friday for $60 each! For reference we rented from Best Bikes Cozumel. The business is owned and run by a guy from Canada. While the website says your bike needs a license plate and his has them, apparently you do not and his don't 🫤

Cozumel is very bike friendly. There are marked bike lanes on most of the streets and a dedicated separate bike lane south of downtown. We had anticipated riding to the east side of the island but it was very windy most days and decided we didn't want the extra effort. We did take advantage of the bikes and only took a cab on the days we didn't have them. We also biked to a two nice beach clubs for snorkeling adventures.

Money Bar Beach Club

Cannon Falls Camping and Biking

Another camping and biking adventure with Bud.

Cannon Falls is surprisingly close to the Twin Cities. A little over half hour and we were at the Lake Byllesby Campground in Dakota County. The campground is adjacent to the dam that creates the lake. The dam is a hydropower plant on the Cannon River.

The campground is well maintained and has very nice facilities (bathrooms and showers). We tent-camped among several RVs with electric and water hookups so no generators and very nice campers.

It was super windy when we arrived on Tuesday and were trying to set up the tent when, fortunately, the women in the RV next to our site offered to help. We really couldn't get have gotten it setup without them. We later got some fried green tomatoes to eat 😊

The tent and site were set up quickly enough that we decided to go on our first bike ride. There is a trail out of the campground that connects with the official Cannon Valley Trail (CVT). We took the spur trail into Cannon Falls before heading on an out-and-back down the CVT to the halfway point, Welch Village.

Cannon River along the CVT

The CVT is really well maintained. It primarily travels next to the Cannon River where you can occasionally see a canoer or someone fishing. There is a daily $7 fee to use the trail. The CVT website is not user friendly at all, but the trail fee is obviously well used to maintain the trail and bridges.

We saw a few animals including a deer being chased by something very furry, a ground hog, and a good-sized snapping turtle.

On the way back to camp, we road back into Cannon Falls for a late lunch.

There was an incredible sunset Tuesday night. The Canadian forest fire smoke made for very dramatic reds and oranges of the sun and later, the moon.

It had been a long day, so we retired early. Wednesday, after a breakfast of scrambled eggs, we drove to Red Wing to ride the other half of the CVT. This portion was more crowded but really that is relative because it wasn't bad. The entire CVT is fairly flat, but this portion is even flatter than the Cannon Falls side.

An out-an-back trip is great because you really do see different things when going in different directions. Seems odd but for instance, the river is more obvious when going in one direction than the other.

On the ride back to Red Wing, we were able to assist a couple who had an incident. The wife got nervous and crashed her electric bike. I was helping the husband get the chain back on when I noticed the wife was bleeding. She had taken a bad fall. Bud had bandaids and we used my hand sanitizer to get her somewhat cleaned and patched up.

We had lunch in Red Wing before heading back. On the way back to camp, we stopped in Cannon Falls again...this time for ice cream.

We spent some down time at the Lake Byllesby beach. The water was not pleasant looking so did not do any swimming. Wednesday night we lit a campfire and made s'mores.

Trout stream in Miesville Ravine Park

Thursday, we packed up and drove to the Miesville Ravine to do a short hike. It was a nice break from biking. We stopped in Miesville for lunch at King's Place Bar and Grill, a very popular restaurant/bar.

A short video of the adventure is here.

Boundary Waters - 2024

Clove Lake

I probably say this every year, but we had another fantastic adventure in the Boundary Waters.

Same foursome as the past 20+ years - Jenny, Julie, Brian, and me. This year we drove up to Jenny and Andrew's cabin on Saturday and paddled into the BWCA on Sunday.

Our usual route to the Gunflint Trail, the Grade, was closed due to a construction project so we had to drive all the way back to US61 then to Grand Marais. We took advantage of the detour to stop for coffee at Java Moose.

We made good time up the Gunflint Trail to Gunflint Lodge to pick up our canoes. We got good guidance from Carson (not Carston) at the outfitters. He estimated it would take us 4 hours and he was spot on.

I had wrongly anticipated that paddling up a river, the Granite River, would be easy going. The river was very pleasant but some of the portages around the rapids and waterfalls were tricky...especially the one marked as "split rock."

We had intended to make it to Larch Lake but decided to stop at Clove Lake which is a wide spot along the river. It was a great choice. Our campsite had a sandy beach and the sand extended well into the lake. It was so easy and comfortable coming into and out of the site.

The theme of this year's trip was, "Well, you are practically a scientist." This was based on our ability to determine (make up) several things including 1) why there was a sandy beach 2) why the snowshoe hare was so "friendly and 3) what makes a super moon.

There was a flat, grassy tent site and the perfect setup for the hammocks. Clove Lake was not busy and had an eagle nest on one side. The parent eagles would fly around occasionally and there teenage offspring flew around frequently.

There were several beaver lodges and on one of our day trips, we interrupted a family of otters playing in the reeds.

We were also visited by a snowshoe hare which was a first for us. This hare appeared very accustomed to humans and got very close at times. We also had some friendly chipmunks and a song sparrow.

The weather was perfect and we even had the supermoon. We were hoping for northern lights but the moon was so bright and we were facing south so didn't see any aurora.

The video is just over 6 minutes and available here. I suggest you watch the video in landscape.