Monthly Archives: November 2009

We were tour guides today!

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Laurie and I were tour guides today as we welcomed her friend Jean-Luc into town and introduced him to our trail route along the Lake Bemidji waterfront.

As weather goes, it was rather unpleasant – but we had good company! And some nice conversations, even if one of us always seemed to be misunderstanding another.

Our trek began downtown and, then, as we reached Paul and Babe, Laurie had to ask Jean-Luc for a favor:

Yep, Laurie has shoe-tying difficulties.

Laurie: "It’s not that I can’t tie my shoes. It’s just that I don’t…"

Me: "Tie them correctly?"

Laurie: "Yes."

She apparently ties her shoes in an unconventional manner. It usually doesn’t matter, but her walking shoes are especially finicky and often come untied. (I tied her shoes about two weeks ago and she said they stayed tied for weeks, so I must tie shoes in the "right" way. ***See me smile oh-so-proudly.***)

Anyhow, we took Jean-Luc along the trail and showed him all sorts of notable sights.

Starting with the location of where Laurie so infamously "lost" her keys a few weeks ago:

Then Laurie explained the difference between our two wall routes. Laurie prefers the "downstairs" location, where she can just sidestep the stone wall without hopping the wall:

She does not like the "upstairs" site where we hope over the wall:

Jean-Luc didn’t find traversing the wall very difficult at all. In fact, he said he could get over the wall by "zero-stepping" it, which I took to mean hurdling. But the ground was rather damp today and we didn’t really challenge him to prove it. Maybe next time…

We had lots of conversations today! Laurie knows each my and Jean-Luc pretty well, but Jean-Luc and I have only met a few times. So we had a nice time.

At one point Laurie remarked that there is a lot of trash on the ground and that we should start bringing a garbage bag to pick it up.

Me: "Yeah, that’s what I want to do. I already pick up after the kid and the husband. I want to pick up after other people, too."

To which Jean-Luc recalled a story about a family he knows. The children and husband were making their real-life family into a computerized version on a SIMS game. The husband asked the wife why she wasn’t taking part.

Jean-Luc, offering the wife’s response: "I am already doing that in real life."

We eventually made our way to Diamond Point Park. 

I got this picture of Laurie and Jean-Luc. And, I have to say, I absolutely love this shot.

Interestingly, there are two points, though, that I should add about the binoculars.

First, I wondered whether the designers planned it so that they directly faced the Bemidji Regional Event Center on the opposite shore (before realizing that Diamond Point was finished before the south shore location of the BREC was chosen, if I remember correctly).

And, secondly, that Jean-Luc looked in the right end of the binoculars on his first try (unlike Laurie who once couldn’t figure out why nothing looked any bigger when she looked in them! … Then I turned them around and they "worked"!)

***

Today’s Puzzler:

 

***

The answer from yesterday, as Sarah correctly answered, is St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. Nice job!

Happy Thanksgiving!

- Bethany

Can we quote you on that?

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This poor squirrel had little chance against me. The only tree in his vicinity was only about 8 feet tall, so he could not — as a squirrel did earlier in today’s walk — skitter far above my head and out of range of my not-very-good 5X zoom lens.

It’s sad that my good camera — a Canon S5 IS — broke just before we started this blog in June. I would have loved to follow squirrels and geese and seagulls, and even ferocious miniature doberman pincers, with that great 12X zoom that once gave me a crystal-clear shot of Babe’s eye, complete with cobwebs. Sigh.

Speaking of birds, we saw a black bird today that I wondered whether it was a crow or a raven.

"I think it’s a crow," Bethany said. "It’s black."

Me: "So are ravens."

Bethany: "It sounds like a crow."

We have such scientific reasoning.

This afternoon, after education reporter and outdoors afficionado Anne Williams told me some fascinating wildlife information that I’ve already forgotten, I told her she should have a blog.

"Nah — everyone already knows this stuff."

Not everyone! Anne’s educated, experienced and enthusastic observations about the world around her would make a great blog.

But back to us uneducated folks. (Note: today’s blog features FOUR quotes!)

Bethany had an interview shortly after our walk, so we picked up the pace for the last few blocks.

"Maybe we should do this all the time," I said after a while, huffing and puffing a bit.

"Notice we haven’t been talking this whole time," Bethany retorted.

It’s not like we *can’t* talk during brisk walks; it’s just that we’re busy concentrating on walking and forget to make the extra effort it takes to talk during a more energetic pace.

Here’s a photo of Bethany’s cute new hair! She got 8 inches cut off — enough for Locks of Love — and went back to blonde with lots of highlights. The color in this photo is a little off; I meant to take some outside, but forgot. This was taken at the Bemidji Fire Hall, where a firefighter noticed her new ‘do and complimented her on it.

"See, guys do notice," he said.

 Isn’t this a cool mailbox? I wonder if my landlords would let me paint mine!

Here’s today’s mystery photo!

Our last photo has taken a while to be officially identified. Bethany had to take Thursday and Friday off, and I opted out on Monday because I was out of town. On the other hand, Jeff correctly guessed it as a cookie jar from Raphael’s Bakery and Cafe and Sarah added a trivia question. Cool use of the comment section!

Tomorrow we will have a guest as my friend from Montreal, who will be arriving tonight, joins us. We hope to show Jean-Luc the dirt trail along Lake Bemidji if the weather cooperates. The forecast says snow in morning and 32 degrees and cloudy at noon, when we walk, so we shall see. It would be nice to have one last trail walk.

Take care!

– Laurie

 

Day off again

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Bethany is off doing fun stuff, so we’re taking a little time off from walking.

And, as we’ve made it clear in the past, each of us seems to lack the ability to walk without the other. :)

So for today is a bonus picture of a walk I took last weekend with my 8-year-old granddaughter, Jada.

We saw this tiny nest nestled (ooh, good choice of words) into a bush downtown. I don’t remember exactly where, but it was probably along Third Street. We wondered if it had actually been used as a nest at that level, but we figured someone probably picked it up and tucked it in there. I can’t imagine a mother bird raising her babies at arm’s length from people bustling past.

Have a great weekend!

– Laurie

Back to the basics

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After yesterday’s fiasco, we stuck closer to home.

Above, Bethany is petting our favorite cat, the black-and-white kitty we see sometimes along our route near downtown, joined this time by another friendly kitty from across the street who seemed quite at home:

Bethany took such a pretty picture yesterday of the sun shining through the trees, so when I saw this sight I just had to try for a little sunshine, too.

Yesterday’s hour-and-a-half walk burned far more calories than today’s did. When we’re walking along the sidewalks, we don’t get as energetic as when we’re in more rustic areas. We get distracted by people, animals, holiday decorations, whatever, and we don’t keep up the pace as much as we should. But in our ever-present quest to lose weight, we keep discussing the possibilities of mixing the walks (which we really enjoy) with other more fast-faced activities, including some cardio stuff we could just do in my living room, where I have Tae Bo tapes and other exercise videos that without a partner end up collecting dust. We have been weighing in on Fridays in my kitchen and we’re hoping for positive results. Keep your fingers crossed for us and feel free to pass along suggestions!

"That would be a great climbing tree," Bethany said as I took this photo.

Heck, you wouldn’t even have to figure out how to get up. A couple of steps and you’re up there and ready to pick which direction you want to go. It’s an awesome tree.

We’ve been walking by this house for months, watching the renovations take shape. It looks like it’s just about done. I love the windows, especially with the black trim.

Here’s today’s mystery photo. Is this too easy? We shall see.

We’ve been using Bethany’s camera for the past couple of days because my card reader broke, but I ran over to Target tonight and bought a $16 reader, so here’s a photo of the sun on Lake Irving from Monday that we couldn’t get off the card until just now (I’m updating this late Wednesday night):

Take care!

– Laurie

A new direction … just don’t ask me which one

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Some walks we just won’t ever forget. Today’s was one of them. I wouldn’t say we got lost as much as we just ended up really, really, really far from Laurie’s house downtown.

So, let’s begin.

We decided to try a new route today. So we headed toward a trail downtown (which I believe is the East-West Trail, if I’m not mistaken) and west, I think. (I’m terrible at directions, sorry.)

It was a nice little introductory walk. We saw this hive:

And we walked for a little ways, until we reached Fifth Street.

 

Laurie: "I guess this would be the end of the trail."

So we went backward a little ways and hopped the railroad tracks until we found a secondary trail. Well, we think it must have been a trail, anyway. But maybe a very narrow road? We’re really not sure.

We saw some pretty cattails:

And a not-so-nice-reminder that winter is on its way:

When this trail ended, we weren’t sure what to do. Laurie does not enjoy walking back the same way we came (neither do I), so we decided to walk along Jefferson and see if we came upon another trail.

We passed this memorial, which I was supposed to crop down for our Puzzler today, but the picture didn’t turn out so well.

We didn’t find a trail. But we did come upon South Lake Irvine Drive Southwest. We figured that it would possibly, maybe loop around the lake toward downtown.

Um, no.

But we saw lots of nice houses and came up by Roger Lehmann Park, which I hadn’t seen before. But I was excited to see the tennis courts. Laurie liked the basketball court.

Laurie: "I have a basketball!"

Me: "On you?!"

Laurie: "Um, no."

So we just kept walking.

We saw several sets of the season’s first Christmas decorations:

And ended up eventually crossing over the river:

But by that point, we realized we were in a bit of  trouble. We weren’t anywhere near where we thought we would end up. In fact, we were closer to the Pioneer offices than Laurie’s house.

Me: "You know now I said I would be shocked if we made it to your place by 1:30? Well, it’s officially 1:30 now and we’re not anywhere near where we thought we’d be."

So … we called in reinforcements. Cell phones are terrific! I called co-worker Anne and left her a message. She called me back a few minutes later and located our position on the map. By then — after 90 minutes of walking — Laurie and I had reached the intersection of 18th Street and Lakeview Drive.

We decided to sit down and wait for Anne.

To explain just how confused and turned around we were by this point would be difficult unless you knew just how directionally challenged I am. Left, right, all that I get. It’s the east, west, north, south directions I have problems with. All I knew was Lake Irving was our our left and apparently Highway 2 somehow ended up on our right.I mean, we didn’t even know if Anne would be coming down the street to our right or the left.

Needless to say, we were both really thankful when we finally saw this:

Anne had arrived. Yay for Anne! Seriously.

So, I’m sorry I don’t have a Puzzler for you today. Especially since we didn’t have one yesterday either. But I’m sure that after today, we’ll be sticking to the core downtown area again tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’ve got to find a map.

Thanks for reading!
– Bethany  

All the world’s a sunny day, Oh yeah

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Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away

Well, I have an Olympus and it’s digital, not Kodachrome, but Paul Simon’s lyrics fit today, I think, as the blue skies made up for a rather nippy day. A sunny day in autumn makes it that much more clear there’s still some left of the greens of summer.

Unfortunately, the photos from said Olympus are inaccessible at the moment because my card reader broke. Literally. As in the receptacle for the standard USB cord broke off the circuit board and was loose inside the universal card reader. The reader we have at work has trouble with my 4GB high-capacity SD card, so I can’t access the photos, at least for now. When I do, I’ll probably do a bonus blog.

They look like decent photos, too, including one of the sun gleaming off the surface of Lake Irving.

But for now, I’m using some extra fall photos from a couple of weeks ago, including a couple of happy "families":

We don’t have a new mystery photo since it’s on the SD card still, but I can tell you that Friday’s photo was from the sign outside People’s Church.

Have a great week!

– Laurie

And we’re back downtown

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After all the fun of yesterday’s walk, we returned downtown today. We walked the route that we have usually been walking when it is raining (or snowing). As much as we love our lakeside trail, I fall on dry land. I try to avoid wet hiking trails whenever possible.

We had a nice time, which was made possible due to Mother Nature, who again decided to let us stay (mostly) dry.

Today’s quote, from me: "It was really nice that it decided to stop raining in time for our walk."

Laurie: "Yeah, we’ve had a lot of luck with that."

We really have been super fortunate these past months. We’ve been rained on once or twice, but only one of those times was really miserable. For whatever reason, the rain has just more or less stopped during our noontime walks. It’s odd.

What is interesting, to me anyway, about our walks is that no matter how many times we’ve walked the same route, we always find something new and interesting. It could be a house we didn’t notice before or a garden that seemed to "pop" overnight. While some days, like yesterday, are certainly more exciting and noteworthy than others, we don’t often have any "blech" days.

Today was no exception.

We walk by the above house, for instance, all the time. But either the rain or something else brought out some more color in the leaves around the trellis. It’s just really beautiful. (It could also be that during the summer there are a lot of other colors outside competing for our attention that this pretty archway has just gone unnoticed.) Whatever the reason, it made us smile.

We also encountered some rather friendly creatures today.

First was this squirrel, who despite the odd noises s/he was making, was quite unafraid of us. S/he was just happily chewing away on a nut, I think.

Then, there was this bird, which Pioneer Editor Molly Miron later identified as a female downy woodpecker. I had stopped to take our puzzler picture (see further below) and the bird was just hopping along a tree trunk. She flew off right afterward, so it’s not the best picture, but Laurie and I aren’t often able to catch animals on camera. Unless they’re geese. We’re pretty good at geese.

Today’s Puzzler is….

Yesterday’s answer, as Jeff correctly answered, is that the sign was taken along the Paul Bunyan Trail near the Mississippi River bridge.

Have a great weekend!
- Bethany
 

P.S. And, really (?!), no one knows what the crosswalk guy is saying? (From two days ago.) *Sigh* I was really hoping someone would be able to answer that for us … it drives me crazy.

 

Crossing over to the other side

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We were excited to walk today, because we had the opportunity to get together with our pal Michelle, the former education reporter at the Pioneer.

Michelle had suggested to us a while back that we go walking along the south shore of Lake Bemidji, but we never got around to it. Unfortunately, we thought of it yesterday, after two beautiful days, and connected with Michelle this morning, on a gloomy, rainy day. But it was still fun going down the Paul Bunyan Trail. Michelle and Bethany drove to my house and we rode with Michelle to the spot in Nymore to walk from.

I noticed right away that we were keeping up a pretty fast pace — I really had to work to keep up! It wasn’t until after Michelle left that Bethany mentioned the same thing. I had thought it was just me keeping up with her and Michelle, but Michelle was totally the leader!

It was cool to catch up, and to take a different route. The lake was so misty it was sort of like being on the ocean. We couldn’t make out any landmarks on the other side. We’ll have to try it again on a sunny day.

The walk was so much quieter than we’re used to, since our bit of rustic occurs only on the dirt trail, which is only part of our walk and which we don’t use on a wet day like today. Few houses, only one other walker, one chirpy bird that my guess, for whatever reason, was kingfisher. Having Googled the bird, I would say belted kingfisher. The bird had a head kind of like a blue jay (but was darker, like gray or black), and kingfisher stuck in my head.

That, of course, is not at all scienctific. For that, we would need Anne, Michelle’s replacement as education reporter, who has also walked with us and regaled us with her knowledge of wildlife. We kept saying "We need Anne." The one who can tell us all about juvenile bald eagles.

I took this picture to show Anne to ask her what the green stuff was. Of course, she knew right away it was lichen.

"It works in a symbiotic relation with algae."

That just made me blink, so she then looked up lichen for me and showed me a bunch of pictures (she determined it was probably foliose lichen), emailed me a couple of Web pages, and dug up the story of Freddy Fungus, who took a lichen to Annie Algae. (There were many bad puns in there. But I love puns.)

"It’s really cool if you take a magnifying glass up to a tree," Anne said. "There’s a whole forest of lichen."

Anne gets so excited about all things outdoors. I’m jealous of her enthusiasm!

But enough about Anne. We don’t want Michelle to be jealous. :)

(They haven’t actually met yet, but I’m sure they’d like each other.)

Here’s a picture that shows the rocky shore and the foggy horizon.

And here’s an example of the bright, beautiful green colors we saw.

A view of the Mississippi River toward the Lake Street bridge.

We had a great time with Michelle! If we’d had all day, we could have walked all around the lake, but work beckoned, so at some point we had to turn around and go back to the car.

We didn’t forget about the How Well Do You Know Bemidji? game, but for anyone who knows the trail, it probably will be pretty easy:

Our last mystery photo was of Bangsberg Fine Arts Center at Bemidji State University.

Happy trails!

– Laurie

Warm weather, talking crosswalks and Bob Dylan

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Today would be such a gorgeous day to just sit outside and read. I saw this woman outside of Bemidji State University and was completely jealous! Not that I wasn’t enjoying our rather grueling hike today (yeah, the trail is much more demanding than our recent sidewalk treks), but I have a book sitting on my countertop at home that I haven’t touched in two days. And I would like to finish it!

It was actually a wonderful walk today. The views from the trail were beautiful, as always. We were actually quite surprised by the vibrancy of all the greenery we saw. In some cases, the leaves and bushes looked like springtime green, although we know that’s highly unlikely.

It’s hard to believe that it won’t be long before everything is white…

***

Whenever we head to the trail, twice we must cross Paul Bunyan Drive. We always chuckle at the man who "talks" to you while preparing to cross the street. He tells you to wait and, then, when it is time to walk, he tells you to do so. But no matter how hard we try, we can’t figure out what his exact words are.

Today’s quote, from me: "I do find it somewhat embarrassing that for two people who listen and quote people for a living that after six months of listening to that guy we still have no idea what he’s saying."

I’ve always thought he is saying, "Paul Bunyan. It is now safe to cross Paul Bunyan." But that doesn’t really match up.

Laurie today thought she heard, "Paul Bunyan. The walk sign is on Paul Bunyan."

But neither really seems to match up to what the guy is saying. And it’s frustrating. So if any of you better-hearing people can enlighten us as to what the words are, Laurie and I would be incredibly thankful.

On a related note, we did laugh last week when we heard the new talking crosswalk/signal light on Irvine Avenue. She (that one is female) pronounces the roadway Ir-VINE.

***

We also saw some interesting signs along our walk today, which are always welcome. We love seeing new things since we usually walk familiar routes.

The first (outside Hair Teasers) was one of two signs we saw regarding Veterans Day.

The second (outside of Glazed & Amused, which also had a Veterans sign) was a nice reminder of the upcoming holiday season, although I must say that with weather like this, it’s hard for me to think of Christmas right now! Also, I have a birthday coming up and I’m fairly self-absorbed, so I don’t think about buying other people gifts until I get my own! (I’m kidding … mostly.)

***

Today’s puzzler is…

The answer from Monday, as Jeff correctly guessed, is that the artwork is a Bob Dylan mosaic, named "Answers," outside on the corner of Third Street and Irvine Avenue. The artist who made the statue is Nancy Miller.

Have a great day!
- Bethany