Sensational and Surreal Start of Summer Season 2019!…part 2: Blues Lose; Twin Cities & Wisconsin Outdoors

      My son David and I had already traveled together in about 30 states.  Now, we were going to add a couple more with his wife Marleen.  We were also going to see a different section of Wisconsin, a state whose eastern coast we had explored back in 2003.

     On Saturday morning, June 1, we ate breakfast and headed north toward eastern Iowa, passing several flooded areas en route amidst this crazy, torrential rain-filled spring. While in Cedar Rapids, I had my first ever experience eating pho.  It was OK at best.  After stopping at a Rest Area/Travel Center in southeast Minnesota, we checked into the Quality Inn-Eagan.

     There was soooo much excitement as we changed into our St. Louis Blues shirts and checked into the Trail Stop Tavern in Burnsville!  That excitement changed to total disgust in a blink of an eye as our first Stanley Cup Finals home game in 49 years turned into an immediate disaster.  We finished our food and left while trailing 3-0 after one period.

     Since we were on vacation, we quickly headed to a sensational, nearby hiking area known as Lebanon Hills Regional Park.  The basic trails we hiked featured dozens of frogs, turtles, lily pads and wild flowers.  The calm wind offered fantastic reflective views on the huge ponds, further enhanced by the ensuing sunset.

     All along, I continued to follow game 3 of the hockey finals.  The same sun went down harshly on the Blues as they yielded a whopping four more power play goals in getting pounded, 7-2…

     We all did the Sunday morning breakfast buffet before heading to Saint Paul’s Como shuttle bus station.  It took us to the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory.  We weren’t impressed with much of the zoo section, but this is a very minor one compared to the Minnesota Zoo in nearby Apple Valley.  But we did love the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory.

     The beautiful building was resplendent with very tall ferns, charming statues and fountains, and gorgeous flowers!  But the area out back, known as the Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden, was even more fantastic with tranquil reflecting waters, a variety of bird life and beautiful waterfalls.

The garden’s significance is that, back in 1955, the cities of Saint Paul and Nagasaki, Japan became the first Sister City partnership between American and Asian cities.  As a 1977 follow up, the City of Nagasaki presented a plan from a ninth generation Japanese landscape gardener.  The garden was subsequently built and opened in 1979, thanks to generous donations from the Ordway family.

     Per a sign in the gardens itself, ‘The garden’s design showcased both the sansui (mountain and water) and chisen-kaiyu (strolling pond) style of Japanese garden traditions.’

     Next stop was Minneapolis Institute of Art, also admission-free!  We were also lucky enough to be granted free entry on the first day of the exhibit, “Hearts of Our People,” focusing on Native American Women. I just had to sign up for a one-year free museum membership.  The paintings, tapestries, clothing items and sculptures were incredibly detailed!

     















After leaving for a brisk, half-mile walk for a nice lunch in the terrific atmosphere of Ichiddo Ramen Restaurant, 
 we returned to the museum.  More highlights for us were outdoor sculptures, the ancient Egyptian section; colorful, full-wall Asian murals, a wealth of Impressionist paintings and some highly unique contemporary paintings and sculptures!

     We totally loved our next stop!  Minnehaha Regional Park is one of the coolest city parks in the entire country!  I know.  I have visited nearly every metropolitan area in every state. What’s so special about the park?  Well, the main feature is the 53-foot Minnehaha Falls, made famous in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1855 epic poem, “Song of Hiawatha.”

    There are a few easy access points to the falls, and the park features some terrific hiking trails elsewhere along Minnehaha Creek, with a very close proximity to the Mississippi River! Added to the falls were areas of great rushing creek waters, stone bridges, wading areas, live band entertainment, refreshment places and a variety of in-park transportation methods to explore further. That’s why we were there for a full 2 ½ hours!

     Always seeking to eat at non-chain restaurants and normally international ones to boot, we had a terrific dinner at quaint, decorative Christos Greek Restaurant. 

     Monday was our mini travel day!  We drove north to Shafer, MN for Franconia Sculpture Park. It’s well worth the less than an hour drive from the Twin Cities because it’s 43 acres large, chock full of several dozen of the most unusual outdoor sculptures you’ll ever see, and it’s continuously expanding!  

     One of our favorites was the tall tower, with three-wide old AM/FM cassette players.  A sampling of the others included a large yellow tank, a strange cast iron bird, a brief trail of mirrors, a triangular climbing roof, and Lizard Lounge. 

     There is also a remnant of a very sad day in history.  It’s the authentic street sign of the Lorraine Motel. 

 It was at that location in Memphis, TN back on April 4, 1968 where Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated when he stepped onto the balcony from room 306.  That motel site is now The National Civil Rights Museum. 

      Franconia is open every single day of the year from dawn to dusk, and it’s giant welcome sign has the tagline, “BIG SPACE…BIG ART…Imagination in Action!” It even has its own huge ‘Hot Metal Pour’ station for the majority of items made on-site.

     From Franconia, we continued east toward the town of Taylors Falls. Our first stop there was the Minnesota section of Interstate State Park along the St. Croix River National Scenic Riverway.  The Glacial Potholes Trail beckoned us.  The up and down climbs were aerobically nice, some of the potholes were incredibly deep, but the views of the river were even more spectacular!

     Back into town for lunch at Juneberry Café where we left our car to walk to a bridge, then under the side of the bridge and back up to a road on the Wisconsin side of Interstate State Park.  While there, we hiked on the western terminus of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail, part of Dalles of the St. Croix River State Natural Area. The river views looking back to the Minnesota side, which we had just left, were breathtaking!

     We walked back to our car and drove just a short distance to the Cascade Falls area in the village of Osceola, WI.  Our first activity was a short hike to the relatively unimpressive Geiger Falls.  The 25-foot drop of the Cascade Falls on the Falls Bluff Trail Loop was far better!  It took awhile to hike there, winding along the St. Croix River with kayakers in front of us and amazing bridge and river scenes to our far right.

     At Cascade Falls, it was so cool and refreshing to be able to walk on the small rocks and dirt toward and behind the first several feet of the falls on the left side. The falls is some 35 feet wide. It was so nice and peaceful, with very few tourists passing by to grab a share of the views and spray.  Understandably, I didn’t want to leave that area.  But the best waterfall of the day beckoned us!

     Continuing our drive back southward in extreme western Wisconsin, we arrived in Willow River State Park.  Oh, how we loved Willow Falls!  Considered one of the two most impressive waterfalls in the state, we reached the major viewing areas by way of the Burkhardt Trail.

     It’s more than 100 feet wide and has at least six major drops, the largest being about 15 feet high!  You could access it from quite a few different points, and also climb up a couple of the cascades from the far right side, but the rocks were far too slippery for me in my half dozen attempts.  But we spent more than a half hour there, as I walked around talking to several people, and took a wide variety of distant and close-up photographs.

     It took us 40 minutes to drive back to our hotel, excitedly anticipating the crucial game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals!

Sensational and Surreal Start of Summer Season 2019!…part I: From Hamburg with Love

      Way back when I was growing up, the summer season was generally considered the period from Memorial Day through Labor Day.  After all, that pretty much coincided with total freedom from the bonds of school.

      Now that school is back in for the masses of today’s America, it’s heartening to look back on the first half of summer 2019!  For me, very few time periods in my long life have exceeded the overall, nearly daily excitement of this past Memorial Day through June!

     Memorial Day actually started for me just prior to midnight.  I drove past the Enterprise Center, and on the far right of the building hung a long banner that announced the impending Stanley Cup Finals between the St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins.  As the clock struck midnight, the series start was to be in Beantown that very same night.

      This year’s ice hockey classic was generally advertised as a Stanley Cup Finals rematch.  I still recall the thrill my sisters and I experienced from the Standing Room Only rafters of the old St. Louis Arena when Jimmy Roberts’ goal gave us our only series lead in a 6-1 loss.  That was back in 1970.

    Ironically, Roberts, who passed away less than four years ago, was also known as the man who scored the Blues’ first ever playoff goal.  It came on April 4, 1967.  It was also our only goal in a 1-0 win over Philadelphia!

     A second later, just prior to midnight this past Memorial Day, I passed the Enterprise Center’s statue of Blues colorful, goal-scoring phenom Brett Hull.  Not only was Hull the face of the franchise from the late 1980’s through the late ‘90’s, but “The Golden Brett” was again in the spotlight over the next few weeks of 2019--to the delight of many and to the dismay of several others, as in the infamous “Drunk as Hull” t-shirts.

     But back to our regularly-scheduled story…

     Why was I driving by 14^th and Clark at such a time?  Well, at 12:15 a.m. that same Monday, I was picking up my son David and his wife Marleen from the Greyhound station.  They had just arrived from a long bus ride from Chicago after short flights from their home of Hamburg, Germany to Copenhagen, Denmark and Stockholm, Sweden, before an extremely long flight to Chi-Town!

     This was by far the most excited I had ever been to be at a bus station!  After all, I had not seen David and Marleen since my girlfriend Pam and I flew to Hamburg for their incredible wedding, the third weekend of April, 2018! It was highly memorable because it was for my son, for the cabin or lodge venue, the creative travel-based wedding cake and decorations, and for the very different activities.

     

     On this occasion, I drove David and Marleen back to my house for them to unpack and we talked until 2 a.m. or so. We slept in late, did more groceries and they trimmed deep into my front bushes which my bad back had prevented me from reaching.  From there, we went to Pam’s to eat pizza while preparing for Stanley Cup Finals game 1 on her big-screen TV.

     We were all really excited as the Blues, a terrific road team through most of the 2018-19 season, held a 2-0 lead early in the second period on goals by Brayden Schenn and Vladimir Tarasenko.  Then they stopped playing, continued taking dumb penalties against the team with the post-season’s best power play, and succumbed to the Bruins, 4-2.

     I educated David, Marleen and Pam of the fact that the Blues were now 0-13 in Stanley Cup Finals games after being swept four straight in their first three seasons of existence. Back then, it was required that one of the expansion teams from the six-team Western Division had to play the survivor from the established clubs of the six-team Eastern Division.  It took the Blues 49 years just to return to that series level.

     Unfortunately, since the Stanley Cup Finals turned into a best-of-seven series way back in 1939, the team that won the series opener went onto win a lopsided 61 of 79 times.  This was also the Bruins’ eighth straight playoff win of 2019!

     The following evening, after work, we had a big immediate family dinner for David and Marleen at Pam’s house, complete with a wide variety of regular foods and desserts, including a huge St. Louis Blues cookie cake!

    About a month earlier, David mentioned that he and Marleen wanted to take a road trip when they were in town.  He narrowed it down to three closer states of the dozen or so ones in which he had never been:  Louisiana, Michigan or Minnesota.  Since it’s one very long day of driving just to get to New Orleans, and Pam and I had recently spent four days in southeast Michigan, we would go to The Twin Cities.

     By the time they had arrived in St. Louis, I had already planned a pretty detailed six-day itinerary that included a good deal of both indoor and outdoor activities. I spent a couple hours of after work time on May 29^th, narrowing down hotel possibilities in the southeast part of the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs.

     A couple hours later, it was time for Stanley Cup Finals game 2 in Boston’s TD Center! When center Charlie Coyle scored a power play goal less than five minutes into the game, the general consensus among Blues fans was, “Here we go again!”  But this Blues team was so darn resilient from the point in the regular season when they made their move up the ladder from dead last in points among 31 teams on January 3^rd.

     Both Robert Bortuzzo and Tarasenko scored first period goals as the two teams were tied 2-2 after one period.  Both Bruins veteran Tuukka Rask and Blues rookie Jordan Binnington were red hot in goal from that point on.  The second period was scoreless.  The third period was scoreless. 

     And then…great play-making by Oskar Sundqvist and Ryan O’Reilly, getting the puck back to defenseman Carl Gunnarsson between the blue line and Stanley Cup logo…Slap shot by “Boom Boom,” and the puck went over the pad of Rask, into the net 3 minutes and 51 seconds into overtime!  The Blues evened the series at 1-1, winning their first Stanley Cup Finals game in their 52-season history!

     Friday night, Pam and I had our usual great night of dancing to Crossfire with some 30 other friends in the house.  It was about my 300^th time dancing to that band in the past 13 years!  The venue was Moolah Shrine Center in Maryland Heights.  We always joke around that we have been going there LONG before anyone else on the dance floor!  After all, it was our very own Parkway North Junior High School some 50 years ago!

     After the dance, dropped off Pam and joined David and Marleen at my house the night before the start of our six-day trip…

Switzerland: Where Storybook Dreams Come True

     Late one Wednesday night, my ex-girlfriend’s eldest son asked me if I would visit his school for Friday’s International Day.

     I said, “Sure.  I’ll go for awhile.”  Then he told me I had to dress up in foreign type attire.

     Unfortunately, I had very little time to shop around or even look around for a costume.  You know…the usual busy things like my deadline for completing the monthly publication for which I was serving as editor.

     To make a long story into one of medium length, I called my cousin at 8 on Friday morning. I asked her what Switzerland props I left at her house for a play I wrote and directed complete with song parodies for family and friends to fully participate in to celebrate my sister’s milestone birthday.

     I went to the elementary school dressed in lederhosen, a white shirt, shorts, olive green knee socks with red trim, a strange-looking tan cap and a backpack.

     When I got to the school (in the district I had eventually subbed), some of the teachers asked if I had gotten my assignment yet.  Well, I had spent an hour and a half behind a table of souvenirs, telling grade school kids about Hungary and Italy—the countries represented by the memorabilia in front of me…even though I had never visited either.

     Kids then asked me if I was really from Switzerland, was I a real mountain climber, etc.

     Too bad I wasn’t afforded much time to tell them about Switzerland because I truly fell in love with that country during an earlier May visit.

Midway through my family’s 24-day, fly-drive vacation in Western Europe, we entered Switzerland by way of Annecy, France.  Geneva, on the western edge of Lac Leman’s (Lake Geneva to us) north shore, was our entry point into the land of my favorite vegetable—chocolate!

     Many of you probably know Geneva for two things:  long-time European headquarters of the United Nations and Jet d’Eau.  The ‘water jet’ around the lake at Westport Plaza was a replica of that Geneva landmark.  Geneva’s glorious lakeside promenade and English Gardens are also nice tourist sites.    

     We enjoyed our first glimpse of heaven a few hours later, while driving north then eastward along the lake.  What could be more rewarding than munching on Lindt chocolate liqueur candies while viewing spectacular turquoise waters, brilliant flowers, fabulous Roman ruins perched high upon the hillsides of Nyon, and neat vineyards near Vevey and Montreaux?

     After stopping a short while at Chateau Chillon, made famous in Lord Byron’s “Prisoner of Chillon,” we gazed upon true Swiss fairy tale material. 

 We took a very scenic route—by mistake—around hillsides overlooking grazing cattle between Forel and St. Martin before arriving in Bulle.

     Yes. Bulle.  That’s no bull!  Most Americans spend nights in cities like Geneva, Zurich, Lucerne and Basel.  But we wanted to see the Switzerland that only the Swiss and other Europeans know and love.  In this picturesque setting, we drank some of the cleanest, coldest tap water we ever had.

     Our next stop was the charming cheese town of Gruyeres with its beautiful little church, chalet, small hotels and medieval battlements overlooking a deep valley. 

     That was our final pause before reaching Berne, the capital city and one of our Swiss highlights.  We spent two nights there with the most famous site being the Bear Pits.

     Do you see the connection?  Way back in 1191, the town’s founder, Berchtold V von Zahringen was instructed to name the town after the first animal he discovered while meandering through the nearby forest. 

 Well, he caught a bear or ‘ber’ in German; thus the town’s name of Berne.

     The Bear Pits, or “Barengraben,” was charming as bear pits go, but we got more enjoyments from the Prison Tower, Houses of Parliament, the animated Clock Tower and he flower-laden Universal Postal Union Memorial.

     But nothing we saw in Switzerland (for smells, see Appenzell) quite compared to the fountains and statues we spied along our walking tour of this city of just 135-145 thousand inhabitants.  They (the statues; not the people) were quite bizarre!  Some examples were of Samson slewing the lion, the Blind Lady of Justice with severed heads at her feet, Moses and the Ten Commandments, the Bagpiper, and the piece de resistance…an ogre chomping on misbehaving kids. 

     Since some of the highways to the south are only open from mid-June-mid-August, we had previously replaced the Matterhorn (see Disneyland and Disneyworld) town of Zermatt with a visit to Interlaken.  To get there, we drove through the awe-inspiring Bernese Oberland of central Switzerland to view picturesque castles in the towns of Spiez, Thun and Oberhofen on lovely Lake Thun.  This is truly storybook Switzerland!

From there, we passed spectacular Swiss chalets en route to the tourist resort of Interlaken.  Few places I have been can match the scenic splendor of Interlaken.  If this isn’t paradise, what is?  It’s a veritable Garden of Eden!

     In fact, two of the three slides I had taken there were blown up to 11 x 14 and 14 x 20 photos of the Hotel Metropole with tulips in the foreground and also a snow-capped mountain vista complete with a flower-based meadow.    

     We watched horse-drawn carriage rides as we ate a superb lunch at one of the  Metropole’s restaurants, then capped it off with Kirsch tortes, Cassata au Marrasquin, Iglou Caramel and Chantilly at The Top of the Met, overlooking the city!

     None of us really wanted to leave Interlaken, but we already had pre-paid reservations for Hotel Hirschen in Grindelwald.  The nickname of that town is something like “a tiny toenail at the foothills of the Bernese Oberland.”

     Grindelwald undoubtedly offered us the most fantastic up-close mountain scenery we had ever experienced—snowcapped mountains and vastly flowing waterfalls in all four directions!  The view from our hotel balcony was also the likes of which we had never seen.  That’s where I took my other now blown-up slide of Switzerland--cows with huge bells grazing behind a fence just off the side of the ride through town.

     There was heavy rain and dense fog when we left Grindelwald the next morning.  After a brief drive on the Brunig Pass (talk about a winding and climbing road!), we arrived in Lucerne—finally a Swiss tourist town! 

     The poor weather hardly dampened our shopping spirits!  After all, that’s what Lucerne is best known for.  Our favorite stop for hand-made wooden goods was the Casagrande store.  If you think that’s a weird name for French, German and Italian Switzerland, how about the nearby Olga Portmann Gift Shop or Sancho Cohen’s in Madrid? 

     Highlights of the Lucerne walking tour were a few long-standing traditional favorites.  They were the Musegg Towers, a fortification completed in 1406; the illustrious inside paintings of Chapelbrucke (Chapel Bridge); and the classical Lion (of Lucerne) Monument. 

     The only potential disappointment in Lucerne was the scaffolding and ‘Closed for Repair’ sign at the world famous Stadtkeller Restaurant, at which he had confirmed written reservations three months earlier.  Luckily, our dinner at the fairly fashionable Le Mazot Walliser Spycher made us quickly forget the Stadtkeller.

     As usual, the dessert was the highlight.  I had Coupe Raspberry—fresh raspberries, ice cream, whipped topping and sauce.  Mmmmmmm!!!!!     One of us got a green vegetable named fenkel with their meal.  The waiter not only had trouble describing it to us before he brought it, but we still don’t know to which vegetable it’s related.  After dinner, we had loads of chocolate, including Cognac flavored ones.  Sweet dreams were not too difficult to achieve that night!

     The next morning featured a drive through several lengthy tunnels from Siskion to Fluelen en route to Tellskapelle am Vierwaldstattersee.  Translation:  Wilhelm (William) Tell’s Chapel on Lake Vierwaldstatter.  It was somewhat disappointing, walking down, then back up a path of 188 steps for a tiny church with a handful of colorful murals. 

    Our next memory of Switzerland proved that, despite the unparalleled scenic beauty of this small European country, it is not always entirely pleasing to the senses.  This region of eastern Switzerland, known as Appenzellerland (as in the clothing town of Appenzell), is quite charming with its splendid Alpine lakes.  But that smell!

     It was mid-May, and we were told they use human excrements as fertilizer.  I had to walk around with my handkerchief tied around my face.  Then, we had to drive around this entire area with kirsch sticks thrust up my nostrils as nose savers! 

     But we did cap off our Switzerland trip segment in grand style, visiting the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen!  We viewed the falls from five or six vantage points.  The water flow seemed a lot more forceful than Niagara, and since we were allowed to get so close to it, we got drenched on a few occasions! 

     We were ‘all wet’ from visiting Rhine Falls, but certainly not from spending eight days on our own in Switzerland!