Bridges too far

The heat wave has dissipated a little and it was again pleasant being outside. I knew I was scheduled for afternoon tennis and that I'd had a hard singles match yesterday with Rich, so I just wanted to walk a bit in nature, stretch my legs, and perhaps get a photo to put up on this blog. I almost made it to Minnehaha Falls, but just before the Ford Bridge there was road work and a traffic bottleneck, so I detoured and ended up at Hidden Falls. I walked along the Mississippi on dirt trails and on the rocky river bank for a while. I saw an eagle circling above me and out of camera range. I walked some more. I realized that these two bridges are not very accessible and that not many people see them from this angle. The first one is the bridge in Hidden Falls that marks the end of paved bike paths. It's across the river from the end of Minnehaha Falls on the St Paul side. The big river is in the background.



And this is the bridge at the end of Minnehaha Creek. It's a bridge I've shown before, but not from the St Paul side of the river. It also is a bridge that is a little hard to get to without taking a dirt path.



So, by the time tennis with the other geezers began, I was already exercised and ready to play. Rich has gone back to Tucson. We played four sets of singles on two separate days, and both were competitive and a lot of fun to play. I'll have stiff muscles for a few days now that he's gone, but the competitive juices flowed and we both played some pretty decent tennis for a couple of senior citizens.

The afternoon tennis was by comparison pretty tame. There were some good points and games, and the geezer guys were all very entertaining with their tennis related gibes, but we had an odd number of players, so played our usual system of playing a game and then rotating in the odd player. It kept us going for a couple of hours on a beautiful August day.

After five days in a row of tennis ball bashing, I'm taking tomorrow off. It's predicted to be one of those nicest days in the history of days (NDITHOD). And the first day of the State Fair.