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Palm Springs, CA, is surrounded by mountains and lovely trails: good reasons to be there last week. There are downsides to hiking in the Palm Springs area: Too much driving to trailheads. It took one to two hours. Days are short at this time of year. When my partner and I were hiking around Palm… Continue reading Palm Springs Hiking

If I didn’t know better I would walk right past this unassuming house. It looks to be about the right size and style for Nordeast (Northeast Minneapolis), and it’s in a typical neighborhood. A typical Nordeast neighborhood has a bunch of churches and bars. There’s five churches within a couple blocks of this house, and… Continue reading Urban Hike: Early Nordeast Houses

When I tap “beauty” into the Google search box for my photo collection, I get a flood of too-easy, stereotypical beauty. There’s enough sunsets and mountaintops to induce indigestion in even the most hardened tourist. But the picture at the top of this post is top of the search results. It’s October 2015. I’m standing… Continue reading Northumbrian Beauty

In the past few days, a sculpture has appeared on my running route around Lake of the Isles (Minneapolis, MN). It’s a defiant sculpture, but it’s not the creation of an artist. The remains of the tree wait to be felled and chipped: it was diseased, it has to go. New trees will be planted… Continue reading The Remains of a Tree

Nordeast (Northeast Minneapolis) encapsulates much of the early working class history of Minneapolis, but it gets short shrift in guide books. Recently I’ve been exploring Nordeast, trying to decode it’s history and culture. Later in this post I’ll introduce some tools I’ve developed, including an interactive map and a feature to customize and print Nordeast… Continue reading Urban Hike and Bike: All Over the Nordeast Map

Today I cycled to Sheridan Veterans Memorial beside the Mississippi River in Northeast Minneapolis. The monument reflects on the cost of war, expresses hope for peace, and is even-handed about the conquerors and vanquished. The push to build this memorial came from veterans. It was dedicated just two years ago, so it is not a strong part… Continue reading Veterans Day 2015

I like to cook from scratch, but some days I simply want to assemble previously cooked ingredients. The solution is to have a selection of “subassembly” ingredients in the freezer. I’ve written about one of these ingredients: stock. Another is mirepoix. Mirepoix is the “holy trinity” of two parts onion and one part each of… Continue reading Mirepoix

We’re almost through a week of exploring the Superior Hiking Trail. We visit this trail just about every year. One year we hiked from lodging to lodging, but usually we just do day hikes. The twist this year was to bring two cars. That way we could explore sections of the trail as a series… Continue reading Superior Hiking Trail 2015