No bicycling today

Despite the fact that it is a gorgeous day.

In fact, it is even a gorgeous day here in Duluth. Therein lies the problem, we are in Duluth, much too far from my bicycles to allow for any actual riding.

We are in town here (again) to follow our favorite hockey team in the pursuit of this deal:They are off to a good start, playing the first period of last night's game at warp speed (stolen from Rachel Blount's game story) followed by two more periods of plenty good enough to advance to Sunday's championship game. Yup, Sunday. So we will be in Duluth all weekend.

This one should prove that we are in Duluth:We got an early enough start to allow an excursion on the way up. We hopped off the freeway at Carlton (that's near Cloquet for . . . oh, wait, that isn't going to narrow it down much for those without a comprehensive knowledge of Minnesota geography, is it?). This is the Saint Louis River below the dam just outside of Carlton.Below the dam the river travels through a scenic gorge that thanks to the foresight and generosity of one of our early settler robber barons has descended to the people of the state as a state park, Jay Cooke State Park. Here's the link up, Jay Cooke was the main financier of the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Construction of the North Coast Limited route was begun just outside of Carlton (the other side of town from the dam).

He might have also been interested in this, lots and lots of people have found this fascinating over the years:That's the famous quartz outcrop in the bedrock underneath the highway bridge over the river below the dam. It looks more impressive in the summer time when there isn't snow nearby to screw up the contrast. In the bright light of summer you get good contrast of the whitish quartz against the dark colored granites in which the outcrop occurs.

Anyone who has ever had gold fever knows that gold is often associated with quartz outcrops and this particular outcrop has probably been hammered for a sample at least several hundred thousands of times. Enough times to convince everyone who pays attention that this particular quartz outcrop is non-gold bearing.

We didn't have our rock hammer and we had a hockey game to get to so the quartz was spared the indignity of being sampled yet again.

Bicycling promises to resume when I get back into proximity with my bicycles as the weather forecast continues to be for May-like temperatures in March.