Michigan Shores and Sunsets

  We have been hanging out in Michigan with friends for nearly a week now.  The weather has been good enough to play in the sand dunes along the shores of Lake Michigan.  Even Sydney thinks it is neat to run around in the sand wearing shorts and a tee-shirt at the end of October.  We also checked out the lighthouse in St. Joseph and made a trip into Chicago to the Field museum and Navy Pier.

St. Joseph Lighthouse

View from the top of the dunes.

Going up.

Steep dunes!

This is steeper than it looks in the picture.

Sydney in front of the lighthouse.

Lake Michigan sunset.

Going......

Gone.  All that Chicago pollution makes for a pretty sky.

Sydney running down the dunes.

And he sticks the landing!  Sort of.

On the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier

View of Chicago from the Ferris Wheel.

More Chicago.

Top of the Ferris Wheel.

Wisonsin to Iowa

    We finally found a place to go trail riding, which we had been promising Sydney for awhile.  It wasn't much of a trail, being that it was in the middle of one of the biggest tourist towns in America, but still it was fun.  Sydney had a very slow horse that at one time began groaning.  The only time it would really move at all was when I tried to go past it with my horse.  Then it would pin its ears back and trot off.

Getting ready to hit the trail.

Heading out.

Riding through "the Old West"

It was a beautiful fall day and we saw nine deer.

  We left Wisconsin Dells and headed to Iowa to see my Uncle David.  We first stopped near Marquette, Iowa to see the Effigy Mounds National Monument.  The mounds were constructed by ancient cultures about AD 650 - 1200.  Some mounds were conical mounds used for burial.  Other mounds were more complex and were oblong or in the shape of a bear or bird.

Overlooking the Mississippi River.

Large burial mound.

A more complex mound

An effigy mound in the shape of a bear.  It is difficult to photograph.  Sydney and I are standing at the bear's butt.

The Little Bear Mound.  The head is on the right, while the other shapes you see are the legs.

A squirrel nest in a maple tree.

A photo from the Effigy Mounds Monument website.  It gives an aerial view of some of the mounds, which wee just couldn't get.

    We have been hanging out the last few days in Mount Vernon. Iowa with David and his wife Kay.  The weather is sunny and warm.  David gave us a great walking tour of Downtown Mount Vernon and Cornell College.  Yesterday, we went to a little orchard and picked apples. The area is very nice and surrounded by corn and soybean fields.

Picking our own apples was a new experience.

 

Many of the apples have fallen from the tree.  The fallen apples are collected and turned into cider.

Picking apples with Uncle David.

A perfect midnight red delicious.

We also went for a walk in a local park.

Wisconsin Dells

  We decided to venture to Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin before heading to Iowa to visit my uncle.  Wisconsin Dells is supposed to be the water park capital of the world.  We have no intentions to go to any water parks, but we figured that since it is a big tourist trap, we would find something to do. Many things are shut down this time of year, or only open on the weekend.  We don't plan to be here for the weekend.  Still, we are finding things to do that we have never done before, like a corn maze and picking a pumpkin out of the pumpkin patch!  We really are sheltered in Fairbanks.

The entrance to the maze.

And we went this way.....

Choices

We were not alone.

Sydney is doing her scarecrow impression.

Searching for the perfect pumpkin.

You must search the entire patch.

We have a winner!

The harvest is complete.

Minnesota

  We have been tooling around in Minnesota the last few days.  We have spent an extensive amount of time at the Mall of America of course.  It is huge, with over 500 stores, mini-golf, theme park, aquarium, theaters, and more.  I actually got a little bit of Christmas shopping done.  We didn't get many pictures though.

On the third floor trying to look across.

Looking down.  They have an American Girl, a Lego, and a Peeps store!

Sydney and her French model look.

Sydney getting her new computer set up.

  I managed to drag everyone to the Science Museum of Minnesota and to a bike ride along the Mississippi River.  We only biked about 16 miles of the 2000 miles of bike trails that follow the river.  It was a beautiful fall Sunday afternoon and the parks and trails were full of people.

Some falls in a huge park along the river.

The first locks and dam on the river.

The other side of the locks

Looking down on the locks.  We road across the bridge in the background.

Crossing a bridge to get back.  We had ridden down to and across the bridge in the distance.

  We also went to Minnesota's Largest Candy Store.  It is a little south of Minneapolis in a town called Jordan.  They had lots of different candy and soda, but there jigsaw puzzle collection was really impressive.

The inside of the store. You can kind of see the puzzles along the top.

This was the Root Beer collection.  They had about five more selves like this with other sodas.

The outside of the store,