The Melt: Cottage Grove Ravine Park

On Saturday, I took advantage of the surprising weather forecast and joined up with Chuck for a day of caching in Cottage Grove. A bunch of new caches had popped up in Cottage Grove Ravine Park and Chuck suggested that we head out to nab them, along with many others, while enjoying the day.

We started a bit later than we are accustomed to (8:30) and eventually made it to the park itself just after 9. There were about 15 caches in the park and many of those had been hidden quite recently. Most of them were regular sized and several were nicely hidden ammo cans — my favorite. We hiked the entire length of the park to get almost all of the caches and were quite surprised to find that only one other caching group was out at the same time we were. I took a couple of pictures of the lake to show the receding ice but didn’t get any showing the snow that was still on the trails and in some of the deeper wooded areas.

Even though the weather has been warmer very recently, I was quite surprised to hear that tick season had already begun here in the Twin Cities. I seriously believe that the little blood sucking fuckers are getting more resilient every year and show up earlier and earlier even with snow cover still sticking around. Chuck already had several ticks on his pants after the third cache in the park (and the second in the woods). I found about 20 total yesterday and while I don’t have the same enthusiastic reaction (previously known as the “tick dance”) that I used to, I was not pleased to find the little bastards making their way up my clothing.

The next caching adventure I will likely have, especially with the new job starting soon, will be with Chuck and Craig “Up North” on our annual first weekend of May trip. With the 10 to 12″ of snow up there, I hope that the ticks will be able to hold off from their first hatch at least until after that but after finding them nearly crawling out of the snow piles this weekend, I’m not so sure I will be that lucky.

See all the pictures from Saturday here (camera).

This weekend I had the longest uninterrupted span without sleep since college. I’m generally someone who goes to sleep by midnight and is up before 8. If I don’t get my ~8 hours I will find a way to make it up.

This weekend we were quite busy. On Friday night we went to watch the Minnesota Gophers go 0-3 (eventually 0-4 for the weekend) and start off with zero wins in their first four games since the WCHA began in 1959. Kim and Laura were surprised at their interest level in the game and so was I ;) We had pretty good seats and the action was certainly steady. Kim is really looking forward to seeing a couple of Gopher sporting events this year and into next. Our next will probably be Gopher’s Men’s swimming vs Arizona State in January. Woot.

On Saturday morning I woke up at 5:30 and headed out the door for caching in and around New Richmond, WI. We were trying to stay out of Minnesota and the hunting season that is raging on this side of the river. We did some some hunters out scouting the Waterfowl Production Areas and other public hunting grounds and did hear some gunshots off in the distance but nothing close to us — thankfully. The weather was absolutely perfect with just a slight chill in the air following the very chilly morning. Unfortunately the cold wasn’t enough to keep the freshly hatched ticks down and I came home with several very young ones running around my clothing/body. Yuck.

Kim met us in Lake Elmo at the Machine Shed and being that I was quite weak after too much walking on 1,000 calories, we went inside for dinner. Their menu was different than we were expecting but I was in no shape to care. We quickly ordered and ended up with a trip to the salad bar to get something into my quickly. The steak and chicken I ate were very tasty and I enjoyed the leftovers again this morning.

After the Machine Shed we headed over to Trader Joe’s in Woodbury following the suggestion of many of my co-workers and Kim’s cousin. While we were there I grabbed some polenta, turkey jerky, two bottles of cheap ass wine (I don’t know the difference anyway), and Kim got some stuff she was interested in. The place is entirely too small for the number of crazies packing the place and I just couldn’t understand the people who had entirely filled their carts with processed foods and organic vegetables as if they were stocking up for the end of the world.

We headed home and I went down to Northfield to hang out with Josh at the Rueb ‘n’ Stein until too late. I haven’t drank anything in about three months so I headed home just before 2. By the time we went to bed at 3 I was absolutely wrecked. With the time change this morning I was up too god damn early with the sun blaring in my face. 5 hours of sleep after that much time being awake (and doing stuff) was not enough.

After a train ride to downtown Minneapolis with Kim to pickup some items from her office that she needed to work from home today, I was just dead. While the train ride there was sardined because of the football game (109 yard TD? Sorry, #28 and his 295 yards doesn’t quite make up for that untouched blunder) the empty ride back was quite the perfect little nap before grocery shopping today.

So after grocery shopping and then heading over to Chris and Laura’s for turkey brats and other healthy food options (turkey brats taste like dry horse shit BTW) I should have joined Kim in an hour-long nap but instead I’m sitting here writing this pointless crap.

Does anyone even care? I didn’t think so.

BTW, I did some more research on my dropped PageRank and dropping rankings as a result and found that Google has done this to plenty of other high ranked sites and while no one really knows why it occurred everyone seems to believe it’s because of link selling. Sorry, I don’t have anything to do w/that shit so I have thrown that out the window. Read more on the shitty Google pulled here.

Anyway, I’m off to bed, finally.