North

I rode mostly north today and discovered relatively early in the ride that Shoreview remains closed to bicyclists who do not wish to have little oil covered pebbles stuck to their tires.  That would be me.

I decided to see if I could cross the Snelling freeway at Hamline.  I know I have crossed in the other direction a few times, I wondered if I could go from east to west in that same area.

Nope.

I ended up riding on the shoulder of a 65mph major highway for a mile or so and then had to share a single lane off ramp with those same cars.  I didn't mind the shoulder so much, it was plenty wide, easy for me to be a long ways from traffic, but that off ramp made me tres nervous.  Luckily for me traffic wasn't heavy and when I finally got to the ramp only one car came up it during the time I was on it and that one came when I was nearly to the top.  At the very top there was a brief two lane (right turn and left turn, the road straight ahead leads into a McDonald's parking lot).  I was going left, the car was going right, as luck would have it I hit the top just as the light changed and everything came out just peachy.

So I had been riding on this major four lane highway that at that point is designated as Snelling Avenue but after hooking left I rode down a half mile or so and came to "Old" Snelling Avenue, the Snelling Avenue that existed before all of that freeway construction out there.

And I think this thing looks really familiar.

I think the very first time I entered Saint Paul I was sitting in the back seat of a car driven by my father and I just can't help but thinking that we drove past this.  It just looks familiar.

My first ever visit to the big cities would have been early 60s I think.  At that time this would have been the real Snelling Avenue and a logical route to take to approach the city from the northwestern part of the state where we were then living.  I think I remember coming down Highway 10 which would dump you right over onto Old Snelling at what at that time would have been fairly close to the edge of town.  The road is on an uphill here, just over the top of the hill would have been Roseville and the Rose Drive-In Theatre and then just a bit later over the top of that overpass just beyond the Fairgrounds with Hamline looming on the left.  For instance, I have a very clear memory of that first time over that overpass, football stadium and then field house on the left.

Memory is tricky, this part of the memory from this spot farther out could all be something I made up later but today it feels real to me. That building is something called Lindey's Steak House, they have been operating on that spot since March of 1958.

That's the corner of Old Snelling and County Road E to the left and Lake Johanna Boulevard to the right.  It was actually Lake Johanna Boulevard I was looking for and the reason I was out there.

A couple of days ago I posted a shot of Lake Johanna taken at the bible college.  TOPWLH and I were looking at the photo and discussing the incident when one of Wireless's grade school classmates accompanied the two of them to a beach out there prompting extreme unrest from the mother of that classmate due to, as I recall, excessive goose poop in the lake.

Well, THAT could definitely happen.

Anyway, we thought we located the beach on the photo and today I wanted to ride down to the other end to find the beach to see if we were right.

And we were.

That tower just rising above the trees frame center is a building at the bible college.

Also, just for clarification, some may notice that there is sign on the chair saying "Life Guard on Duty" with clearly no life guard in the chair.  Well, not to panic, there are actually two chairs out there on that beach.  I'm not sure why but the roped off beach area seems to be divided in two and today the area over to photo left was the one that was being heavily used.  The life guard was in the chair over there on the left.

Why two areas?  Perhaps that Beach Boys song needs to play again.