Minnehaha Falls

I am in the City of Minneapolis right now. One of my favorite places in the city is Minnehaha Falls. Minneapolis has an extensive park system. It's one of the highlights of life here for many people. This afternoon the air was breezy, thin, cold, and dry, but the sky was clear (besides some atmospheric pollution in the form of haze.) The early winter sunlight was beautiful (probably even enhanced, ironically, by the pollution.)

Minnehaha creek feeds into the Mississippi river—not far from Minnehaha falls. Today the water was flowing, it was quite interesting to watch the flowing water disappear into a shell of ice.

I have memories from when I was a teenager of climbing behind the frozen ice of the falls.

Today, I thought I could hear some of the ice cracking.

I have heard that the City turns on municipal water supplies to feed the creek. I am not sure if that's the case currently (as seen in the following photos.) Anyway, the falls are an impressive sight.

Here are some photos of Minnehaha Falls in the winter. There are a few more posted on my Flickr site.


Trees and Trail

So much clean snow. Quite a wonder.


Trees and Sky


Frozen Minnehaha Falls in the Winter


Top of the Falls


Mom

Peace! Namaste! May All Beings be Happy!

Glacier Park Lodge and Landscape with Mountains and Sky

This photo is from Tuesday the 21st of December 2010, the winter solstice. It's the view from the left side of an Amtrak coach train car on the West-bound Empire Builder (route #8). This is the Glacier Park Lodge, in East Glacier, the lodge is not in the park. This is in Montana. The photo is geo-tagged on Flickr.


view original size

Amtrak Train Empire Builder Route

Glacier National Park

Olympic Mountains over the Puget Sound, seen from Budd Bay, Olympia, Washington

Snow Capped Mount Rainier

view larger: Mount Rainier Capped with Snow

Branch

December 2008

Driving in the Snow

When I woke up today I lounged around. I found some steel cut oats in the cupboard, so I didn't need to go straight into town - so I didn't go straight into town. I hanged(?) out. I read blogs and news articles. But I still needed to go to town. Later I told myself, later.

At about two o'clock it started snowing. Well, first it was ice pellets and freezing rain. But then it turned to big thick wet and fluffy flakes (there is such a thing). It was a perfect snow for building snowmen or throwing snowballs.

It was not a perfect snow for driving. Unless you like driving in that sort of thing. I was faced with the prospect of heading out in a thickening snow storm to procure some of the essentials (lettuce, eggs, doughnuts, whole wheat flour (for pancakes tomorrow morning)).

At about 3:30 I decided that it was then or never. I figured that the Island City Coop, which I intended to visit, might close earlier on. In fact they are open until 5 or 5:30 most days. With the rear-wheel-drive-only pickup waiting, I zipped up my jacket and headed out to the drive.

It was nice to drive through the clean white snow. I was in the first vehicle that made tracks through the new snow at first, on the side road.

After all was said and done, the pickup handled very well considering it is rear wheel drive, and the mission was accomplished. Now, I can go to bed without being hungry, and rest, while looking forward to pancakes and whatever tomorrow may bring.