Cozumel snorkeling

Here are the snorkeling photos for this year. My old Olympus Tough was working this year. Yay! It takes much better photos than the Sony underwater camera that I bought at Costco last year.

The new Olympus Toughs are expensive but I am sure better than the cheap Sony camera.

Most of these are right off from the Coral Princess where I stay. Some of the fish photos are from The Westin up the road. The Westin is a beautiful new property. It has a walk in beach area and long pier that you can jump in from.

Annual ginko tree leaf drop

The annual ginko tree leaf drop. The first drop was late last week. Today was the big day.

In 2018 it was October 21.
In 2017, it was  November 1st.
Looks like the latest has been November 7th.
This year looks the to be the earliest.

Saved some money

I am not an auto repair guy but I figured replacing a broken side mirror couldn't be too bad. The Ford dealer was going to charge $310.00 just for the part plus I don't know how much for the labor. But the worst part was I couldn't get it fixed for almost a month.

I backed into a column in the parking ramp at work. Tore off the driver side mirror unit. It is heated and motorized.

Thanks to the internet I found an auto parts shop in St. Paul and multiple YouTube videos on the steps to replace the unit.

The used part was $110.00 and it took less than 1/2 hour to complete!

It isn't perfect. There are some scratches on the black cover and turns out the motor doesn't adjust up and down. But it adjusts in and out and the mirror moves manually up and down. Best of all it isn't going to fall off or flop around.

Before - mirror cracked up

Before - bungees holding it in place

After - it isn't in primo condition with some scratches

After - nice mirror

Gray Jays

When we came back to the cabin after our BWCA adventure, a Gray Jay family was waiting for us. Gray Jay's are very sociable birds that with no prompting ate right from our hands!

Annual BWCA Trip - part 1

This past week was what has become a near annual camping trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) Wilderness.

The usual foursome of Jenny, Julie, Brian and me drove up north on Tuesday. We spent the night in Jenny and Andrew's cabin on Gust Lake off the Grade (road). We paddled in on Sawbill Lake from Sawbill Outfitters.

There is a very long and, looking back, funny story on how we ended up where we did but I'll make the text of this post short and post the photos that I took. There will hopefully be more photos when the others get theirs off their cameras and phones.

Paddling in on Sawbll

Around the campfire grate

Fire grate and some of our cooking gear

A Jack Pine pinecone. The Nut Hatches really like these.

Dramatic sky while paddling. We did have storms during this trip.

A double water lily. We saw lots of these on our river paddle.

We love to swim in the lakes. We always where our life jackets.

A dramatic sunset. The reflection off the lake is always a winner.

One of our campsite sitting rocks.

We all happened to wear our Gust Lake t-shirts!

Annual peony post

One of the interesting things with keeping the blog is tracking the posts from year to year. For example, last year the peony post was 2 weeks earlier than this year. A demonstration of the difference in each year's weather.

This year Spring has been cool and wet so the blooming flowers are later than last year's hot and dry Spring.

There is a new peony in the garden this year. I don't know where it came from and there are only two stems and each has a pink-toned blossom of the single type peony. Pretty crazy.

Miss America

One of the old fashioned red peony that came with the house

Miss America

A pink sngle type variety. This one just showed up this year

One of the red peonies that came with the house.

Burr Oak at 10 years

The Burr Oak has grown so much that I had to prune off several very large branches. It is exciting to see the backyard changing because the oak tree is getting so tall and broad.

The oak tree is now 10 years old which means the backyard patio project was done 10 years ago.

Ten years ago I was working for IBM and travelling nearly every week. Peonies were blooming this week in June 2019. This year the peonies are close but at least another week before full on.

Check out the Burr Oak from 2011 and from 2013 and when first planted in 2009.