Catching Up

I've been out of blogging mode for a week or so, therefore I'm going to try to catch up with a few of what I think are my better photos. The lilacs in my back yard are in full bloom and are being enjoyed by a single hungry butterfly. They are about a month ahead of last year's schedule which admittedly was a bit late. I blogged with a lilac photo last year on May 23. The arrival of the lilacs is always a welcome time in the spring.

I spent much of last week in the northern part of the state. After the snow melted - about Tuesday- PW and I went on a drive along the North Shore of Lake Superior, partly to visit the spot where we had our high school class trip in 1961. I was hoping to recognize some of the landmarks and to remember the music of the time, music that was played over and over on the Lutsen jukebox. I brought the music with me on iTunes: Ricky Nelson singing "Travelin' Man" and "Hello, Mary Lou." While we walked around the property we encountered a small herd of deer. I was able to get a photo of the white tailed deer cautiously grazing at Lutsen Resort while we stood and watched.

We decided to go to some of the various state parks in the area.  PW promised that we could see the Devil's Kettle, a very curious feature of the Brule River.  The river branches in a part of the rapids and one of the branches disappears into a pothole and just goes away.  They've looked for the outlet of the stream, but haven't yet found it.  Unfortunately the water was pretty high and it overflowed the pothole enough that the disappearance of the water was not particularly obvious.  There are photos elsewhere on the web which depict the falls when the water is in less abundant supply.

This is Upper Falls not far from the Devil's Kettle in the Brule River in Judge C.R Magney State Park south of Hovland, Minnesota.  The volume of water seems pretty large.

We also spent a little time in Hovland, a tiny community north of Grand Marais, where I spent a couple of years as a toddler in the 1940's.  As expected, I didn't recognize a single landmark there, nor did we buy any smoked ciscos from any of the stores in the area - an oversight which I plan to correct next time I'm in the area.

We also visited Cascade River State Park.  It was a cloudy day, in fact it rained most of the morning, so we were very much alone in the park - except for some animals and maybe a park ranger or two.   This is a fairly dramatic rapids running through a gorge in the Cascade River in Cascade River State Park.

The Temperance River goes under highway 61 a few miles south of Lutsen. The rapids through the gorge are part of one of the six state parks along the north shore of Lake Superior, north of Two Harbors.

Back in the big city we paid a visit to one of my favorite Minneapolis sites: Minnehaha Falls, this time on an April morning, atime when it's in sunlight.

Following the creek down towards the river is always a nice trek.  It was a sunny day and the water was flowing, albeit a bit low for a spring flow, especially compared to last year's flood.  The animals have been active, including a family of beavers.  I caught tree reflections in a beaver dam in Minnehaha Creek on its meander below the falls to the Mississippi.

I guess that means I'm pretty well caught up with my postings, so I can try to get back to a more normal frequency.