Yesterday, Chuck, Dave and I spent the day caching in Winona which included much time hiking up and down the sides of the bluffs that line the sides of the city up Highway 61 from Red Wing on down.

Our first stop was at the “Kitchen Cove Cache” which is located about 500 feet above the road below and offers excellent views of Winona and the bluffs on the Wisconsin side. I, being scared of heights, did not particularly care for the hike up or watching my friends scale (hand over hand) towards the top of the bluff while I stayed where I was, shaking nearly uncontrollably, worried I would bump my way to serious injury below at a slip of my white knuckled fingers.

After Dave descended from his perch another 50 feet above me, he began to walk me down from my relative safe zone but stopped and told me to turn to my left (no my other left) and look down at my feet. I had been standing less than a foot from the cache for the last 20 minutes — too scared to look down… heh!

We spent a little bit of time in and around downtown Winona and then began a trip North again, through the crazy amount of traffic of Fall Colors watchers, and found a cache about 650 feet above the road level and well over 1,500 over Highway 61 below which is depicted above.

I had visited Winona to hike the bluff back in 2005 and was thrilled to get back to do some more. I really need to get back here with Kim one of these days and drag her up to the top to enjoy the beauty that I only seem to find the time for while searching for ammo boxes full of shit that no one wants.

Check out a video for a panoramic shot here:

See all the pictures from geocaching in Winona here (camera) and here (mobile).

Well, I’m trying to get back into posting now that the crazy time at work has slowed. We had originally planned to be in Hibbing this weekend for a bean bag tourney and after that fell through we planned on heading to Duluth for a day trip. Kim decided we should stick around at home and find other crap to do.

I had originally planned on bowling at Apple Place Bowl, where we’ve never gone before, but found the hours on Fridays to be prohibitive. Instead, Kim suggested that we go out to see Shoot Em Up on opening night.

Kim wanted to see the movie because of fucking Clive Owen. I took a look at the trailer and the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes before heading out to the movie and I’m glad I did. They all claimed that it was over-the-top ridiculous and didn’t take itself seriously and they were absolutely right. Between killing people with raw carrots and feeding a newborn with a lactating hooker instead of formula, this movie had more intentional plot holes than anything I have ever seen before.

Even with the unbelievable amount of unnecessary killing, general non-sense, and people walking out of the theater mid-movie, I found the film to be hysterical and I was laughing out loud throughout most of it. While I started right from the get go, most of the rest of the movie-goers took until 3/4 of the way through the movie to join me.

On Saturday I spent the majority of the day caching with Chuck in and around the South metro from Lakeville all the way to Prior Lake and back to Burnsville before picking up Kim at the 28th Ave transit station and heading home. Chuck and I picked up around 30 caches each and only traveled about 35 miles with several miles of hiking in Cleary Lake Regional and Ritter Farm park included. Not bad for the types we were looking for!

After heading home and showering, we got ready to join Kim’s Aunt and her cousin at Redstone American Grill in Eden Prairie for dinner. I had the Seared Ahi Tuna with an asian noodle salad and Kim had their backyard BBQ chicken. The rest of the table ordered the spinach/artichoke dip which apparently tasted more like frozen creamed spinach dip than anything else. They didn’t finish the appetizer. My meal was pretty good — certainly not the best Ahi I’ve ever had but you can’t expect much when you order seafood in Minnesota.

Redstone has a woman that apparently only walks around the foyer holding a candle floating in water on a tray. We came up with various reasons for her doing this including punishment for dropping a tray full of entrees the weekend before, attempting to look busy while doing nothing more than wandering around in 50 square feet, or just being yet another body in the foyer to make it seem like they have a lot of unnecessary staff on hand to cater to your every need.

I liked Redstone’s decor including the fresh flowers in the bathroom. What I didn’t quite understand were the two large piles of ice in the bottom of the old-school floor length urinals. I wasn’t quite sure if I was supposed to pee on the piles to help melt them or not so I used a stall instead.

On Sunday I watched the Vikings win for once and went grocery shopping. Not much else occurred until now when I wrote this pointless post.

See all the pictures from the weekend here (mobile).

This weekend Kim, Josh and I spent our time out in the swelter heat of central Iowa (about 30 miles outside of Des Moines) at the US Army Corps of Engineers Lake Red Rock’s North Overlook campground.

I had visited this site back in March and have mentioned it twice since. I was VERY excited last week about getting down there again and checking out everything they had to offer. I also had plans to get into Pella, IA and enjoy some of the “Dutch influence” that the town has with Kimmy.

We arrived at the campsite later than I had hoped due to pokey behavior on everyone’s part and the 4.5 hour drive. We had camp setup in less than 30 minutes and I got to work cooking dinner. I had planned on roasted corn, baked potatoes, and chicken along with our other sides of homemade shrimp and pea salad, potato salad, and chips, etc but ended up cutting it to salads, corn, and the chicken instead. I just didn’t have the 35 minutes to bake the potatoes on the fire.

The next morning I got up and did the cooking/cleaning thing and spent the day playing bean bags with Josh and Kim. We had lunch and suffered through the breeze-less 90+ degree day watching the dogs swim and then Buddy be swarmed by gnats loving his now stinky coat. I made brats and baked potatoes for dinner along with some pasta salad. Damn good stuff IMHO. I was so beat from the day’s activities that I passed out for 30 minutes or so in the tent and then re-emerged for fire pies and then another hour long nap in the camp chair before bed.

I was the first one up on Sunday and had quite a bit of the camp packed up by the time I woke Kim up at 8 AM. We got everything settled into the car and took off on a tour of the other campgrounds finding North Overlook to be, by far, the best available. We also noted some campsites inside North Overlook that we would choose on our next visit if possible. After that, we returned back and made lunch before cleaning the last vestiges of camp and heading out at 1 PM for home.

A very nice camping trip without rain. I did come back with a nice sunburn and the need for some serious sleep.

Take a peek at the pictures from the trip here, here, here (mobile), and here (camera).