Goodby Minnesota

October 15.  Time to leave Minnesota, it is getting cold!

I sure have enjoyed the fall colors.

We took several "Peeper" drives. Pretty trees were not all we saw.

 We were surprised to see these critters in a small pasture.

I wonder what they were. Based on pictures on the internet, I think they were yaks.

One of them was not satisfied with the nice grass in the pasture. He or she worked very hard to eat the grass as close to the fence as possible.

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes. This was one small one. Maybe it was just a pond. The tall water grasses waved gently in the breeze.

The RV parks seemed to be telling us it was time to head south!  We stayed at Pete's Retreat for a week, up to October 1 when it closed for the season.

Many of the days were quite blustery with threatening clouds. This park, the Grand Casino Campground in Hinckley Minnesota, had shut down large areas.

The section we stayed in had only a few rigs.

Next we stayed at Lake Elmo, a small county park, and then at Dakotah Meadows Casino Campground near Minneapolis.

We enjoyed the beautiful fall color all around, but didn't do much walking because Craig was having trouble with his hip.  He is going to have it checked out when we get back to California.

While at Dakota Meadows we drove into the city to see the Van Gogh Immersive Exhibit. It was a wonderful experience. The still pictures below cannot express the full impact of the exhibit. 

There were two galleries; both had the same show. All four walls formed a continous screen. If you looked carefully you could see the screens were broken into repeated images but were blended perfectly. Van Gogh's work is all about light and movement. This projected show was made up of many layers of images from his paintings. They moved and changed and were accompanied by a fantastic sound track. 

In the first gallery (above) everyone either stood  or sat on the floor for the half hour show.

In the second gallery there were several benches. We stayed and watched the show a second time after scoring a bench the minute someone else left it. For our old bodies, it was nice to be able to sit.

 

Several of Vincent's self portraits appeared throughout the show.

This was my favorite. The flames on the candles flickered as if they were actually burning.

At one point I said to Craig: "This would really blow Van Gogh's mind!"

I appreciated the fact that everyone was required to wear a mask in the galleries. Not "recommended",  "required!"  Throughout our summer travels, we have met people who were not vaccinated. I am not afraid to ask, and if someone tells me they are not vaccinated, I just move away and don't continue any contact with them. The case numbers are going up in Minnesota, but at most stores you see very few people wearing masks. We do. 

This last week we went to a CVS and we both got our flu shots. A few days later I got my Pfizer Covid booster. Now that it has been approved, Craig will get his Moderna booster next week. All we can do is take care of ourselves. 

So now we are in Iowa at an almost empty state park in Clear Lake for three nights. The trees are just starting to turn here, but the temperatures are going down. Autumn is truly my favorite time of the year. 

[Update from Craig] Older rock fans might call Clear Lake IA "the place the music died".  In 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and "The Big Bopper" J. P. Richardson were killed in a plane crash near here.

Michigan Upper Peninsula, Visiting with Friends

On Friday we drove from Munising to the Sunset Bay RV park on the Keweenaw Peninsula. It is a very rustic place just south of Eagle River. 

We had a direct view of the lake from the front window of the Alfa, and when we arrived the wind was really blowing and waves were pounding the shore.

There sure was no sand on the beach, just lots of red rocks.

Although the weather had been blustery, Sunday was beautiful and we decided to drive to the tip of the Peninsula and see Copper Harbor and Fort Wilkins Historic Park. If you blink when going through Copper Harbor, you will miss it. But Fort Wilkins, just a bit further on, is well worth a stop.

Our walk around the fort was quite interesting. It was built to protect the copper miners and fur traders in the area.

Next we tried to drive out to the furthest point of the peninsula on a rough road, but missed the turn and ended up on an even rockier road more suitable for ATVs. Glad we were in the Jeep!  I was too busy holding on to take pictures, but when we came to the last mud puddle I got out to document the drive.

Later, back at the RV park:

Just to give proof that when it comes to taking care of the Alfa, Craig is on top of it! A tree branch had caused our cell phone antenna to bend down as it is designed to do when something hits it. This may keep it from breaking off, but then it is necessary to manually return it to the upright position. 

Sunset Beach is aptly named. This is one of the sunsets we have enjoyed here.

From there we headed west along the south shore of Lake Superior to our last "planned" stop this summer. We met up with Fred Reinke, a high school friend of Craig's, and his wife Joan at the Union Campground in Porcupine Mountain State Park. 

It rained much of the week, so we spent a lot of our time hanging out in the rigs talking and eating.

We did go over to see the Lake of the Clouds. Fred doesn't get around very well due to serious back problems, so we were limited to a short walk up to the overlook.

I love this picture. It could be a painting or a book cover.

On the next day, Craig and I went for a five mile hike to Trap Falls.

The trail was quite muddy in places.

We noticed many interesting mushrooms.

Craig remembered going mushroom hunting with his stepfather and step-grandmother when he was a kid. Of course neither of us has the kind of knowledge she had, so we left the mushrooms unharvested.

Part of my plan had been to swing over to Door County to see the trees changing color. Unfortunately, when I checked the "Wisconsin Fall Color Report" web site, I discovered they would not peak until the third week of October. We have many things we still need to do this fall and cannot stay in Northern Wisconsin until then this year. Maybe some future year...

But we did get a small taste of fall color in the UP. 

Earlier this month I contacted Karen and Steve to see if they would be home on the days after our time camping in the UP. They were, and we had a wonderful couple of days with them. The image below shows the wonderful old house that they are restoring and expanding.

Too soon it was time to get rolling again. We are headed straight West to La Crosse, Wisconsin and then down the Great River Road along the Mississippi.

So much to see, so many places to go.

RV Life is Fun!

An Autumn Week in North Georgia

We felt like real full time RVers this week, just being lazy and watching the season change. No plans to rake leaves, clean gutters, harvest firewood, or pay property taxes! 

There was quite a rainstorm here Tuesday. I guess Karen and Al know more about Georgia weather than we do, because they took off and went to a motel Monday night when the storms first started. We had looked at the local and regional radar and decided there probably wasn't any danger, but I did make a mental note that the brick-walled laundry room and bathroom were at the end of the street, about six lots away. I try to remember to find a safe place to go to (if necessary) when we first arrive at a new park.

We have been having overnight rains often this fall, but this one was quite hard and woke me with the drumming on the roof. I felt quite peaceful knowing we were not under any big trees like we had been all last winter on our own land.

The rain continued all day. Karen told me we got five inches and the rivers were running hard and full. 

Craig enjoyed the day alternately reading and napping on the couch.

I spent the day doing needlepoint and reading. I felt a bit like I was inside  protective bubble with the rain and wind all around. I checked all ceiling edges and was happy to report they were all leak-free. The window that we had repaired last spring was also nice and dry.

We had planned on waiting a couple of days before taking another foliage drive, but with the storm and wind we were afraid all of the leaves would blow off. Wednesday started as a partially sunny day, but by the time we took off it was mostly cloudy!

The mountain  views from the Brasstown Bald lookout tower were quite different from a few weeks ago when everything was green. This time the clouds were very dramatic, and I was pleased to catch this bit of color in a splash of sunshine between clouds. It was very cold up there as well! Forty degrees and windy, so I didn't stay up on the tower's deck for very long.

We retraced our path from Monday, but this time without the fog cover we were able to see far off into the distance from the turn-out locations.

There is a small town named Helen on the route we were driving. The central area of town has block after block of shops and restaurants decorated in a Bavarian style. I think I would rather see a small town do a theme like this than fill itself with waterslides and wax-museum-type attractions. If it fills the cash registers of the local businessmen, more power to them! 

Craig and I both like German food, so we stopped for lunch. We both enjoyed Reuben sandwiches. I make them for us at home from time to time, but they looked like the best things on the menu. 

There was still some very nice color along some of the drive, but in other places it was as we feared: pretty blown out.

Thursday was another lazy day, but on Friday we again went exploring. This post is getting too long, so I'll tell you about what we did in the next one.

[From Craig]  I love the combination of the blog title and our new top image.  If I had a dream that looked like that, I'd consider it a bad dream!

A foggy Autumn drive

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Judy commented she likes her ribs naked.  Georgia would probably frown on a nudist restaurant.
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Every day the trees have been showing a little more color. Unfortunately the weather has been quite rainy and we have not gotten out as much as we would like. It has rained every night.

Monday, we decided to take a drive along the Russell-Brasstown Scenic Byway even though it was a bit wet and foggy. I would say that the color was more than halfway to its peak. Sunshine would have been nice, but the fog gave a bit of a mysterious air to the forests.

We stopped and took a two mile walk to the Dukes Creek Falls.

It was wet, but it did not rain on us.

The fog was really neat. I heard a little boy who was walking with his parents say "it's like we're in a parallel universe." A perfect description of how it felt.

Many colors.

Dukes Creek Falls is the confluence of a smaller creek, which is coming down from on high via many branches (above), with a larger creek that makes a lot of right-angle turns (below). 

We hope one of the next few days will be dry and sunny. We would like to take the same drive again because there were many turnouts that overlooked mountain vistas that were totally fogged in today.  If the weather stays as it is, the leaves will soon fall and the show will be over.

Autumn color is one reason we are here.