September '09 Newsletter - Trip #1

Minnesota Family Trip (6/28/09-7/10/09)

As usual, we spent two weeks in northern Minnesota visiting Susan's family and friends. We flew to Minneapolis and were picked up by Susan's sister Twila and brother-in-law Bill. After eating dinner on the way back to their home, we talked the evening away. Bob spent some time working on their computer, which surprisingly enough was in pretty good shape. Apparently their daughter Heidi tunes it up whenever she comes home. After breakfast, we visited Susan's old friend Frog to see his litter of puppies. Then Twila and Bill took us to pick up our rental car and we headed northwest to visit Uncle Bud and Aunt Jo. Their daughter, Trudy, who lives in Minneapolis had the day off and joined us. It was our first visit to their beautiful home and we enjoyed a tour of both their property and the community grounds and facility. We had a nice dinner out and a relaxing evening catching up on family news.

We arrived in Hoyt Lakes to find the last 3 days of June to be what Bob considered winter-like. Temperatures never exceeded 60 degrees and ominous overcast threatened all day long with the possibility of rain. As it turned out there wasn't much, but Bob was rapidly becoming depressed. We were thinking of getting one of those florescent lamps to clip onto his baseball cap. Fortunately the weather improved for most of the rest of the trip and was excellent for the holiday weekend events.

Aurora, the town where Susan went to high school, celebrates the 3rd of July even bigger than the 4th. On parade day her entire family was parked on the curb, ready for viewing the big event. As usual for small town parades, there were myriad fire trucks from all the surrounding communities tooting their horns and blowing their sirens. The Shriners performed precision motorcycle drills on their Harleys and in kiddy cars. Several of the local marching bands were really good. The State's newly elected liberal senators, Al Franken of Saturday Night Fame and Amy Klobuchar, were in the parade. For some reason Amy focused on Bob and rushed over to shake his hand but didn't stick around long enough to have her picture taken. Susan's niece Gina had forgotten her camera, so we took even more pictures than we normally would have. Gina's in-laws always enter a float in this parade. This year her mother-in-law and father-in-law were Grand Marshals. Their family float included Gina and Rob's two boys dressed as chickens and won first prize. Since the main street is already blocked off for the parade it only makes sense to add a live band, food booths, and open all of the bar fronts for a massive party. We hung out for awhile with a few of her high school chums in front of Susan's old haunt, Hank's Bar, and eventually moved out towards the mine dumps to watch a spectacular fireworks display.

Bob slept late the next morning while the family went to the July 4th kids' parade. Susan's nephews were again dressed as chickens. Afterwards, they ran some of the races staged for the kids but skipped the sawdust pile to go back out to their grandparent's cabin on the Lake. Laurie's granddaughter Teagan jumped the gun on one of the races, which was quite comical. She had never braved the sawdust pile and was game to give it a whirl. It's about as competitive as BCC's Easter egg hunt and Teagan managed to hang onto a few coins but will have to toughen up in the years to come.

Antti and Winks had mentioned that the fireworks around Whiteface Reservoir were usually even more impressive than the town displays. They invited us to join them at a party hosted by his boss but we elected to spend the time alone at their cabin. Apparently folks chip in big bucks for the fireworks, sometimes as much as $800 each. Late that afternoon we picked up supplies at the local grocery, loaded the canoe they had left at the landing for us and paddled out to their secluded island paradise. About dusk the show began. There were probably 10 fireworks parties in view from our porch. Most started with little rockets and stationary flowing displays but as it got dark folks got serious with commercial quality exhibitions. This went on for a couple of hours and we can't imagine how many thousands of dollars worth these folks blew up. Those Minnesota Iron Rangers really know how to celebrate a holiday!

When Winks and Antti came out for dinner the next night, they told us how their fireworks were discharged from a raft the host had placed offshore. Mid-show it caught fire and there was some concern about whether the remaining fireworks would go up simultaneously. Susan whipped up a chicken stir-fry and they headed home as dusk settled in, since Winks had to work midnights and Antti early the next morning.

After spending another day with Susan's father, we drove north to Tower to visit one of the larger high grade iron ore mines in the world. Ore with over 60% iron was extracted from this mine but it has been closed since the sixties because open pit mining is much more economical. They took us several thousand feet down to the last areas worked. This is also the site of some more recent high tech work in particle physics. Something about neutrinos sent from Chicago through the earth's crust and measuring background radiation levels to locate the dark matter. A tour through that area was also offered but it was scheduled for 4:00 PM and we were off to visit Rhonda and Marty at Lake Vermillion. After a pleasant dinner, we watched the sunset on the Lake from the boathouse bay window. Winks drove out with a "better than sex" chocolate cake and spent the evening with us.

We spent one more day with Susan's dad and then it was off to St. Michael with niece Leah, who had stayed behind on the Range when Laurie had to return home. On the way, we stopped off at the casino for a scrumptious lunch. Since it was a buffet there was too many choices, too much food as usual, and of course we left stuffed. Leah knew the backroads home so we made a timely arrival. Bob was asked to look at the family computers, since Laurie's laptop would no longer work in the kitchen area. A weak WiFi card combined with one of the two antennas being broken off the wireless transmitter caused low signal strength. Bob did what he could, updating the WinXP software to the latest version, installing a free antivirus program and cleaning out the viruses found.

Susan and Laurie went to local yard sales the next morning while Bob finished his software updating. We left for the airport around noon, returned our car by the 2:00 PM deadline, and were uneventfully flying home. Blue met us at the airport and returned us to our car. After shopping for food to restock our shelves, we arrived home to a miserably hot house and dreamed of those 60 degree days.

Participants: Susan & Bob Marley

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