Day in the Life of an Idiot

 
Image: Baptisia lactea (White Wild Indigo) in Afton State Park

It got warmer today than I was expecting (85 F / 29 C) so we didn't do as much hiking as we might have usually, especially since Afton State Park is largely open prairie. Which is to say that the sun was beating down on us pretty harshly. As we started out we ran into a couple who were clearly park enthusiasts. They overheard me grumbling lightly that I couldn't parse the map very well and they offered to advice. What did I want to see?  My answer: honestly, anything interesting!  So, they sized us up (Mason = indoorsy, long-haired nerd + me = fat middle-aged lady) and suggested the river with the caveat: "You do go down a long way." Which I immediately understood to mean, "And that will be tough coming back up."

We decided to brave it, anyway.

So, following the directions offered, we headed down the path. The first thing we encounters was this lovely observation deck, which Mason is modeling for you:


Image: Mason overlooking at the overlook. 

We followed the path down a very steep set of stairs and met many people in presumed better shaped than I am (their outward shape: more thin and pencil-like, mine being more like a comfy pillow) huffing and wheezing up the stairs.  Undaunted, we continued on across a high bridge that overlooked a small stream. Mason's eagle eyes caught sight of a grazing deer.  We stopped and watched her for a long time. At least one other set of adventurers came past us and we tried to get their attention, but they seemed decidedly uninterested in the wildlife around them. I fully believe that State Parks are for everyone, even the casual user, or the person who might just be looking for exercise, but I'm still always a little surprised when people blank you or actively say 'no' when you offer the question, "Do you want to see a deer [or other, fill the blank cool natural thing???]" 

But after the deer wandered out of sight, we continued onward to the beach.

There were a lot of people picnicking or taking advantage of the warm weather to swim. We saw several boats out on the water, as well.


Image: the St. Croix at Aspen

I had wanted to dip my toes in to cool off, because despite all the things that I had prepared in my hiking backpack the TWO THINGS that I forgot were actually deeply critical: water bottles and THE BUG SPRAY. Afton has warnings on their website about the sheer number of mosquitos that have hatched this year, so I can not believe I was so dumb as to leave the BUG SPRAY IN THE CAR. Second, we had stopped for a lunch before taking off for our hike/drive and neglected to remember to buy a couple of bottles of water for the backpack. I was really starting to feel a bit desperate for relief from the heat. However. I didn't end up putting my toes in because at the point I thought to do it, we had passed the sandy section of the shoreline and were nearer the less groomed, more mucky bits. Alas!

After a bit of a wander there, we headed back. We really missed the bug spray on the way back because when we returned to the bridge, we saw the deer again. She had returned (or possibly never left, being unafraid of unobservant passers-by) and was very near an alternate path we could see below. We decided to try out luck at getting close, but some a$$hole bird cried out in warning as we approached.

Seriously, we were whispering and trying to move stealthily, a bird of some kind made two very clear high-pitched BEEP, BEEPs in warning. She did it again when we had the river in sight. So, that bird was a legit narc.

This close to the little river the mosquitos, which have always found Mason tasty, swarmed. So, we tried to hightail it (not whitetail it, because she was long gone) up back to the regular path. 

Which is where I met my old enemy....


Image: STAIRS!!!

These were not Devil's Kettle level stairs, but... oh boy, on a hot day, I had to take my inhaler twice!  Plus, my hair is still kind of moist, despite being home and virtually unmoving for several hours now. 

However, we were rewarded at the top, near the Interpretive Center, by a park ranger with a telephoto lens pointed at an osprey nest. There was a family (of humans, with with small children) gathered near the lens, so even though I happened to be peeking through just as one of the bird parents returned with prey, I quickly handed it back to the smalls so they could see activity in the nest. So, I never saw the babies, at least not exactly, but I did see that the brave hunter parent brought something furry home for dinner!  (Probably just as well that I got murder cam, and the kids got baby cam, as it were, you know??)

Mason also did a bunch of driving, so I would say that the outing was a win. 

 
Image: The vista of the Kettle River from the trail at St. Croix State Park.

Mason woke up on Monday with a hankering for a spontaneous road trip. Unfortunately, he had an appointment that day with his urologist at United for a final check-in on his hydronephrosis (a condition he was born with, which was actually spotted in the womb.) He has not had any problems with it his whole life, but we have faithfully had it checked at least once every two years since he was born. He came away with a clean bill of health again, but still desirous of a hiking adventure somewhere.

Thus, we decided to have a planned spontaneous trip yesterday. 

The only part we "planned" was that we would leave as soon as was reasonable after Mason woke up on Tuesday and be back some time that same evening. We were slightly limited by how far away from the city we could go, but when Shawn said that we didn't have to worry about being home before dinner, suddenly even more possibilities opened up. 

I have a book that Shawn bought me for some gift-giving occasion (my birthday? Solstice?) but, regardless, it is an annotated guide to Minnesota State Parks. I also have a book about day trips from the Twin Cities, but Mason nixed anything where we'd run into a lot of people--so no visiting some historic downtown or other. We settled on St. Croix State Park, which is near Hinckley, MN. My guidebook said there was a lot to do, but to be sure to bring bug spray. 

Oh, how I wish we'd heeded that warning. 

The drive up was lovely. It's been cool, but clear here the last few days and so it seemed like a perfect day for an adventure hike/road trip. And it very much was. We had easy driving up to Hinckley, stopping for lunch in Forrest Lake (at a surprisingly efficient Culver's) and so we made the state park in good time. I renewed our state park license at the park office and left Mason in charge of finding a park map and deciding which trails we should try.

He picked perfectly. He found one called "Two Rivers Point," a five mile loop from the trailhead on the Kettle River side, down to the point ,and back again along the St. Croix River side. I think so long as we had stayed near the river, we would have been decently bug free. However, at one point the trail led us straight through a section I now refer to as "mosquito and tick alley."

 
Image: It looks like a stand of trees, but we call this mosquito and tick ALLEY

What is unclear from this picture is that on either side of these lovely stands of trees is swamp and brackish bog. There is so much standing, stagnant water, it is amazing we weren't found sucked dry from the swarms of mosquitos.  The other horror is that there were ticks flinging themselves at us at breakneck speed. Every time I'd be thinking I flicked them all off, I'd discover another little devil. 

HORRORS,.

But, honestly, that was only about a mile stretch, if that. 4 out of 5 ain't bad.

Plus, the views were astounding. Not to mention the fact that is is early enough in spring that all the wildflowers are blooming. We saw so much trillium, largeflower bellwork, delicate pink wood anemone, wild strawberries, full fields of trout lilies, and standing clumps of one of my favorites: violets:


Image: clumps of blooming light purple woodland violets in their native habitat.

Mosquito alley aside, I think that this trip was a huge success. Mason has always loved spending hours exploring nature, even as a very small child. One of the pictures we have in our living room is a shot I took of him when we were on what I call grasshopper trail (actually part of the wild life refuge near the Mall of America,) He has just gotten his glasses and he is staring INTENTLY at a blade of grass. There is no bug on the leaf, nothing. He's just six and he his INTO this leaf.

Not much has changed.


Image: Mason sitting at the point where the Kettle and the St. Croix rivers meet.

We spent at LEAST a half hour just in this spot, because Mason discovered some crayfish near the shoreline and we watched them moving around and plucking at various bits of algae, etc. It was PERFECT.

I'm hoping that before he heads out to college we can do this again. I found another, closer state park I want to check out, so maybe in a week or two we'll do it again.

This time though? If the guidebook says bring bug spray, I'M GOING TO DO IT.

Wow, I had a typo on my subject line at first, which read, "What I Did My Sumer Vacation" and I thought that might make an awesome historical novel or time travel short story.

But, at any rate, as I said, yesterday Mason and I went to Minnehaha Park. I'm actually still sort of recovering from the massive amount of sun we got. (Why IS it that fresh air makes a person so tired?)

Thanks to all the rain we've been having, the falls were magnificent.



Mason says of this next picture: "The sand pits in the picture, I dug with my hands. I call them the Causeway Caverns."



Now we're off to the Roseville Library to pick up all the books we put on hold. I think today is going to be a lounge and read day. I'm giving up on the book I started reading (with my dyslexia, sometimes I have to make the call that a book isn't worth the effort and time,) so I'm going to see what I can find for myself to read as well.

By sheer accident I ended up doing a lot of the traditional Fourth of July activities with Mason yesterday. We saw some friends of Facebook were organizing an impromptu picnic at Swede Hollow, so we packed up the picnic basket (and, because Mason was involved, an entire EXTRA bag full of books -- just in case.) We arrived at the park ten minutes before our hosts, but we hung out in the shade and kept an eye out for them. After a lovely meal of ham and cheese sandwiches, pickles, fresh strawberries and a few Doritos, we took a stroll/hike around the park with our friends. It was hot, but the breeze was pleasant. Eagle Eye Steve spotted a deer in the underbrush, and the intrepid nature photographer Shari sunk up close enough to the beastie to get a pretty good photo. Mason was pretty good until near the end when the heat caught up with him and he got a little tired (and whiney).

I was thinking that we'd done all our 4th stuff with that nature adventure, but Mason said he really wanted to see some fireworks. Shawn, btw, is still pretty sick. She slept most of yesterday and was feeling pretty woozie in the evening. Thus, we were on our own for fireworks. Before passing out, Shawn noticed that Roseville has a celebration at Central Park. It sounded like it might be our speed, so after watching Mason's favorite TV show in rerun (Master Chef), we headed out. I'm glad we left early. Even though we were there two hours before the show officially started, we had to park several blocks away. BUT, we were with an early enough crowd that we found a really prime spot. Turns out our view was slightly blocked by a couple of tall pine trees, but really not in any significant way. I think there were really only a couple of the lower "shower" types that were somewhat harder to see. At any rate, it had a nice, small town feel -- us spread out on our a checked blanket, Mason reading from his pile of books, and me napping/people watching.

All and all, I'd say it was a pretty good 4th. The only thing we missed was an invitation from naomikritzer to have a Pokemon playdate with her daughter. (naomikritzer, I tried to call, but your line was busy!)

Today looks gray and it's 10 am and Mason is still asleep. I'm hoping that means that I'll get some decent writing done.

Yesterday, I got over my cranky in two ways. 1) I discovered that fixing (aka building) the broken link actually took only about ten minutes. It is, if you're interested, here: Almost to Die For Excerpt. I must have whined for at least twenty minutes, so I made myself feel pretty foolish for getting all worked up about something that took so little time.

2) I went to the beach. Mason and I like to go to Lake Josephine, and yesterday afternoon was perfect weather. It was hot... so hot that jumping into the lake was not one of those gradual, one toe at a time kinds of affairs, it was LEAP without regrets. I think I may have lost my .mp3 player and gotten a bit of a sunburn on my face (the one place I forgot to smear sunscreen), but it's hard to be Ms. Cranky Pants floating in cool water. At least it is for me. Especially with Mason squealing with delight and the little schools of fish fry darting about in the shallows. I could really tell that we've been getting significant rain, though. The water line was all the way up past the lifeguards' chairs to the retaining wall!

Yesterday, before we left for the beach, I finished HUNGER GAMES. I'll be curious to read the next book, CATCHING FIRE, because I found myself vaguely disatisfied by the ending of this one. I mean, it clearly goes on, and that's not really the problem for me. My issue was with Katniss. She's so emotionally closed off (with good reason, mind,) throughout the book, and, though she changes over the course of it, I was left wishing for a bigger transformation. I will admit, however, that having just come off ORDER OF THE PHOENIX I was in the mood for a major uprising, ala Fred and George Weasley vs. Umbridge. Shawn was telling me in the car this morning that CATCHING FIRE hasn't been quite as well recieved and I told her I suspect the reason may be that, IMHO, the next book has GOT to be more political. But, don't tell me if I'm wrong!!! I'm going off to the bookstore this afternoon to pick up CATCHING FIRE, so I'll know soon enough. It's kind of strange to actually be reading a book that other people are still reading. I mean, I've come _so_ late to Harry Potter, that it's strange to realize that MOCKINGJAY isn't even out yet.

Well, Mason is bored (he's stuck in his DS game and is wishing for a walk-through) and my battery is starting to ask me to plug in. See you later!

So yesterday was supposed to be my "idea" day, but I got sidetracked by the excitement that is Hidden Falls. I don't quite know why kids love Hidden Falls so much, but they do. It's actually not terribly remarkable to the grown up eye, IMHO. For one, it's man-made. A lot of concrete and gravel... but they did a nice thing making a series of "falls" that are kid friendly for climbing over and building dams over, etc. It really is just a street sewer run-off grate that tumbles down a bit of a sandstone that then leads to this elaborate man-made falls system. But... both Mason and his friend Dalton spent two HOURS just clamboring and spalshing and generally doing boy stuff in the woods.

At one point, the boys were tossing rocks into a big pool, and Dalton said, "This is great! I've never done this before!"

At first I thought, "Are you kidding?" Then it occurred to me that, you know, this is what that book LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS is talking about. It used to be, in the days of much more undeveloped property, that it wasn't far for a boy or girl to roam before they found some hidden creek or whatever where they could just do unstructured play. Those days you could just roam, too. No parent had to accompany you everywhere. Now, you have to have a play date, and then usually it's off to some clean, "safe" park with rules about what you can and can't do. Why would someone in this day and age have had an opportunity to just throw rocks into the water? (Rock throwing is usually a no-no. It's specifically not allowed on our beach, Lake Josephine, for instance.)

I'm glad Mason and I were able to share that moment of discovery with Dalton. And I'm super glad his mom packed Gatorade. I'd meant to bring along water, but I totally spaced because Mason and I ended up playing laptop pinball right up to the moment we were meant to pick Dalton up. (I'd thought I might stop at the store to get bottled water at least, but time had run out.)

Anyway, it was a great day. I also had a wonderful time at Wyrdsmiths last night. We all got quite carried away, as we often do, brainstorming improvements for naomikritzer's already pretty awesome story. There were arguements about pterasaurs and Thunderbirds and a whole boatload of awesome. It didn't inspire me specifically, just generally. I was reminded why I love those guys and why I keep going to Wyrdsmiths.

Which means I have to dig up the hand-outs from last Wyrdsmiths, read and critique them, figure out what I need to hand out tonight, and print off a bunch of copies. Plus, it's recycling. And I need to pickle some cauliflower for the apoclaypse. And bake bread. Oh yeah, and write some.

Sheesh.

Luckily, it's only 10:30 am, and I have a lot of time to get at least some of this stuff done.

Yesterday for Mason's "early release" day, he and I went on an explore of the Minnesota Valley Wildlife Refuge System. I have to say, I wasn't expecting it to be nearly as awesome as it was. There's a very short hillside trail that takes hikers down to a wetland observation point, which really isn't much more than a dock looking out over what to my untrained eye looked like a grassy marsh. BUT... by chance, Mason and I connected up to their meadow road walk (I beleive it's called), which we dubbed "the road of squished grasshoppers." Though it's a protected area, for some reason they were doing mantainance work on the paved/gravel path with these giant electric trucks. One guy really loved ripping up and down the road at top speeds. We got out of his way fast, but, alas, about a million and six grasshoppers, some locusts, and one sad garter/grass snake weren't quite as quick as we were. I worried at first that this would traumatize Mason, but, young scientist that he is, he LOVED looking at all the goo and bits the grasshoppers exuded. (Ick!)

The snake was rather cool because s/he only got hit at the tip of her/his tail. And though at first s/he looked quite dead, when we stood over her/him, s/he quickly "recovered" enough to zip off into the underbrush, startling the pants off Mason and me. There was much giggling after that.

The road goes quite a ways, but we only had a couple of hours, and Mason got to this little metal bridge that goes over the Minnesota River (which looked like a creek at this point), and spent a lot of time just wedging rocks into the slats. If he'd had his druthers we'd still be there.

I promised him we'd go back as soon as he had another day off. It made me sad, if only because Mason really LOVES these kinds of adventures and very quickly fell back into his "last child in the woods" mode, where he'd just stop and look at stuff for hours. We caught a bunch of grasshoppers (living ones, the road is apparently a good place for sunning one's self) and a tree frog. It reminded me, actually, of LaCrosse's very own RABBIT Trail.

Anyway, I should off to work. I blogged a bit writing realated things over at the Wyrdsmiths blog. Check them out, if you're so inclined.