Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Ice Cubes

This afternoon, Stacy and I met for a 23-mile bike ride. It was supposed to be warmish. I think it did make it almost to 50 degrees, but it was a bit windy. And there were a ton of lakes on our route, which meant that the wind blew cold air off the still-frozen lakes on to us throughout the entire ride.

I know, you're skeptical. Were there really that many lakes? Yes, and oddly enough, almost all of them are named after animals: Island Lake, Snail Lake, Turtle Lake, Amelia Lake, Otter Lake, Birch Lake, Lake Vadnais, and Sucker Lake. We also rode on Goose Lake Road, and near Bald Eagle Lake, but we didn't see either of these lakes.

Here's a cornfield we saw near Amelia Lake. You can see what a lovely day it was.

We saw a few old run-down farmhouses in this stretch. It was an interesting ride, due to the mix of old farms, crummy 1950's ramblers, and new developments. I read an email from FarmAid the other day that said that since 1982, we've lost more than 23 million acres of farmland - an area the size of Indiana.



The sun did come out for a few minutes, so I snapped some photos of Stacy and Otter Lake.

Stacy near Otter Lake

Otter Lake - brisk wind coming off that sheet of ice!

We turned after Lake Vadnais to go between that lake and Sucker Lake. Stacy decided to model her leg warmers while I snapped a picture of this cool, old house in the lake - - it's related to the lake being a reservoir.

Lake Vadnais (lots of deer tracks here, by the way)

Stacy and her legwarmers - and some sass

Where the path veers away from Lake Vadnais (behind those evergreens) and follows Sucker Lake, we ran into a bit of a problem. It was impassable. And, not only that, it was really, really cold between these two lakes. We had to backtrack, take a detour, and go up three pretty big hills to get back to where we started.

Snow, still. April 7, 2013

All in all, a good day, but cold and tiring.

















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