PJ and I traveled to the upper Midwest Nov. 6 - 11; seems like a November trip up there is becoming an annual event. Started in the Twin Cities on Saturday 11/6 - Cecilia & Steve hosted a fine dinner with Therese & Mark, Nick & Mayb (sp?), Margaret; nice time chatting (including a Skype-ish encounter with Angie and Liam down under), v. good food, then a chance to sit around and even watch a bit of late evening football (featuring ASU and UA losing, as it turned out).
Ate breakfast next morning at a place called "
Bad Waitress" with Steve & Cecilia and their friends Jodi and Curt (nice folks indeed; interesting restaurant concept, we write up our own orders). The four of them then headed to Mason City for a Bill Bryson lecture at
NIACC; PJ and I headed over to Therese & Mark's place for chit-chat, watched Vikings lose to Cardinals (oh wait, after we left the Cardinals blew it, mostly due to Camarillo I think), had a very nice lunch, took a walk along Grand Avenue, etc. Then we headed to Mason City - easy trip down - very enjoyable dinner at Steve & Liz house. Our four breakfast pals were there, along with Julia.
Then to St. Joe. It was a different kind of a visit in the sense that I was feeling lousy from a long-running cold or flu or whatever, so we stuck close to the house. Had planned on visiting Storm Lake and Clarence & Caroline, at least, but didn't. Instead we settled into a delightful, low-key routine from Sunday night until hitting the road on Thursday at noon.
Items:
1. Finally made it to the POW camp museum in Algona (brochure below,
interesting website here) and, as a bonus, saw the Nativity scene that the German POWs had assembled (two photos included). This was quite interesting. Just had been
reading in this book about how badly the German prisoners were treated in the Soviet Union (not to mention Russian prisoners) - I can bet the A
lgona internment looked reasonably attractive.
2. Grandma had been wanting to do some editing on captions to photos that hang in the school, so we worked on this. A minor project that was fun to do together (EMG handling the frames).
3. EMG had banged up his knee, so spent some time in the hospital waiting room. But he seemed to be recovering fine. While in Algona, we went with Grandma to some interesting shops, including a chocolate store and a locavore coop.
4. On Monday night toward sunset, spent some time up on the hill farm. Perfect conditions: mild weather, no bugs, no leaves, plus EMG has cleaned up a bunch of the brush. So took a bunch of photos (with my seven-year-old digital camera), included some in a separate post.
5. EMG and his accomp
lice (Ray Gales) had been moving around equipment on the farm a week or so ago. With rain looming, EMG and I spent some time on Wednesday (Nov. 10) at the farm getting things into the shed. This was a bit of a throw-back experience: aging vehicles, balky ignition systems, etc. I don't recall the last time I was in the driver's seat of a tractor. But we got the job done, including dragging a combine into place with tractor and log chain.
6. Grandma outdid herself with baked goods - pumpkin bread, cinnamon rolls, pseudo-apple-dumplings, peanut blossom cookies.
7. Late-night chats with EMG, including his ruminations about the "free cell" game and some old-days stuff about corn shelling (very enjoyable). I hadn't thought about those wire drag covers in many years.
Great weather throughout - snow arrived pretty shortly after we left.
We didn't do a good job of taking photos. But I did take a photo from a book Grandma had taken out of the library about Hitler's Henchmen . . . prominently featuring our "he's-definitely-not-a-relative", Martin Bormann (in foreground of photo below, sauntering along with Adolf himself (and von Ribbentrop, an interesting character in his own right)).
We found the visit particularly enjoyable despite (or perhaps partly because of) being a bit constrained from moving around.
Much enjoyed our Thanksgiving. Typical awesome food primarily courtesy of PJ with big assist from Chris; Rick & Laura & David stopped by for the evening ('twas fun); long weekend of leftovers, football games, visiting; etc.
(She takes liberties with our address - Easter missives are addressed to the "Gales Hutch", for example - but this "Turkey Farm" concept was a new one.)
