My friend Mary and I recently had a LOVELY weekend away from home. She is also interested in photography, so we planned to explore - and document in pictures - the south (of MN) a bit. The beauty of the trip is that we did absolutely no planning whatsoever. Now you all know that I love to plan things WAY more than the average person, but I also tire of being a slave to Rose's specific schedule every day. So I was looking forward to
not having to eat EXACTLY at 6pm that night, for example. I reveled in our spontaneity: eating when hungry, lingering out of the house over nap time, staying up of the house "late" (i.e., past 7pm), etc. As you'll see from the photos, it was WONDERFUL!!
We started by driving south to Red Wing. It's a city I'd driven through (and window shopped) a couple times before, but I'd never hiked the
huge bluff overlooking the city. The views were definitely worth the effort!
Next we headed a little further downstream on the mighty Mississippi, to the lovely town of Wabasha. I had been there once before for the State Bass Fishing Tournament, but at that point most of my time was spent down by the docks. This time Mary and I got to tour the International
Eagle Center! It was everything I had hoped for and more. There were gorgeous eagles that we were within arm's reach of...
...the building itself was beautiful...
...and the exhibits were interesting and informative.
Best of all, we got to attend a Live Eagle Program. We got there "only" about 10 minutes before it was scheduled to start, and the classroom was already PACKED. The only two remaining seats were in the very front row - lucky us!!! The speaker, who also happened to be the center's education director, did a fabulous job of sharing a wealth of information in a way that was easily accessible for all ages.
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| the backyard of the eagle center |
By this time it was about 2:30pm, and both of us had growling tummies. So we backtracked a bit and ate lunch at a little place up the river:
Read's Landing Pub. Even though neither Mary nor I drink beer, we both agreed that a brew pub is generally a good purveyor of tasty food - and we were right! Delicious!
After lunch we headed further downstream again, toward the town of Winona. I had never been there before, and I was totally captivated by the stunning bluffs and meandering river. Sadly, I was driving so I have no photos of said images!
Mary and I wanted to do something interesting in the Winona area before he headed toward our B&B, so she did some google searches to find out
what options we had. Oddly, touring various banks seemed to be the most common attractions?!? And sadly, "Winona Knits" did not exist, much to Mary's dismay (she had been convinced that a special knitting store was the main tourist attraction for the city!), but we selected what we thought would be the next best thing:
Pickwick Mill.
Neither Mary nor I knew anything about the milling process, so we somewhat grudgingly agreed to pay $5 each to tour the place, in the hopes of developing some expertise - or at least passing knowledge - by the time we left. Despite watching a horrifically dated 20-min video cassette (narrated by none other than Buster Bluth), we two educated people (with a PhD and an MD between us) left with the basic understanding that wheat goes into the bottom level, then gets lifted to the top, then there's something to do with millstones, and there's some dangerous dust, and then it gets packed into precisely weighted flour bags. Oh, and the water wheel is pretty powerful.
Huh.
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| Needless to say, we did not purchase the video. |
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| We had no idea what we were looking at, but the machinery was still rather fascinating. |
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| And the building itself was beautiful. |
One fun part of seeing so much water was being able to play around with the shutter speed on my camera. Usually I focus on the aperture (making things blurry vs. not in the background), but with the shutter speed one can make water droplets vs. sheets.
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| fast shutter speed |
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| slow shutter speed |
I continued experimenting with shutter speed by the stream as well.
Fun! I still think I'm more interested in focusing more on aperture, but this was an interesting diversion. :)
Finally, we drove through Winona and made our way across the river and upstream a bit to Alma. What a cute little town!
The town is situated right next to
Lock and Dam #4, so the running joke seems to be that it's the "best town by a dam." We saw several such signs, of which here is but one example:
After we unpacked a bit in the
Hotel Deville and ate a delicious meal at
Tansy's, we walked down to take a closer look at the lock and dam and to watch the sunset from the bridge over the traintracks.
And what incredible timing because we also got to see a HUGE barge pass through!! The skill of the barge driver (is that what you call the person - a driver??) was incredible - there must have been only a couple feet of clearance on each side, and he maneuvered with such skill. As someone who can barely parallel park my tiny car with 5' of clearance, I was quite impressed with his superior visuospatial abilities.
An incredible evening, to be sure.
The next day we both happened to wake early, and we opted for an early walk around the bluffs above Alma. (As an aside, we nearly got killed twice on the drive up to these bluffs, the first as I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a deer running across the road, and the second as I had to quickly throw the car into reverse as a HUGE sanitation truck cut the corner as he was turning onto my road. Yikes!)
We then had a delicious breakfast at
Pier 4 Cafe (incidentally, the "Best Breakfast & BBQ by a Dam Site") and then headed out of town.
The ride up the WI side of the river was just as picturesque as the ride down the MN side. We stopped for another
bluff hike near Stockholm, WI (another quaint and charming town along the river!!), and this time I focused more on macro-style photography. But since I don't have a macro lens, this was the best I could do.
And then it was back to real life in the big city again! Huge thanks to my friend Mary for the lovely weekend!!
BTW, she also posted her own review of our trip on her blog. I highly recommend that you check it out :
http://simplymessingabout.blogspot.com/2015_05_31_archive.html She is a stunning photographer, and she also posted an awesome video of the barge going through the dam. Check it out!
