Ideas for the coming weekend

I have just been looking at various websites for this week's peak fall color locales. When it is fall, you cannot obviously go anywhere else, can you?
According to Explore Minnesota beautiful fall color can be found at cascade river, grand portage, Itasca, St. Croix and Savanna Portage state parks- the same as given in Star Tribune.
I dont think we can travel more than 80-90 miles this weekend :-) and we have already seen the North shore side...so Grand Portage and Cascade river are ruled out.
lemme see...Itasca- DNR reports state that this is going to be an early fall season here
but distance: 227 miles! out of question

St Croix state park is about 87 miles from Minneapolis, check out here for further details.It states that last week was a better time to go :-( hmmm

Savanna Portage state park is still close to peak color with very less leaf loss and is about 125 miles...

I think it's either going to be Savanna portage or St Croix this weekend...or maybe we will discover some new place closer home

Sep 24th: 2nd day at North Shore

We woke up early in the morning and walked down the lane right opposite to our motel which led us straight to the rocky shores of Lake Superior.
Faraway from us, this endless ocean of water merged with the blue skies above to form the single magical line called Horizon over which the sun broke loose from the chain of clouds, blessing the cold land with sunshine and waves thundered in joy along on the shores and we sat there awed by this spectacular art called nature .

On the shores of Lake Superior

Soon, it was time to check out of our motel and move on with our plans for the day. Our first stop was Sugarloaf cove.Located on Highway 61, this place was home of log rafting operations in olden days (not too very old, if you ask me :). We took the trek down to marvel at another breathtaking view of Lake Superior and the beautifully formed cove and we set off our next destination: Temperance River and hidden waterfalls.

At the Sugarloaf cove

The road separates the trail into two. Hiking south towards Lake Superior, the river forms a gushing waterfall before emptying into the Lake but on the other side is the hidden waterfall. This second part of the trail was pretty difficult with a lot of rock climbing to do and so we took two different routes to reach the falls. Sadly, he could not see the falls while I did and he had the camera and I didn’t:(.
However, I picked this picture on the web to show you how the hidden falls looked like.
Hidden falls- One has to really lie flat on the rock and peep out to take this picture!

Mighty waves of Superior on the southern side of Temperance

Tall maple trees crowned over us and set the forest on a fire. It was a visual treat for the eyes and has left a lasting impression on us. I do not have words to describe their beauty.

For latest information on north shore you could visit http://www.northshorefallcolors.com/

Etched in my memory forever


In the end, we were tired of taking pictures that didn’t do any justice to the richness or luminescence of fall colors and we headed back on 61 to our last stop in our trip- the Gooseberry falls.

I cannot say we enjoyed Gooseberry falls as well as other places. Firstly, we were way too tired after so much of driving and trekking and secondly, this place was far to crowded to admire the fall’s view.

Gooseberry Falls

We didn’t stay on there long and pushed off after a quick look and a small trek around the three crowded waterfalls.
We stopped by at India Palace on W Superior Street, in downtown Duluth, for our first decent meal in two days. We then energetically stepped on the gas on a car-flooded 35 S to get back home and hit the bed throughly exhausted and exhilarated with our trip.

Sep 23:Day 1 of North shore drive

After a good amount of research, we had decided on Thursday that we will drive out on the last weekend of September along the North shore drive until Lutsen and booked a room and car accordingly. But on Friday afternoon, when I was lazing around surfing the web, I realized that fall colors had already reached the peak in Northern Minnesota due to dry summer and may not last another week!
My hubby, a great planner and stickler to details was not very happy with this piece of information but anyhow we reworked our plan and were off on Saturday morning to Lutsen.
We didn’t get accommodation to stay over on Saturday Night but decided it was going to be OK as it was only a 4 ½ hour drive and it wouldn’t kill us to get back home the same day.
We hit off 35 N in the morning at around 9 am after a light breakfast of peanut butter-bread and fruits.On reaching Duluth, temptation got the better of us and we strayed into Scenic 23 instead of choosing the expressway.After stopping over at every scenic byway to admire Mother Nature’s lavish display, we merged into 61 with more than an hour’s loss.

While on Scenic 23

It was almost 2 pm when we reached Two Harbours and hunger was the most prevailing thought in our minds.We headed to a Subway to grab a sandwich and were shocked by the crowd...there must have been atleast 25 people in the queue. So we pursued our next option- an unhealthy but a delectable one of eating doughnuts and chips. After a ten minute break at the gas station, we were back on track.

Our first stop was at Lutsen Mountain.. We took the Gondola ride (Tram/ cable car ride) that took us across a valley to the Moose Mountain from where we saw the breathtaking fall colors on Sawtooth Mountains and Lake Superior's remarkable coastline. We stayed on in Moose Mountain for another hour trekking along spellbound by the vivid colors of autumn where a rush of color paints each and every leaf with a stroke of a shimmering gold or a bright orange or a fiery red and the mountains and valleys are glowing to compete with sun shine.

The Gondola ride

A bird's eye view of Sawtooth Mountain

My photos cannot justify the beauty of this place

It was around 6pm by the time we got back to Lutsen Mountains and we headed off towards Tafte to check out Caribou trail and yes,search for accomodation- as one day was distinctly insufficient. We checked each motel on our way but "No vacancy" was prominently displayed in each place lest we had any hope of staying back.

So we set off on wooded Caribou trail to see the colors of sugar maples and moose maples and reached Cascade lake so serene and untouched by the hand of man. I dont know how long we sat there with our minds so quiet and hearts feeling elated- one with nature. We left it with a touch of sorrow wondering why we ever left behind all this wilderness.


Cascade Lake

We were back on 61 heading back home dissapointed that we couldn't get accomodation and yet hopelessly checking out each motel for a vacant room when we came to Beaver Bay. Surprise of surprises, one motel did have a room available and that too a non-smoking one! We were so thrilled!
It was almost 9 pm by this time and instead of tiring ourselves hunting for a restaurant, we decided by buy a box of cereals an milk from a wayside gas station.

The day finally came to an end with a walk down the streets in the night and a million stars were glimmering over us, hiding the secrets of the day to come.

Where to go this fall: more updates

Star tribune tracking this fall and has given its judgement - there are these 5 best places to go this fall and I dont want you to miss it.
check out this link for details
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/678382.html
also, if you ever wondered why leaves changed colors....u might wanna read this :)
http://www.startribune.com/style/news/variety/seasons/fall/why.swf

Cold Stone Creamery: A ten minute visit to heaven

We were out to shop at Cub foods in our now favorite Silver Lake Village when we saw the neon sign of”Cold Stone Creamery”. We hadn’t entered a pastry or ice cream parlor since the time we came from India as we bought it straight out of the shelf and had it at home. So with all the enthusiasm of a kid going to an ice cream shop, we entered this place.
Cold Stone’s variety is stunning and they specialize in ice cream creation- that is, you get to choose from their numerous delightful mix-ins of nuts, candies, fruits and biscuits. Add to that, caramel or chocolate sauce or what ever topping that comes to your mind and the various kinds of ice cream cones. The ice cream maker scoops out the ice cream that you would like to have, flattens it out and adds all the mix-ins you ever want and mixes it thoroughly and rolls it back in a nice scoop and presents it to you. Yum!
No wonder, there was such a big queue in front of us.
After treating ourselves to a “Germanchocolatecake” made with chocolate ice cream, pecans, coconut shredding, a hot Brownie and rich Caramel, we were back on earth to continue our mundane shopping.

A lazy evening drive

Yesterday, after a lazy cup of coffee in the evening, we decided to drive out aimlessly on 55. After driving about 5 miles, we came to Minnehaha Ave where Pergola gardens and Minnehaha falls were located.
We parked our car near the entrance and decided to take a stroll in the garden. Boy, was it cold. The moment we stepped out, the cold air started stinging thro my jeans and was hardly able to walk. But we braved the situation and didn’t need to repent it.
This waterfall drops 53 feet and is pretty small when compared to the Indian ones but then given the fact that it is not even 10 minutes drive from our place, why complain.


We walked down to the bottom of the waterfall and took the trail following the stream of water to explore the park further. People were cycling in this crazy cold weather and there we were, wrapped up in sweaters and still feeling cold. The colors of the leaves have just begun to change and I guess another visit to this place during October is definitely on the cards.

Where do we go this fall

Fall is in and the leaves are turning yellow and copper and red and gold.
One fine day they would all be gone and we want to be there before they vanish. We have booked a car for two weekends now and wondering when would be the best time to go. And of course, the eternal question still in our minds is" where?" We have two options: either go the northern side towards Canada or down south in Wisconsin and the first one seems better.

This is what Minnesota DNR has to say about the peak season:



Ofcourse, this is for the trees and the trend is different for grasses and wild flowers.
We would be just in time if we have to go to GZrand portage or International falls but still have some more time to go, if it is Duluth.
This is a link for minnesota state park map if you wish to refer:
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/map.html

As of now, we plan to take a trip on the North Shore drive off Lake Superior. Let's see how things work out.

One weekend to socialize

We had two invitations for lunch and dinner on Saturday and Sunday plus a faulty car condition that tied us back home over this weekend. We decided that since this was the case, we should at least go to a new shop to purchase our weekly stuff. On Friday evening, we were driving around trying to find a good mechanic to fix our car and we saw a road that would take us to Silver Lake village in city of St. Anthony- a sister city of Salo, Finland.
The concept of Sister Cities is much prevalent here in US where towns or cities from geographically and politically distinct areas are paired, with the goal of fostering human contact and cultural links. Check out this link to find out about other such sister cities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_twin_towns_and_sister_cities
I have not seen Salo and so cannot comment on the similarities but St.Anthony is a very beautifully laid out city, almost like a small village.We walked down the street admiring the pretty shopping complex and fountains there and watched the sunset before heading back home.
After a filling lunch at a friend’s place on Sunday, we were off in search of a mechanic to get our car repaired.
Soon after we came back from Chicago, we found that our car had developed 4 unrelated problems- dome light was not working, wiper not working in intermittent speed, car radio antenna not going up and cigarette lighter not working!! We were just amused that 4 such unrelated things could go off the same day like that.
First we went to Bob and Steve’s where it was anywhere between $50-100 to just open the car and check. Then we went to a smaller mechanic who said he had to check up all the wires and connections and it can be fixed in an hour or it can take weeks to figure out the problem, all at $100 an hour.
After getting these two bombshell quotes, we were at our wits end and on Sunday evening we went to Tires Plus to just try one more time before we actually spent the money. Now, here there was a mechanic/electrician, who immediately came out, checked the car for us and within a minute it was confirmed that one of the fuses that had blown and we just had to replace that one piece which cost us less than a dollar and all our 4 problems solved. Shame on the other guys!
It was late Sunday evening when we drove along the Mississippi river stopping every once in a while to look at the changing leaf colors. The temperature has also come down drastically and the maximum it gets is 13 C. We are still enjoying the summer or what is left of it now before winter sets it and we are all wrapped up in layers of sweaters.

Straberry fields of Bel Plaine

While on our way to Minneopa Water falls, we saw a board that read “Pick your own strawberries, apples, pumpkins". We jerked our car to a stop and turned around to check out if that was really true. Driving on the path where the board pointed, we saw a whole lot of apple trees and we entered into what seemed like a farmer’s market place. We were given a basket each and sent off to the strawberry patches to pick and enjoy as much as we wanted.

After picking more than a pound of red plump strawberries and admiring the place for a hundredth time we left it to continue our journey to the Minneopa waterfalls.
You could check out this place on the web at http://www.emmakrumbees.com/.

Sep 11th : Day 3 in Chicago, IL

Well...I have said it and there it was, the LAST day in Chicago before we headed back home. We decided to vacate the room and then see the one place we had missed out in our plan- Botanic gardens. It was incessantly raining and we took our chance to visit the place that I refused to strike off my “places to visit” list. After a lovely English breakfast of muffins, crackers and coffee at the Garden Café, we ventured into the wet and drippy gardens.

It was definitely worth the trouble. From fruit and vegetable garden to rose garden to japanese gardens, they had it all.

I only wish it wasn’t raining so badly that day and we would have spent more time there. But then, there was a gain because of this too. We got an early start back home and so could touch Milwaukee taking a deviation on our way back home. We hardly had 2 hours to explore this place before we headed back home. The comfort of home after 3 days of maddening excursions seemed very inviting. And so, after 6 hrs of flying at 80 miles an hr, we reached home at 1 am! That’s ok…can’t I do this once more soon:)

Sep 10th : Day 2 in Chicago, IL

The second day in Chicago was the most enjoyable time in the whole trip.
The morning of 10th, we started off early and headed to Devon Street for our breakfast at Udipi café. After a delicious helping of idly- vada and piping hot filter coffee, we were back in form to hit the roads.

This is a picture of Devon Street( the Indian side) It feels like you're walking on Ranganathan street and you just have to think of an item pertaining to India and you are sure to find it here.







We traveled down the Shoreline drive absorbing each sight and smell. Admiring the shoreline beauty driving at a 50 miles an hour is a bit difficult and so we decided to walk down the beach to our first spot for the day- Navy Pier. We still hadn’t gone on cruise and were worried that we wouldn’t be able to do that in a cloudy weather. Just as we’d guessed, most of the cruise lines were closed or were doing a dinner tour and we didn’t have time for that. But at around 3 o clock, we did find one line that would take us on a shoreline cruise at 4. We jumped with joy and to kill an hour’s time we hopped into a Ferris wheel. And this didn’t let us down either.
We headed back to the cruise and I am not going to even attempt writing about it. All I would say is, don’t ever miss it if you go to Chicago. :)

The view from the top of Ferris Wheel was awesome with a magnificent view of the city’s skyline and a good view of the lake too.

We were back on our way to see the botanic gardens when we happened to notice a Hershey’s Shop.Now, can any chocolate lover ever let that go? So there we were in this 3,600 square foot shop as “factory workers” (we were given caps by that name) and watched a “Hersheyizer” sing songs and make cup cakes for the kids.

We rushed out of this place as it was getting dark and were on track again to botanic garden but it was not chocolates that stopped us this time but the mesmerizing Bahai House of Worship. There are only 8 such temples in the world and with such splendid architecture and lovely gardens, it was impossible not to go in.
But, by the time we came out, it was already well past eight and the sun had set. It was no use going to the gardens and so we drove to the other side of Chicago to see China town. Most of the shops close at 7pm and we could see only a few of the gift shops open. So at around 9:30 we decided to leave the place as we had to still hunt for our “veggie” dinner. After several unsuccessful attempts, we managed to get some roti and dal packed from New Delhi restaurant at and the day ended at 12 with my hubby singing birthday song for me.

Sep 9th: downtown Chicago and the trolley Tour

Since the weather was good on the morning of 9th, we decided that we should do the major part of sight seeing that day. So we headed towards downtown and after successfully wasting more than half a “world famous stuffed” pizza at Giordano's, we hopped on to the trolley tour in an open topped bus. Our first stop was at Millennium Park. This park is right in the center of downtown and is most admired for its world class architecture, landscaping and live performances. After watching Crown Fountain, Kapoor Sculpture, Jay Pritzker Pavilion and a Mexican concert ( it happened to be Mexican Independence day on 9th) we hopped back into our bus to continue the journey.

The Crown Fountain has 2 high glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers have changing video images and lights, and water cascades from the top of each making it one of the most enjoyable spots in the park.

The Kapoor Sculpture is a fascinating 110-ton elliptical sculpture designed by the celebrated artist Anish Kapoor. The sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly-polished stainless steel "plates" that create an elliptically-arched, highly reflective work with Chicago’s skyline and Millennium Park itself as a dramatic backdrop. What you are seeing here is a reflection of us on the sculpture.

This is the train that spiderman stops from falling into the lake :)

After this, we decided that we would not hop in and out of the tour but rather complete it in one go. We went on to see the Museum, Financial street, Hyatt and Sheraton hotels, theater district, Navy Pier and finally reached back at Sears Tower.

Thankfully it was not too cloudy and we were able to see the city's spread from the top of the tower. It is a breath-taking concrete jungle!I think the view is best in the evening when the sun just sets and all the street lights are on and the view is just overwhelming.

That was the end of day1 of our trip, but ofcourse the search for vegetarian food began ...thankfully we were able to head to devon street ( the indian forte in Chicago) before 10 and we managed to get some good food.

Sep 8th : The drive from Minneapolis

This trip was a birthday treat from my husband. Since we both loved traveling so much, we decided that we should travel out somewhere outside to celebrate the day. We decided that we should do small road trip of about 5-7 hrs and we checked out all the places where we could visit. We finally decided on Chicago as we had heard so much about it and it was about 6 1/2 hr drive from Minneapolis which also suited us very well. He took a day off on Monday and we were all set to go on our trip. We rented a car from Enterprise and booked acco in Motel 6 and we were off on Friday evening 5:30 pm on 94W.
Since I am very new to driving, we decided that I should start first and then during the later part of the day, he would take over from me. By the time we were in Wisconsin it started raining heavily and it had gotten real dark. We were also in a heavy truck traffic area. To top all this, there was about 12 miles of road work and I should tell you -it was one of my scariest drives. :) We had initially decided to stop at Madison, WI for dinner but we reached there only by 10 pm and knew that all the restaurants would be closed. So we continued to drive and at around 11 pm, we took an exit and had veggie delites at Subway- From here it was my hubby's drive and after crossing a zillion (no, actually 3 tolls) we managed to enter Chicago at 12:15 am. But the most difficult part of the journey was yet to come. We did not have a map of Chicago and Map Quest had let us down with directions. And so after 3-4 calls to the motel and searching nearly 40 miles around Schaumburg, we managed to find our motel. It was around 1 am when we finally hit the bed that day. Scary, tiresome but thoroughly enjoyable drive that was!

My dear blog,
I am starting my second blog and I really do not know if I am going to keep you up.
I have many many interests like music, books, cooking, travelling, crafts...and I would really like to write about all of them. But, mainly what I want to write about is traveling.
I travel almost every weekend to different places and after a few months,I forget how beautiful the place was and the minute details that I enjoyed then. So what I want you to do is to be my hard disk - my trusted memory- to remember all these places for me and ofcourse all the fun I have had during these outings. I live in Minneapolis, MN now and travel around the n-w region of USA mostly.

If I am atleast able to do a travelogue with you for a month, then i plan to write about my other intersts too.Hope u will remain my friend for a long time to come and we get to share a lot of wonderful memories travelling around the world.