alexandriacardinals

September 2 (still)

[Leaving Pipestone, heading south on Highway 75 again . . . ]

[Another Bucket List item . . . ]

[And here are the real live bison . . . ]

[And, of course, since youngsters are going off to college now, their parents have to say, “Bye, son.”  Oh, you heard that already?]

[Not a bad view (guess the background city?), with a Halloween tree in the foreground.]

[Nope, can’t quite make out the name on the water tower.]

[Meanwhile, back on the hill . . . ]

[We hiked up to the interpretive center only to find it closed.  I guess we may have misinterpreted something?]

[A color changed tree . . . ]

[With leaves that look like flowers.]

[Either riding thermals (it was a hot, sunny day) or an aged hiker collapsed on a trail.]

[The Super is off in pursuit of her Quarry . . . ]

[The goal is attained . . . ]

[We wanted to get up there – it would require a drive back to where the bison were and then a 2-mile trail hike.  We didn’t have the time, or the desire.]

[There’s a topless man up there!]

[Now looking for a place to have lunch . . . ]

[Luverne revives a lot of childhood memories.  They always seemed to be in the state basketball tourney, so they got a lot of statewide TV coverage back in the day.  Of recent vintage, they have become a bit of a hockey power – the only one from this part of the state.]

[And not a bad little baseball field.  The high school nickname is the Cardinals, a la Alex.]

[Another mid-size city downtown that appears to be vibrant.]

[So, where are we? If you stand here and throw a baseball to the south, it will end up in Iowa; if you throw it to the west, it will end up in South Dakota.  Now you know where we are.]

[I did mention lunch, right?]

[Whom amongst us doesn’t enjoy a chocolate malt?]

[Yes, Mom, I finally made it!]

[And the house Mom grew up in – she was born in Eau Claire, the family moved to Worthington when she was very young, and at some point in her mid-teens the family moved to Minneapolis where she graduated from Marshall High in 1941 (I think, I wasn’t there).]

[There was a young man in the garage in the back.  I asked if he’d mind if I took some pictures of his house – I told him my mom grew up here, like 90 years ago.  He smiled and thought that was cool.]

[Photo of the house by brother Cam in 2010 . . . ]

[And back in the day . . . ]

[And here’s Mom with her brother Dick (later to become my uncle Dick, though neither of us knew about that at the time).]

[A final shot as we go in search of Worthington.]

[OK, not likely where the Thompson (Mom’s maiden name) kids went to school . . . ]

[But this was . . . ]

[And long ago we learned the cheer:  “Red and black, red and black; Rickety-rack, rickety-rack; Rickety-rye, rickety-rye; Worthington, Worthington, WORTHINGTON HIGH!”]

[Probably self-explanatory?]

[An unidentified water tower?]

[I guess so.]

[A lovely evening for a drive around the city’s Lake Okabena.]

[Sunset Park, appropriately enough.]

[I still don’t see anything on the water tower?]

[Stock photo]

[Lake Okabena. It’s only 776 acres (about 3/4’s the size of beautiful Lake Darling), but it hosts . . . the Worthington Windsurfing Regatta and Unvarnished Music Festival — which has drawn sailors, musicians and spectators to Worthington for the past decade. (www.dglobe.com)]

[“The kids” ate here once (everybody’s been here except us?) and recommended we do as well.]

[I thought it was an abandoned building, but for some reason the place is closed on Saturdays.]

[Worthington’s population is 12,800 – about the same size as Alex.  But it had a Daily newspaper since 1872?  Until April of this year, that is, when it changed to a twice weekly Wednesday and Saturday publication.]

[We still were looking for fine dining – this place looked good right downtown . . . ]

[El Azteca, with a nice cold Corona . . . ]

[The Super got a taco salad, I party dip Azteca.  Mmmmmmmmm!]

Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese.  ~ Billie Burke

Up Next:  Birthday, day 2

September 2

It was a BIG one.  What to do?  I thought about a party, but I would have cried through the whole day ruining the festivities.  So, how ’bout . . . a ROAD TRIP?  Beginning Saturday morning?

[But where would we go?  We thought about seeing Bonnie Raitt in Moorhead . . . but by the time we checked the closest seats were in East Grand Forks.  We weren’t A-listers like “the kids” who got back stage passes!  Woo-woo!  Besides I’ve never been much of a big venue kinda guy – I like to see the whites of their eyes and smell the wine on their breath.]

[Bonnie, at 67, is at least of my generation.  🙂  ]

[We thought about the Cities, but the State Fair had sucked all the air out of anything else happening down there.  And the Fair falls within the “big venue” category for me.  So . . . Ortonville?]

[We had long talked about a road trip to the far southwestern part of the state – the only part we had not yet visited.  Which is really strange since Mom grew up in Worthington and I had never been there!  We’d be visiting places of first impression.  By the time we returned home on Monday afternoon, my birthday, Labor Day, we had traversed 560 miles.]

[Ortonville is as far west as you can get in the southern half of the state without being in South Dakota.  It’s at the base of the little bump out into South Dakota, by Big Stone Lake, the source of the Minnesota River.  From here a straight shot south on Highway 75 almost to the Iowa border.  Bellingham, Minnesota?  Just down the road a bit.  Population 168.]

[A big city in these environs – and hometown of Charlie Roth (you can look him up) . . . ]

[Another capital I can check off the Bucket List . . . ]

[A rather new participant among old guys at the Y in the morning used to own this DQ.]

[I tried to catch a hint of each town along the way.  At times, as the Super was taking a turn on two-wheels with her super charged turbo diesel VW Beetle convertible, I’d miss a shot.  Canby was once home to a couple of Alexandria educators, as I recall . . . ]

[Small town America on the edge of the prairie seemed to be doing OK . . . ]

[Close to the edge of the world . . . ]

[When we approached Lake Benton we began to notice for the first time some . . . TOPOGRAPHY!]

[Hole in the Mountain Prairie is a preserved remnant of the tallgrass prairie in southwestern Minnesota.  It is owned and administered by The Nature Conservancy, and is located on Buffalo Ridge near the town of Lake Benton in Lincoln County.  It spans a valley of about a half-mile in width, with a total area of 1,364 acres.  The preserve is home to about 60 species of grasses and emergent vegetation, and about 200 species of wildflowers. Trees are a minor feature, with only about 10 species present.  (Wikipedia)]

[And here is Lake Benton in Lake Benton.]

[The first stopping off point for the grand adventure . . . ]

[Pipestone National Monument is located in southwestern Minneasota, just north of the city of Pipestone.  The catlinite, or “pipestone”, has been traditionally used to make ceremonial pipes, vitally important to traditional Plains Indian religious practices. The quarries are sacred to most of the tribes of North America, and were neutral territory where all Nations could quarry stone for ceremonial pipes. The Sioux tribes may have taken control of the quarries around 1700, but the Minnesota pipestone has been found inside North American burial mounds dating from long before that, and ancient Indian trails leading to the area suggest pipestone may have been quarried there for many centuries.  The National Monument was established by an act of Congress on August 25, 1937, and the establishing legislation restored quarrying rights to the Indians.  Today only people of Native American ancestry are allowed to quarry the pipestone.  As an historic area under the National Park Service it was administratively listed on the National Register of Historic Places under the heading “Cannomok’e—Pipestone National Monument”.  The Red Pipestone Quarries within the monument comprise a Minnesota State Historic Site.  (Wikipedia)]

[We were chastened to remember our friends from the East stopped here on their last trip to Minnesota, thus visiting here before we ever did.]

[This was a 20-minute movie – highly recommended for a history of the place.]

[Well, all of the above was a tour of the facility.  Now, let’s go hike a trail . . . ]

[This way, old man!]

[My guess, prayer ribbons?]

[Lead on, McDuff!!]

[Oh boy, rock outcroppings!]

[Look up there!]

[And here she/he is . . . can you see the face profile?]

[And now the face at an angle.]

[I wonder what’s around the corner?]

[A waterfalls!]

[Since you asked . . . ]

[The Super did a video here.]

[More figures?]

[Yup!]

[The sumac is turning.]

[Hey, if plants can get along????]

[We left the national monument and got a whiff of the town of Pipestone, population 4,317 (I didn’t think it was that big).]

[The Calumet Inn is apparently well-known to everybody but me.]

[A busy first day.  We’ll cut it off here and finish the day in the next posting.]

Oh, to be seventy again.  ~  Georges Clemenceau (on seeing a pretty girl on his eightieth birthday)

Up Next:  Birthday, day 1, part 2

August 29

[Ladies and gentlemen, your 2017 Cardinal volleyball team!  Let the fall sports season begin!]

[But volleyball was the second visit to the high school on this day.  The Super and I began the morning with many other interested personages watching this movie.  And afterwards we all met over coffee and muffins to discuss it all.  The current education model has been in existence for 120 years – you know, an hour of history, change rooms, an hour of biology, change rooms . . . all mostly presented through teacher lectures.  The movie proposes student-led learning with teacher oversight and guidance, project oriented, basically the way modern companies operate in our technological world.  I think most people there were in agreement with the movie’s proposal.]

[And to think all this occurred on Class of ’65 alum, Greg “Little Mayo” Johnson’s, 70th birthday!]

[And here are your fall sports schedules.]

[And here, again, is your 2017 Cardinal volleyball team.]

[First game of the season and we’re taking on Marshall, a perennial volleyball power.]

[Again, we have no 7-footers, not to mention 6-footers . . . but then, neither did Marshall?]

[And here are the dreaded Tigers.]

[Watching practice kill shots . . . ]

[I didn’t remember many players from last year . . . ]

[We have a new assistant coach, he’s lobbing the lobs . . . ]

[No jump ball, no face-off, let’s play volleyball!!]

[Final advice from the coach, “Always remember, hit the ball OVER the net” . . . ]

[So, the front line to begin the game:  McKenzie Duwenhoegger (11), 5’11”, junior; Erika Roderick (7), 5’8″, sophomore; and Tori Jeseritz (2), 5’10”, senior.  The back line is: Mya Lesnar (10), 5’9″, sophomore; being replaced by Alana Rodas (1), 5’2″, senior (apparently that substitution before the game actually starts establishes a substitution pattern, or something); Mia McGrane (5), 5’7″, sophomore; and, I believe absent a visible number, Kendra Hardy (13), 5’10”, junior.  Why yes, we are a rather young team.]

[And leading us off, Kendra rises to the occasion . . . ]

[Mya and Erika go up for a block . . . ]

[Where’d the ball go?]

[Kendra serves, with McKenzie as her sidekick . . . ]

[The linebacking corps . . . ]

[And front line of the defense . . . ]

[Mya again, I thought she had a stellar game at the net . . . ]

[Whooompff . . . ]

[So, is the Boulder Tap House open after the game?]

[We’ll be ready for a malt!!]

[Set position . . . ]

[Moving to the block . . . ]

[This time Erika goes up for the block.  For you Class of ’65ers looking in, can you spot Ruth Helie Anderson in the background?  (Oh, and Brad was sitting next to me, giving me updates on the political crisis of the moment.)]

[First game, and we have . . . extra innings?]

[Drat!!!!]

[McKenzie serving – all around good game, front row, back row, offense, defense . . . ]

[Kendra with her lefty power serve . . . ]

[Really out of sorts this game, after the close loss in Game 1.  Never got any rhythm going.]

[Game 3, time to pick it up again . . . ]

[Looks like Tori and Erika on the block . . . ]

[Now, stay on that side!!]

[How we doin’?]

[We’re making a run, keep it up . . . ]

[Uhoh, overtime again!]

[1, 2, 3 JUMP!]

[Did I mention that the strength of McKenzie and Mya is their . . . strength?  They’re likely the two best shot putters in our section.]

[And here they were blocking together . . . ]

[McKenzie goes for a kill . . . ]

[I see it!]

[Block and . . . ]

[Block]

[Go out!!]

[Deflection . . . ]

[The tension is palpable . . . ]

[Ohhhhhhhhhh!]

[Get it!]

[Oh nooooo!]

[Heckuva game!  Sometimes shooting a scoreboard at the shutterspeed set for game action doesn’t work very well . . . the final score was 30 – 28.  We had multiple game points but just couldn’t quite make it over the top.  I think the team can take some positive vibes from the match.]

Some students drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.  ~  E. C. McKenzie

Up Next:  Workin’ on it.

General introduction:  August is generally a hot, dry month in these environs.  It’s the one month out of the entire year that Minnesota’s carefully groomed lawns may brown up a bit. This August, however, will go down as the first month in probably a decade to be cooler and wetter than normal.

August 25

[The first of 3 straight days at the winery.  There was lots of other stuff going on in Vacationland USA, as there always is at this time of year, but we were too weathered out and/or tired out to partake of such.  If life hands you a lemon, take a nap . . . ]

[Nice to be back with an old friend . . . ]

[The forecast was for chilly and rainy – and it was.  Nevertheless, we had a small but elite group for Anthony . . . ]

[We were joined by the Bergers, before they take off for their month-long sojourn through the great American West.]

[OK, this isn’t Anthony.  But he played this (from his iPad?) during his last break – and we agreed that we love Bonnie Raitt and we love this song.]

 

August 26

[Yes, folks were in jackets for the Salty Dogs the next day.  Forecast was for a 90 percent chance for rain.  When we arrived, we couldn’t believe they were outside.  Here the Super captures her “Missing U at” photo . . . ]

[Superior concentration by the boys . . . ]

[It was a Saturday, so the regular crowd shuffled in . . . plus there was a wedding and a couple other wedding planning parties, so the place was hopping.]

[Did we mention it was windy, chilly, and sticky?  Greg had two bows for his fiddle, but the hair loses tension in the humidity and you can only tighten them so much.  He wore out both bows, but luckily Lesley showed and had another with her.  It’s handy-dandy if your spouse is also a violinist.]

[One of the wedding planning parties consisted of the 2012 (OK, a guess) All-American cheerleading team (OK, also a guess) . . . ]

[Needless to say, it created an extra layer of fun . . . ]

[And a photo by another member of said party.]

Thanks, Nicole!!

[Word on the street had it this video went viral in Renville.  And as you know, you can always trust “the street” as a source because that’s where we all learned about the birds and the bees.]

 

August 27

[Yup, another raw day for the Cheese Bots.  They began setting up inside, but it was suggested there aren’t that many outdoor performance days in Minnesota so they should give it a shot.  Like the previous day, somehow a rain delay never occurred?]

[Barbara and Bob Foss, the keepers of the Alexandria music calendar!]

[Found out Barbara’s birthday is two days before mine.  Oh, and Shelly Karnis was there and we share our birthday.  And the next night Shelly was also at the Andria to watch her daugher Sara perform in Stormy Weather.]

[I hope the guys don’t mind.  They made two attempts at this fast-paced Brubeck classic, but due to circumstances beyond their control were unable to finish.  Jim, “Fromage du Jour,” needed baling wire, super glue, and/or duct tape to keep his music from blowing away.  He was ultimately tossed for a 2-yard loss on the 50-yard line, but everyone appreciated the effort to get as far as they did!]

 

August 28 (Bonus coverage)

[The Super leads the way to the theater . . . ]

[See that marquee?  It’s old and getting structurally unsound.  They would like to replace it was a new digital marquee.   So if you have a couple bucks kind of wasting away in an off-shore tax haven, why don’t you pass them along?]

[This was Paulette’s third such period piece, and she and the cast produced another tour de force . . . ]

[They’re not only fun and entertaining, but you get a little history lesson as well . . . ]

[For example, many locals probably didn’t know that Deb Trumm worked at the Hotel Alexandria in 1936, or that the Andria Theater opened in 1933 with a Star Wars prequel?]

[Many thanks again to you all!]

Friends come and go like waves of the ocean . . . but the true ones stick, like an octopus on your face.  ~  Domesticated Momster

Up Next:  Whatever . . .