Twenty One Soon

My boy child will be 21 this coming Sunday.

Old enough to vote in his first Presidential election.

Young enough to enjoy birthday gifts that say "For ages 4+" on the box.

A pirate at heart.









We headed down to Decorah, IA to see him this past weekend.

It was parents weekend. They even put on a concert for us.












My dad came with us for the weekend.

He hadn't been to Luther, so he got the grand tour from Ben and lovely girlfriend Becky.






















Dad camped with us for the weekend, a few miles outside Decorah. We had a campsite right on the Upper Iowa River.

He and Girl of the House skipped rocks and looked for fossils on the bank.

We had gorgeous weather - into the 80s.
Extraordinary weather in September!

Morning coffee spot

Here's our coffee spot from this Saturday morning.

Anyone guess?








Here's Sunday morning. Does this help?










We went to Temperance River State Park for the weekend.

It's on the shore of Lake Superior. We reserved our favorite campsite, months ago.

We planned to be on the shore, awaiting the rising of the (almost) full moon over the great lake.

Unfortunately, we arrived after 9 pm on Friday. The moon was risen, and beautiful, over the lake. We looked forward to seeing it Saturday evening. But it began to rain late Saturday afternoon, with the attendant clouds. No moon at all to be seen through the clouds.

And yet, we had a great time. When we couldn't be outside, we played cards and listened to the iPod. We played cribbage, we played RAGE. I am the RAGE champion. Three out of three games. (We won't discuss cribbage...)

It was my birthday this weekend.

Look at the gift from the Girl of House gave:

DISHES!!

She did dishes all weekend. Now, really, that is a gift!




We did some hiking before the rain began.
We found the State Park geocache, after a few geocaching challenges. Perhaps reading a map is not one of my strong suits - especially now that I'm another year older!

There is so much to see in this park, beyond the Lake.






There were tons of people at the beginning of the trails, but they thinned out the farther we went from the road.









I started and finished another hat from handspun while on the drive. (Temperance is 275 miles from home.)

Recognize this yarn?

It's the spindled yarn from our Colorado trip.

Another hat?

We're canning today. Girl of the House has gone to the Defeat of Jesse James Days, Northfield's annual big festival, for the afternoon.

We've made 31 pints of Salsa and 20 pints of canned tomatoes.














It would have been 22 pints of tomatoes, but two jars broke during processing








Yay, salsa!












I finished this hat from handspun earlier this week.


I really don't know who's going to wear all these hats.

But it's good to use up some of these little skeins.





A sample skein. I have a coopworth lamb fleece, aging in my stash. I added some scraps from the recent hats, and carded them up together.

Makes a pretty, slubby, yarn.









By the way, our little dog is a pervert.

This is one of last year's (male) kittens.


I know, it's just not right...

off to school

There she goes, to seventh grade.

no fiber content

AT ALL - not a lick.

It was the final weekend of official summer.

Paul took Friday off to get Ben back to college. Before taking him down, he ran to Sakatah Lake State Park and dropped off the camper.

After work, I met Harlan and Coleen, keepers of the Girl of the House for the past week, in Faribault. A quick trip to the wine mecca - Haskell's - and we were off to Sakatah.

Started a campfire, put supper on the grill, and so began the holiday weekend. Harlan and Coleen stayed for supper. Paul made it around 9:30.












Early Saturday morning - 6:45 - the dang dogs woke us to go outside. We walked down to the lake for coffee. It was a bit farther than we usually undertake; about a half mile to the lake. But well worth it.



Sakatah State Park is on the Sakatah-Singing Hills Trail, a great paved trail that stretches 39 miles from Faribault to Mankato.

We did some bike riding, and some geocaching.

There are tons of caches along the trail, and several in the state park. We added 9 geocaches to our count.

(I discovered I can take a picture while riding a bike! Who'd have thought?)


We came home on Sunday. With the GotH being absent from home for near a week, we had a number of things to prepare.

We headed to the city today, for some last minute school clothes shopping.

Before we headed north, we headed to three brand new geocaches. They were just published this morning, and we were first to find on all three.

This was taken at the location of the most difficult find.

Yup, this is me, high in a tree above the lake. Getting up was a bit tricky, but do-able. Then I was sure I was stuck. However, Paul and GotH refused to bring me my meals for the rest of my life, and the bathroom situation was a bit iffy, so I slowly made it down.

At least I made it down without falling in the water.

I think I'm too old for tree climbing. Isn't that why I married a younger man?!