Red Wing & Biking the Cannon Falls Trail

For our 32nd anniversary, Roberta and I wanted to go someplace close to Saint Paul where we could bike and sketch. We also wanted to give our Bromptons a fairly long test-ride approximately the distance of the longest stretch on our Bemidji to Brainerd trip at the end of the month. We decided on staying a night in Red Wing and bicycling the Cannon Valley Trail to Cannon Falls and back. We booked a room at the historic Saint James Hotel and bought two round Amtrak trip tickets.

Monday, we boarded the Amtrak Empire Builder (it was two hours late) with our Bromptons folded up and stored in the luggage compartment. It's a short trip to Red Wing from Union Depot and there's nice scenery along the way. At the Hastings Lock & Dam # 2,  we saw pelicans and turkey vultures waiting for lunchtime fish meal to come swimming over the dam.

It was real hot when we arrived so we ate sandwiches and tried to sketch, but both of us were too hot to sketch, so we gave up and had dinner at the Staghead just a block from the Saint James. The Staghead has good beer on tap and the food was good with fresh, local ingredients. We did a few sketches:

Roberta's sketch of the Staghorn.

My sketch of the Staghorn.

The next day was cooler, so we bought trail passes at the front desk at the Saint James after eating breakfast at Bev's Cafe where a lot of the locals go. We got on the trail and biked up the gentle grade to Cannon Falls. We ate lunch in Cannon Falls at Nick's Diner (a favorite of bicyclists). After lunch we sketched the falls. It was hot again and we didn't bring our chairs, but we did pretty good in spite of the discomfort:

Roberta's sketch of the falls.

Roberta sketched these kids swimming in the river.

My sketch of the falls and the cave.

We rode back to Red Wing and had dinner on the Saint James Hotel's veranda overlooking the river. Good food and drink and excellent place to sketch Barn Bluff:

The Amtrak train was an hour and half late. We love Amtrak, but it is so shameful that our nation has such terrible train service compared to other countries. If we can send a spacecraft to Pluto, why can't we fix our passenger rail service? It was so discouraging to read the following notice in the Red Wing train station:

Gearing Up for More Sketchy Adventures

We had a lot of fun sketching and bicycling in Sioux Falls last month. Lots of times people ask us where we got our bicycling or sketching gear. So, this post is about some new art and bicycling gear pictured here:

New stuff in front of Union Depot, Saint Paul.

The Brompton isn't new, but I recently got it tuned up at Calhoun Cycle which makes it as good as new. While I was picking up my Brompton, I purchased a nifty Banjo Brothers Metro backpack. The backpack is perfect for carrying all my sketching supplies, water bottle etc.

One new thing that fits real good in the backpack is a Niji roll-up pencil holder I got at my favorite art store Wet Paint. A  lot of my sketches are pen and colored pencil on Strathmore toned paper. Speaking of Strathmore, check out the sketch I did for their Pass The Journal project.

The other thing that fits good in the backpack is the Helinox chair I got from Midwest Mountaineering. It's compact and lightweight - perfect for bicycling and sketching.

I'll get to try out the new gear next week when we take Amtrak from Saint Paul's Union Depot down to Red Wing. We will stay overnight at the Saint James Hotel and bike the Cannon Valley Trail the next day.

At the end of the month, we'll be taking a Jefferson Lines bus up to Bemidji and bike down the Paul Bunyan Trail to Brainerd. This map has the basic itinerary:

Our Sketching Trip to Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Warm weather has returned to the Upper MIdwest and once again Roberta and I are traveling to interesting places in our region to sketch. Our friends at Jefferson Lines suggested we visit Sioux Falls , South Dakota on same "Big Bluestem" route we took last year to Pipestone, Minnesota. Roberta and I had never been to Sioux Falls, so we were excited to explore a new city on bike and sketch our discoveries.

Wednesday, We took the Green Line from our home in Lowertown's Union Depot to the bus terminal in Minneapolis to catch our Jefferson Lines bus to Sioux Falls. I sketched our bus driver as we made our way southwest from the Twin Cities. Roberta sketched the rolling countryside outside her window. Our bus had wifi, so we were able to upload our sketches to Twitter (click on sketches to make them bigger).

We arrived six hours later at the Jefferson Lines depot just outside of Sioux Falls. We unfolded our Brompton bikes and pedaled our way to the Victorian Bed & Breakfast in the Cathedral Historic District on the hill overlooking the city. We grabbed a bite to eat at The Market, an awesome downtown eatery. After dinner, we biked a short distance to see the spectacular falls in Falls Park. The Big Sioux river tumbles over a jagged escarpment of red quartzite. At  night the falls are dramatically lit by multi-colored spotlights.  Rain started falling, so we were unable to sketch. We returned to the Victorian B&B and hoped we would have an opportunity Thursday to sketch the falls.

The sky, the next morning was overcast and gloomy. We were prepared for a day of indoor sketching at several museums. We walked next door to the Pettigrew Museum. The museum is housed in the former residence of Senator Richard Pettigrew, Roberta took the tour while I sketched some of the objects and curiosities in display cases.

We biked downtown to the Old Courthouse Museum. We split up. Roberta sketched the exhibit about the history of the purse. I sketched the Fawick Flyer, an old automobile fabricated by Thomas Fawick, a local inventor. I also sketched another curiosity, a tree trunk with a tornado-driven section of railroad track sticking out of it. I found Roberta with a crowd of children surrounding her, bombarding her with questions about her sketches. My favorite remark, "I didn't know you were real".

We left the museum and biked to the Falls Overlook Café in Falls Park for lunch. We enjoyed eating while gazing out at the park. The rain was coming down pretty hard when we left the café, so we biked back to the B&B. After we dried off, Roberta sketched a vintage fainting couch just inside the front door and added the fainting woman from memory.

After the rain ended, we biked to Parker's Bistro in the heart of downtown Sioux Falls. Parker's Bistro has excellent food, great service and a great selection of fine wines. Roberta and I sketched the lively crowd in the restaurant. They have a lovely patio dining area out front with live soft music, but due to the cooler weather, that wasn't happening that particular night.

The rain ended Friday morning, so after eating a delicious, sumptuous breakfast downstairs, we split up again. Roberta biked to Falls Park and painted this awesome watercolor of the falls:

I biked down to Fawick Park along the Big Sioux River to sketch a bronze cast of Michelangelo's David. The full-sized, exact replica of the original sculpture was a gift to the City from the Fawick family. The nude statue scandalized some of the city's more puritanical citizens at the time.

After sketching the stature of David, I biked south of downtown to check out the Sioux Empire Medical Museum in the concourse of the Sanford Medical Center. I love small museums devoted to esoteric branches of scientific knowledge. The Sioux Empire Medical Museum has an extensive collection of medical curiosities including a foot-powered dental drill and electric-shock therapy machines. I sketched the vintage iron lung attended by a nurse mannequin in period uniform.

I wished I had more time to sketch the other ancient medical devices, but Roberta and I had tickets to a Saint Paul Saints vs the Sioux Falls Canaries game at "The Birdcage".

Roberta and I like to sketch everywhere, and especially at baseball games. We sketched the Saints earlier in the week at the new CHS Field just a short walk from our home in Lowertown. It was a great night for baseball and there was a good crowd on hand to watch the Canaries win the first game. The Saints won the second game.

Our final day in Saint Paul was warm and partly cloudy, perfect for sketching outdoors. Roberta chose to paint the lovely Victorian B&B.

I biked back to the river to sketch the very nice bike and pedestrian trail on the opposite bank:

Roberta and I got together in the afternoon and biked to Philips Street for some excellent pizza at Fiero Pizza on the SculptureWalk.

After lunch, we had an opportunity to bike part of the extraordinary bike trail that rings the city of Sioux Falls on way back to the Jefferson Lines depot. We had a lot of fun sketching in Sioux Falls and look forward to returning to sketch things we missed.

If you take your travel bike on Jefferson Lines,  we think this is the best route for getting downtown:

Sketching in Nevada & California

Roberta and I took a trip from the frozen tundra in the Upper Midwest to the sunny climes of the Southwest to visit family, bicycle and sketch. We took out Brompton folding bikes and flew this time. First stop was Las Vegas where our eldest daughter lives. She drove us to Hoover Dam wherewe did some sketching:

My sketch of the dam from the middle.

After hiking around the dam and working up an appetite, we motored to Boulder City and ate an awesome lunch at Fox Smokehouse & BBQ. I especially liked the Pulled Pork and the Cowboy Beans. Here's my sketch of Dan Fox:

My sketch of Dan Fox

The next day, we hiked in the Red Rock National Conservation Area. Roberta and I sketched a mountain:

Roberta's sketch of a mountain at Red Rock.

Roberta and I and our sketch journals at Red Rock.

In the evening we walked around the famous Las Vegas Strip. Roberta did this sketch of a gondola at The Venetian:

Roberta's sketch of the gondola at the Venetian.

We visited Container Park, an attraction made from shipping containers, a favorite of young hipsters:

My quick sketch of Container Park.

And a few blocks away, the Downtown Las Vegas Fremont Street Experience:

We took a bus through miles of desert to Los Angeles. The bus let us off downtown where lots of homeless people camp out on the streets in tents:

My sketch of a homeless man and his tent.

Los Angeles has some pretty good bike paths. We especially like the Ballona Creek trail from Culver City to the Pacific Ocean:

My map of the Ballona Creek bike trail.

The creek is mostly lined with concrete which reminded us of the old horror movie "Them":

Roberta's sketch of the Ballona Creek trail.

The next day, we took a Metrolink train down to San Clemente. We ate a yummy breakfast at La Galette :

Afterwards, Roberta and I sketched the San Clemente Art Gallery, the Farmers Market and the San Clemente Pier:

Roberta's sketch of the Farmer's Market and a tightrope walker.

My sketch of the art gallery & Roberta.

My sketch of the scene in front of the San Clemente pier.

The next day it rained. I sketched the ghost of former San Clemente resident, Richard Nixon:

My rainy day sketch of Nixon's ghost.

The next day was warm and sunny, so we visited the tide pools of Laguna Beach:

My sketch of the tide pools and our guide.

Roberta's sketch of the tide pools.

We returned to Los Angeles where we enjoyed an awesome dinner at The Bun Shop on Western Avenue:

Sketching the Paranormal in Pipestone, Minnesota

In yesterday's post, Roberta and I travelled to Pipestone on Thursday from Minneapolis via a westbound Jefferson Lines bus . We sketched at the Pipestone National Monument Friday morning and then sketched the buildings along Main Street and Hiawatha Avenue in the center of Pipestone in the bright, clear, October sunshine. The Golden Hour faded and the ruddy stones of Pipestone's landmark buildings, that only minutes before blazed in the amber beams of the setting sun, now took on a palette of darker and more somber hues – Pipestone's Paranormal Weekend was about to begin.

We prepared for our first night of paranormal activities by fortifying ourselves with dinner at Lange's Cafe (click on sketches to make them bigger):

My sketch of Lange's Cafe.

Lange's has good, classic, American family restaurant fare, but their specialty is pies. The sour cream raisin pie is incredibly awesome (top shelf):

Roberta's sketch of the pie case in Lange's Cafe.

After stuffing ourselves with pie at Lange's we took in a play at the Pipestone Performing Arts Center. The Calumet Players performed a medley of macabre tales in a production titled "Nightfall with Edgar Allan Poe". The local thespians did a good job of dramatizing "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Pit and the Pendulum", and "The Raven" and the actors succeeded in giving me the frights. The set design was especially awesome. I did a sketch of a scene from the play from memory during intermission:

I rarely use yellow-green. It's a good color for ectoplasm.

After the play, we walked back to the Calumet Inn to meet some of the participants in the weekend's paranormal activities and listen to their eerie experiences with ghosts by electric candlelight. Some of the ghost hunters had some hi-tech gear designed to track down ethereal wraiths in our midst. We searched high and low. But the closest we came to bagging an apparition was when we sat in a dark,  un-renovated room on the third floor rumored to be haunted by a ghost named Charlie who once walked among the living until a fateful fire on Valentines Day 1944 in the Calumet Inn transported him into the realm of the supernatural:

My journal entries document the search for elusive phantoms.

I briefly thought I felt the presence of a being from the great beyond, but I decided the sensation was more likely the effect of a surfeit of sugar in my bloodstream boosted by the awesome sour cream raisin pie I ate back at Lange's Cafe. Roberta and I turned in early so we'd be refreshed for Saturday's schedule of phantasmagoric activities.

Saturday morning, Roberta and I joined our fellow seekers of the paranormal at the Pipestone County Museum from which I biked to a local cemetery for a tour conducted by a local historian:

Journal sketches of some interesting monuments.

Roberta skipped the cemetery tour to finish her sketch of the Calumet Inn. After the tour of the cemetery, Roberta and I met at the old Masonic Lodge on Main Street. No longer in use, the lodge had some interesting murals and artifacts:

Artifacts in the Masonic Lodge.

After the Masonic Lodge tour, we filed into the Performing Arts Center for a "gallery reading" by psychic medium Susie Otto though which the dearly departed sent messages to loved ones in the audience:

My sketch of the medium.

After the gallery reading,  I walked a few blocks south to do a quick sketch of the Pipestone County Courthouse. The courthouse is an impressive, majestic building and I hope I can return someday and do a more detailed sketch:

My sketch of the Pipestone County Courthouse (and tank).

Roberta and I had dinner and I rushed to sketch another landmark, the old water tower:

The old water tower in the amber glow of sunset.

As the curtain of night descended on the city of Pipestone, we joined a "Ghost Walk" – three actors in period costumes led us on an exploration of Pipestone's alleys and byways while relating tales of spirits that haunted various buildings. I'm not very good at sketching in the dark, but Roberta did some nice sketches of our guides by lamplight:

Roberta's sketches of the two ghost-guides with ethereal emanations.

Another sketch by Roberta of a ghost-guide.

After the tour of Pipestone, we were foot-sore and weary, but we partook in one more ghost-hunt at the County Museum, but we failed to glimpse any apparitions. We slunk back to the Inn fell into a deep slumber.

The next day, as we were packing up our Bromptons, Roberta noticed her bike-light was facing backwards. Since neither of us had turned the light around and our door was locked, we concluded it was one of Pipestone's many playful poltergeists that pulled the prank on us. We had our paranormal experience!

My journal account of our encounter with a poltergeist.

We enjoyed our sketching trip to Pipestone and look forward to returning someday. Pipestone is very sketchable and we recommend taking a trip there to all our sketching friends. Pipestone is also a great place to bike. You can rent a bike for 5 dollars a day at the Ewart Community Center (info here). I enjoyed bicycling on the Casey Jones State Trail that begins on the edge of town near the big grain elevator. The trail runs straight and level through the cornfields:

I could have used a ruler to sketch the Case Jones Trail.

We look forward to traveling on Jefferson Lines to more locations in Minnesota. Stay tuned!