Up north

Friday morning in August, a time when lots of Minnesotans head up north. We decided to join them. We did deviate somewhat from the norm, however, in that most of the others were loading up the truck, hitching up the boat trailer and heading for Brainerd. We hopped on our bicycles and headed for Lake Vadnais.

I was leaning against the picnic table in the parking area while I waited for the model to come back from make up or wherever the heck she was. I had the camera already fired up and was just goofing, doing not much of anything when this appeared in the LCD screen on the back of the camera. So . . . A bicyclist's feet.It's my blog, I can goof off when I want to. If you don't approve, well get your own blog and try, TRY to be serious all of the time.

The model finally appeared. It was, might I say, just another routinely spectacular day at Lake Vadnais. There was only one person fishing, a pretty unusual occurrence but since she was using the picnic table as a staging area for her fishing (tackle box on the table, bait in the shade of the table etc.) we ended up having a nice chat.OK, a dissenting opinion has been entered. There suddenly exists a fairly strong argument to be made that these are actually pelicans. I dunno, big white birds, birds of a species I just rarely ever see. Pelicans, storks, I just don't know.I remain pretty sure the other dudes are cormorants. In fact, that is part of the problem. Our Birds of North America book has a section called "Pelicans and their allies" which features white birds quite a bit like these and also double crested cormorants. I do not know.

The newspaper reported last week what I have already reported here, it is a good year for corn in Minnesota. The newspaper reported, if I recall correctly, that 90 percent of Minnesota corn is classified as "good" or "excellent". It is unquestionably tall.Guest Model for scale.