Lanesboro & the Root River, MN

We left St. Paul on Sunday June 29, headed towards Lanesboro on the Root River. Bob had met a couple in Guatemala who spent their summers in Lanesboro and invited us to camp on their property. Bob had been trying to communicate with them by e-mail without success, forgetting that he had been using his Yahoo account in Canada. We headed down the Mississippi River, stopping at Frontenac State Park on Lake Pepin. We stopped to take a 2.7 mile hike along the top of the bluffs and down at riverside in an area that was famous with explorers for these bluffs. The rock formation at left was very important to the Native Americans in the area. In Winona we stopped to let Bob play 18 holes of disc golf while I caught up with family via telephone (including a talk with Beren in the hospital where he was recovering from surgery to repair a broken hip).

In Lanesboro we camped at the city park which was within walking distance of everything in Lanesboro. The first night a huge Monaco Coach parked next to us. The next night Roxie from the Twin Cities drove up in a Cadillac Escalade in which she sleeps and camps. She was getting a respite from caring for her husband who had acute kidney failure. She had the most amazing quantity of plastic boxes filled with things to camp (table, chairs, little fire pit, lights, etc.)

The first full day in Lanesboro we rented a 16' canoe and paddled down the Root River for 16 miles. The rental place drove us to the put in point after caravaning our cars to the take-out point. The Root River is really beautiful, good current, bluffs, cold water, and we saw two leatherback turtles. We paddled along, stopped twice to swim and eat lunch and after about four hours made it to the take-out point.

Lanesboro is the home of the Commonweal Theater, a regional professional theater. We got tickets for the Man of La Mancha Monday night. It was quite a good production. This is a musical and most of the voices were pretty good. The accompanyist, a pianist, was also an actor and there was the occasional accordion and percussion created with tin cups and plates.

On Tuesday we rented a CD for a self-guided tour of the Amish country near Harmony, which is just south of Lanesboro. The CD explained some things about Amish traditions and guided us to various farm stands and places were quilts, baskets, canned goods and other things were sold. I was initially annoyed at the fact that it was so focused on selling things, but it finally occurred to me that the only way the English (what the Amish refer to outsiders as) could come into a farm yard is if they are invited through the offers of things to buy. We bought some amazing baskets (which seem to be the specialties here), a large bunch of asparagus for $1, a beautiful head of broccoli for 75 cents, and some dill pickles. It was really quite interesting. At one farm a young man was cultivating the corn field with three large draft horses. The Amish plant their corn wider so that the horses can walk between the rows.

In the afternoon we went to Mystery Cave, a state park with the longest cave in Minnesota. There was a great tour which we went on with one other family with some very interested kids. This area is all limestone and in the area of the cave the Root River goes underground, through a terminal sink and flows through the rock to emerge at a place called Seven Springs.
As a result, the cave is very live with water. There are quite a few fossils in the cave of the predecessors of squids and beautiful ponds which are so clear they look only a few feet deep, when in fact they are 10' deep. When the river floods, or there is heavy rain upstream, the cave fills up. It did so only about 2 weeks before we were there. The floods were more severe than those in 2002. The formations are created by the water seeping through the limestone. Each time it floods, the floods erode some of the formations. We took the short one hour tour (though it actually lasted 1 1/2 hours). There are longer tours on the weekends and wild cave tours lasting 4 1/2 hours where you are outfitted with knee and elbow pads and helmets and LED head lamps (which have replace carbide lamps) to go into areas of the cave not on the tours. They are still mapping the cave.

We had intended to go out to dinner, but the restaurant was closed, so we bought a sirloin steak and BBQ'd it and had new potatoes and asparagus. Yummy! The next morning we went to the Pastry Shoppe, recommended by the guy in the Monaco Motor Coach. You go in and when you ask for a menu they tell you they have all the usual breakfast stuff and you just put together what you want. We ordered scrambled eggs (Bob runny, me well-done) and they came exactly as ordered. They were accompanied by delicious Danishes and caramel rolls. It's a definite must go and very inexpensive.

We hope to return to Lanesboro and can highly recommend it for people who like to bike (the 60 mile Root River trail), canoe or walk.
The other two photos are of the Root River and Darwin and I in the canoe (me sporting my dorky hat which does keep the sun off may face and neck.

James Hill & Summit Ave.

The reason we traveled relatively quickly across the Great Plains was that Bob wanted to compete in a disc golf tournament in St. Paul. On the day of the tournament, I dropped him off about 8 a.m. and Darwin and I headed into St. Paul. Because it was so early in the morning, none of the museums were open. To while away the time, we walked four about four miles along the Mississippi River. There were walkers and bikers and the view was sometimes pretty and sometimes reflected decaying industrial buildings. When 10 a.m. rolled around, I left Darwin in the back of the car in the parking structure and walked up the hill near St. Paul's Cathedral to Summit Avenue and the James Hill House and bought tickets for the house tour and an architectural tour of Summit Ave. I walked over to St. Paul's Cathedral to await the architectural tour. When I came out it was pouring rain and the tour was cancelled. Instead, I went on the James Hill house tour.

James Hill, born in Guelph, Ontario, came to St. Paul to work as a "mudder," unloading the barges that traveled up the Mississippi River to the falls in Minneapolis, where they had to be unloaded. He was careful with his money and with some backers began a transportation business. As a bachelor, he ate all his meals in a particular hotel where he met an Irish waitress, whom he married. She was a good Catholic and they had 10 children.

Hill and some different backers eventually purchased the almost bankrupt Northern Pacific RR and started to build it west into Canada. The Canadian government refused to let him continue into Canada, so he was forced to go west through Montana, eventually finding the lowest pass through the Rockies at the same place we drove through. The Northern Pacific and Hill were also trying to build railroads into southern BC, which caused Canadian companies to beat him at his game and construct the railroad that went through the Othello Quintette tunnels. Hill succeeded partly because he was a hands-on manager and was out supervising the actual construction of the railroad.

Ultimately he built the house, the back of a portion of which is shown in the top photo. The house is 36,000 square feet and was constructed between
1888 and 1891 and had all sorts of conveniences such as central heating, electric lights, etc. It was designed by a Boston firm and the central heating is still used (though the coal-fired boilers have been replaced with natural gas). The house includes an art room with a glass ceiling below which is hung a frame covered with fabric to protect the art from too much sun or to let additional sun in. That room also has a 1,600 rank organ (which was played by a volunteer organist since it was Saturday). The main hall alone is 2,000 square feet. The dining room ceiling is covered in gold leaf and had leather embossed "wallpaper" on the walls. It was actually not all that gaudy.

Hill, who knew to the penny how much he spent on the house, did not have a will (i.e. he died intestate). He died in 1916 and his wife continued to live in the house until her death in 1921. She also died intestate (no one knows why they didn't have wills given their emphasis on details elsewhere in their lives). After her death the kids tried to sell the house unsuccessfully and ultimately gave it to the Catholic Church which used it as a place to train nuns to teach in the parochial schools.

Eventually the Catholic Church got tired of the building and it was given to the Minnesota Historical Society. After the house tour, lunch at Cafe Latte, I returned to Summit Ave. too late for the tour. However, as I parked, I saw the group heading off down the street and Darwin and I joined in. Summit Ave, five miles in length, with the exception of about 40-60 houses, consists of original houses in various styles built between about 1855 and 1920. The docent-led tour was very informative. Summit Avenue, until about 15 years ago was a very run down area of town with a high crime rate and lousy schools. Many of these houses had been turned into apartments and the Catholic Church owned a whole bunch (which is probably what saved the neighborhood). A few brave urban pioneers began to buy up the houses dirt cheap and rehabilitate them. The other three photos are of some of the wonderful houses on Summit Avenue. The third photo of a duplex was built by two lawyers who were also partners in their law firm.

If you ever get to St. Paul, Summit Avenue is a must-see for anyone who loves old houses that have generally been painstakingly restored.

Badlands, SD

We approached the Badlands from the Black Hills by way of SD 44. This route goes between the north and south portions of the Badlands. The south portion is governed in cooperation with the Rosebud Sioux tribe. We got to Ceder Pass campground, a USFS campground near the visitor's center. It had flush toilets and water and places for people to camp, though there were few trees. Each picnic table had a sun and wind shelter (the wind comes predominantly from the south). This first photo is the view from the campground.

That night there was a ranger's talk. Things have changed since I was a child when the ranger sat around a campfire and gave a talk. Now they have screens with reverse projection of power point presentations. The temporary summer ranger, from Tennessee where he teaches school, gave a really interesting presentation on the Homestead Act of 1862. Lincoln proposed the act in order to have more persons sympathetic to the north populate the Louisiana Purchase. He waited until part way through the Civil War to suggest the act. Interestingly, only people who had taken up arms against the north were prohibited from participating.

That meant that women, blacks and foreigners could try to earn their 160 acres by improving 5 acres by farming for 5 years. In the Badlands 95% of the people failed because the land gets so little rain. In the middle of the talk it began to thunder and lightning and so it was cut short as we all ran towards our tents and trailers in the downpour.

The next morning Bob and I got up early to hike to the Notch, 1.2 miles round trip, before it got too hot. Since dogs are not permitted on any trail in a national park, we had to leave Darwin in the car. The trail was amazing, up through the formations, up a 40' ladder, across ledges and to a notch looking out on the White River. There was no one on the trail except us. The second phot is of the hike up the Notch.

The Badlands were formed from the broken down debris washed out of the Black Hills over millions of years. Eventually the land was covered with a shallow sea and when that disappeared about 500,000 years ago the rivers began to erode the land into the present formations.
They lose about 2" every year. After hiking to the Notch, we visited the Visitor's Center and headed out on the 31 mile road to Wall, SD. It had wonderful overlooks and the colors were amazing.

When we finally reached Wall we did not visit Wall Drug, but headed east on I-90 for about 125 miles before we headed off on blue highways to Hamilton Lake State Park on the SD-Minnesota border. It had a disc golf course.

Food on the Trail

This photo shows Bob's breakfast, also called the "Tower of Power." All of the food to the right of the bowls are what he has for breakfast: granola, almonds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, raisins, yogourt, milk or juice and fruit. To the left of the photo is my breakfast: musli with milk and fruit.

We have mainly eaten out of the trailer or at friends' houses. When we do eat out, we generally do so for breakfast. We have tried the following restaurants mentioned in "Road Food" by Jane and Michael Stern:

Stella's in Billings, MT (large cinnamon rolls and plate size pancakes)
Lange's Cafe in Pipeston, MN (gooey caramel rolls and the best sour cream raisin meringue pie)
Cafe Latte in St. Paul, MN (wonderful high class cafeteria food and amazing layer cakes)
Pie Company in Traverse City, MI (wonderful pies)

In addition, we have found a few gems ourselves:

La Tarasca in Centralia, WA (Michoacan food)
Blackbery Patch in Hungry Horse, MT (huckleberry pancakes)
Rock Cod Cafe in Cowichan, BC (yummy fish sandwiches)
Udder Guy in Cowichan, BC (amazing ice cream)
Old Vines Restaurant in Qualsgate Winery, Kelowna BC (very high class lunch, lamb burger, panini with chicken, goat cheese and pepino pesto)
Pastry Shoppe in Lanesboro, MN (breakfast without a menu, you simply tell them what you want, wonderful Danishes)

We're not suffering in the food department. We've also bought Cornish pasties in the Upper peninsula and smoked whitefish, artisinal cheese in the Okanagan, Wisconsin cheeses in Wisconsin.

Black Hills, SD

We camped in a USFS camp ground in the Black Hills where the camp hosts were from Texas. They told us they had decided to be the hosts with another couple, and the other couple copped out. They came May 10 and will stay until September 10 or so, work 6 1/2 days a week, often 10-12 hours per day cleaning the 58 campsites and the pit toilets. It's really hard work. Also at the campground we met this nice family from London, Ontario with two kids who could really throw Darwin's disc and were very enamoured with him. A match made in heaven. The lake had a sandy beach and Bob went swimming before dinner.

In the morning we decided to take a hike because I was finally over my cold and felt like I could take a serious walk. We went to Sylvan Lake in Custer State Park and took two walks. The first, 1.2 miles round trip was up to Little Devil's Tower. The area is granite and the view from the top (see photo at left) was wonderful. It was also finally a clear day. Darwin made it almost all the way to the top, but finally there was too big a step and we went on without him.


We then hiked a quarter mile over to Sylvan Lake and headed down Sunday Gulch. The lady at the Visitor's Center said that the first half of the hike went steeply down a canyon and the last half followed the road through the forest. We decided we would go only half way and return the same way. The trail had these metal guard rails (see photo at left) going down this very steep canyon. The water was quite high so in various places the concrete steps were covered with water. After going steeply down, the trail leveled out a little, then went down even more steeply. We finally turned around and came back up and went around the other side of Sylvan Lake to get a cold soda. It was about 2 p.m. and we were also hungry and the pizzas looked good, but we continued back to Snoopy, headed down the road to a picnic area and got out our lunch.

We have discovered that it is so easy to set Snoopy up, that instead of packing a lunch, we just stop and take everything out of the refrigerator and storage and make our lunch at a picnic table. Other than the few meals noted (from either "Road Food" or the "Road Tripping"), we've been cooking our meals. More on that later.
Sylvan Lake. This is a very popular place with paddle boats, kayaks, people fishing, peddle kayaks with outriggers, and people walking around the lake. The parking lot was packed. There's also a lodge nearby.

Courses I've Played II

I'd like to descrbe the last 3 courses I playe: The first as outside of Vernon, VC, was private, and was at the home of a very clever and congenial mana who constructed the course on his hillside home.  Some of the features I particularly enjoyed on this pay($5) to play course were: 27 holes of mostly short but sometimes very steep slope wooded disc golf course with a variety of targets including high propane tanks suspended from trees, a copper gong man he crafted and hung from another tree, and baskets and drain pipe and copper tonals.  All this was in the atmosphere of a local club where the businessmen and others  can come if they are invited, and out of towners are generally welcome.  The second day I played with them there was a tourrnament which occurs every Thursday after 4 PM.  Everybody pays 10 dollars and thereis prize money for the winners as well as a "player's pack of a shooter on the 18th (of 27) hole.  The night I played it was a cinnamon iquor of flavored whiskey and was very tasty.  My play was rushed and poor as i was held up by road construction on the long drive from our campsite on Lake Okenagon.

Saturday, June 28, 2 time zones to the east, I played in a one day tournament at St Paul, MN, the Kaposia Open, held at a course of same name, which i a 24 basket trip thru deeply cut forest near the mississippi River in S St Paul.  There were no other grand masters or senior grand masters in the am ranks for me to play with so I played with the pros of same age, and was a division of one, which I won with lousey scores, relatively speaking.  The course is very challenging and I met some interesting people including Richard Hasch, Chuck Kennedy, and Allen Hanson, who I expect to see in Kalamazoo for the ProAm Worlds in August.

The next day as we were going down the Mississippi Bluff highway to the Root River Valley town of Lanesboro, we went thru Winona, which has a lakeside course with water hazards, significant wind, many OB possibilities, and varied length holes.  I'm not playing up to the level I did last year and I suppose I may need to accept that, but for now, I'm designing remedial programs to spiff up my long shot accuracy and do a bit better with up shots as well.  I was so impressed with Gene Fackler's roller and then John Ross's roller, that I'm working with those shots.  Here in the midwest, the courses are more manicured and suitable for this shot.

Tomorrow we will go to Wisconsin and I'm going to try the La Crosse course which is well-regarded in my PDGA directory of courses, where incidentally, directions etc to these courses are available.

Out of the Rockies

We left BC and got as far as Hungry Horse, east of Glacier National Park. There we camped at Lost Johnny USFS campsite and woke up the next morning having to get all the way to Billings. We ate breakfast at Blackberry Patch in Hungry Horse (recommended in the Road Tripping Across America guide), initially concerned because there wasn't a soul in the restaurant. Despite our initial impressions, the food was excellent. As we headed up US 2 across the south end of Glacier National Park, we ended up in the middle of an Airstream caravan. The views were awesome and whetted our appetite to come back without a dog and go back packing. The route follows the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad (more on that later) through the lowest pass in the Rockies at a mere 5,200 feet. Coming out of Glacier we started down US 89 down the east side of the Rockies. For miles and miles you see the snow-covered Rockies over rolling green pasture.
In Great Falls we stopped at the USFS Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. Great Falls was where Lewis and Clark had to make an 18 mile portage around five water falls. The interpretive center was really wonderful. It had lots of interactive exhibits so that you could determine what you would have done in the same situation. It also had a lot of material on the Native Americans encountered along the way. Just down the Missouri River is Giant Springs State Park, which you can walk to along the sides of the Missouri. There are swallows nesting in the rocks, people fishing for rainbow trout, Canada Geese and cool breezes off the river.

Giant Springs is located right next to the Missouri River and Lewis and Clark noted it in their writings. It flows at 150 million gallons/day. The water enters from the Little Belt Mountains, quite a distance away and after 50 years emerges at the Giant Springs. It is clear (see the view of the plants growing in about 7 feet of water below, cold (54 degrees) and there are very large rainbow trout swimming around in it. The water is 400 feet underground at this point, but because it is under so much pressure, it forces its way up through the rocks.

We then headed on to Billings, stopping to have the oil changed and tires rotated (so we keep our warranty). The next morning we tried our first "Road Food" restaurant, Stella's (famous for enormous cinnamon rolls and plate sized pancakes). We didn't try the cinnamon rolls, but the pancakes were great. I get the feeling that Jean and Michael Stern, the authors really go in for pies, pancakes and cinnamon rolls and other sweets.

Tues June 17,2008. 7:52 AM

Sitting here on a picnic table in our Manning Provincial Park campground is a cool but lovely place to greet the world.  We've come up from Vancouver Island, at sea level to 3200 feet or so and the air is bright and crisp.  I've got to eat breakfast right now, but I'll be right back.

     OK, now I'm back with granola and homemade rhubarb sauce, nuts and seeds etc in my tummy and feeling even better.

Since leaving the confines of Corvallis, I've been able to play disc golf in a few places.  I hd two intensive days in the rain with John Ross at Milo McGiver, in Estacada, and then a day at Pier Park in Portland, all while Wendy was becoming mor erudite about folk and classical music at Reed College.  

     Then as we traveled north to the Olympic Penninsula, I hit a course just south of Port Townsend which was only 8 baskets, but growing and very pleasant and technical, albeit with rather short fairways, at HJ Carroll Pk in Chimacum.

     After arriving at sister Helen and bor-in-law Bill's place in Maple Bay, near Duncan on Vancouver Island, I played the Malahat course north of Victoria once, and found it to be rough, hilly, and neglected.  I talked to the proprietress of the establishment, who told me that she couldn't compete with the free courses and planned to sell the place and move back to Victoria from the mountain location.  I don't think there will be a Malahat course much longer.

Much more positive was my experience in Nanaimo, north of Duncan, where I played 36 holes each on two separate days.  This course at the Bowen Sport Complex on a large tract of wooded, hill, mowed land was a great combination of technical challenge and the occasional longer hole.  No hole was a simple straight shot, with trees in play to challenge the skills of all.  Some would fault it for having too many shorter holes, but of course, I'm not one of those.

I'm planning to play in a one day tournament in St Paul, MN, the Kaposia Open, on June 28th and there is a course in Vernon BC that I expect to take in tomorrow.  Overall, it is a lot of fun trying the different courses andseeing how I can do on each of them.  I haven't lost a disc yet, although there have been some searches required.

I'll give you an update on my disc adventures after the 28th.

Hotel Ymir & an Amazing Art Collection

On Sunday morning in Nelson, after raining hard all night, it continued to rain. Bob and I had looked at the distance we had to travel to get to St. Paul for his disc golf tournament the following Saturday. Unless we wanted to simply drive like heck, we decided we should leave a day early. We had planned to do a serious hike in Kootenai Glacier Provincial Park, but a check of the website revealed that it was still snowed in.

We decided to provision ourselves for the next week and headed off to the local Safeway. When we returned we met Helen and Bill driving off in the opposite direction. We discovered that Helen had left her tennis shoes in our car, so after we hooked up Snoopy we went looking for them. We thought they might have gone to mass, so went past the Catholic Church in Nelson. They weren't there. So, we headed off.

As we were driving south on BC Highway 3, we saw a sign from Ymir (pronounced Eemir) and remembered that Helen and Bill wanted to look at an old hotel there. We turned off, found the hotel and saw their rig parked across the street.

We went looking for them, but couldn't find them. Finally, they appeared out of the bottom of this hotel. Helen knew the man who owned the hotel (he used to own a nursery near Duncan, B.C.). HansWilking, 76, from near Bremen Germany is a very serious art collector. He bought the hotel because he was looking for a large house in which to display his collection. The hotel is crammed with art on every surface, all original. No smoking allowed and it is protected by all sorts of video cameras. Every room has art on all the walls, the dining room is filled with art from the Polynesian islands. It turns out that he is an expert on Hawaiian art, and has served as an expert witness in various forged art trials. His taste is really good and his pictures are loaned to major museums all over the US. He has met all sorts of famous folks, including Jaqueline Onnasis who was a real fan of Richard Priest (Hans has the largest collection of Richard Priest paintings in the world, over 250). After we looked at the collection in the hotel, we were admiring a black and white picture by a modern NY painter (he collected a lot of modern art) and Hans commented that he had three more paintings by the same artist in Salmo.

Off we went to Salmo to see the rest of his collection. He bought the Knights of Pithias Hall there and it is filled with his painting, even on the ceiling. The three large black paintings on the left wall in this painting are of from that artist. The wall is covered with Richard Priest paintings. Hans is the white-haired gentleman in the red and black coat in the foreground. In and amongst the paintings are floor lamps, chairs, and bedspreads from the hotel. However, the place is all climate controlled and protected by the same kind of security. The collection is apparently worth millions and he's also a very wealthy man, though a real curmudgeon (very few people like him). He's hard of hearing, but a real character. He likes to talk and it was difficult to get away.

If you are ever in southern BC, you should go to the Hotel Ymir (rooms with shared bath $29/night, $39/night for rooms with a private bath). Ymir itself was a mining town and is along a river with great trout fishing.

The top painting is the original of the mural in Chemainus. The bottom photo was simply of a painting I liked, sitting on the floor. An amazing place.