Gary-Summer: MN-Minnehaha

Showing posts with label MN-Minnehaha. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 23, 2026

June 23, 2026 -Return to Minneapolis

Title: June 23, 2026 -Return to Minneapolis

Hike Info : Description : Extra Photo's

Hike Info:

Type: Walking : Car

Trail head: S Minnehaha Drive

Trail: Walking paths around Minnehaha Park

Destination: Minnehaha Falls

Actual Destination:

Distance: 0.82 miles ¹

Elevation Rise: 167'

Descent: 167‘

Maximum Elevation: 813'

Minimum Elevation: 735'

¹Plotted from Google Earth

Rest Stop sign

Description:

I woke up about 5:30-how will I adjust back to California time? Or will I be waking up at 3:30? No lightning to report.

Rachel gets up and then Sherri’s alarm goes off about 7:15. We went down for breakfast and then finished getting packed. There is more to do with Sherri’s hair before we lose Rachel;’s services. Or should I say before Sherri does? When Rachel gets done, Sherri is content with her hair.That is a pretty good job by Rachel.

We will lose Rachel today as she flies home. It also looks like it will rain this afternoon. So we will see how today goes.

With that, we leave about 10. We stopped at Circle K for gas-because of Rachel’s running, she gets $0.15 off per gallon. Also she gets a free drink and a bottle of water. Was it worth running 13.1 miles? Then we are off to Minneapolis. We do make one pit stop along the way, about ⅔ of the way to Minneapolis.

There are some falls within Minneapolis. But the first order of business is to find a parking place. Rachel secures one close by where the falls are. After paying the parking fee, we started our walk. About 150’ brings us to a bridge crossing Minnehaha Creek

Minnehaha Falls

. The bridge is right behind the top of the falls, so we only see over the lip from this view. But once we cross the bridge, we can see Minnehaha Falls is the falls which we have been wanting to do for the last couple of days.

But to get the view we think is there we need to go down to the base of the falls. This requires descending down 50-60 feet of stairs. At least there is a railing to stabilize those of us who are not as agile as they once were. But the view is worth it. This is the sight we were wanting to see at the falls we witnessed along the North Shore. The water spouting over the limestone ledge on top, dropping down 55 feet into a pool. Just magnificent. But this beauty also draws a crowd, not as big as Yosemite’s, still there was enough. As I commented to Rachel, we have beauty, but not solitude.

Minnehaha Creek

We do walk a little ways further down the Minnehaha Creek . There is a bridge further along where we recross the Creek. From there we ascend the stairs back up to the lip of the ravine. Some people passed us with Maine T-shirts. We asked them about it and they said that the Special Olympics were in town and their nephew was competing in Track.

At the top of the climb is a fountain with part of the Longfellow poem of Song of Hiawatha engraved in a circle around it. Why? I am wondering. Apparently there is a line which ties Minnehaha with Hiawatha. I will have to research this out a bit more. We found a statue with both figures in it. It was originally commissioned for the 1893 World’s Fair.

Minnihaha Falls

It is getting close to the time for Rachel to get to the airport. We saw that there was a cafe in the park. We looked on the menu and it was all fish food. While Rachel does eat fish, she was not desiring anything on the menu while Sherri and I are more picky.

So off we went to deliver Rachel to the airport. The rental car had a nice connection with Rachel’s phone. But now that she is leaving, we try getting my phone to give me navigation. We eventually make it work and off we go. We delivered Rachel to Terminal 2-there are a lot of cars there, but eventually Rachel is able to get her stuff. We say our goodbye’s and she goes off into the terminal.

We need to return the car to Enterprise. First, we go to Costco to fill up with gas. Much cheaper than when we left Fresno. As we leave Costco, we lose the map on the car’s screen. I still can follow instructions because the car projects them on the windshield. We go a little ways and find a stopping place and we get the navigation to show again.

Minnihaha and Hiawatha

Our next stop is at Home2Suite. We get there right at 3 and are able to check-in. We only have time to bring our luggage upstairs to the room before needing to leave to take the car back. I get turned around a bit-Minneapolis has two sets of numbered streets which are almost identical. I get confused easily by it. Once I decided to follow Google’s navigation, we got to Enterprise pretty quickly. About 3:45. The return time was 3, but we fell within their grace time.

One of the things which made going to Enterprise so challenging is that the skies opened up. Now we need to get back about ten blocks to our hotel in the pouring rain. Is this a problem? The only problem is getting to a Skyway entrance. We just need to go through a driving rain for half a block, go around a Chris Ruth and go through a lobby. I actually do not get too wet. Sherri has her rain coast on and is able to protect her hair. All is good.

From there, we roam the Skyway maze to get back to out hotel. I had gotten a map of the Skyway last week and I followed it with Sherri in tow. I do a pretty good job of knowing where I am, but I do realize that I had drifted a bit away from a line to our hotel. But wait, there is a Chipotle and we have not had lunch and it is approaching dinner time. We stopped in and got a meal. Sherri has a chicken bowl and I have a chicken burrito. During our meal, we find that Rachel has finally taken off for Chicago after a 30 minute delay.

After easting, we continue our walk through the second story of buildings till we reach the block which Home2Suite is on. I cannot figure out how to get to our place as it does not appear to connect the hotel to the Skyway. We exited out and walk a few feet back to the hotel entrance and dryness.

It is time for the old people just to relax a bit. Sherri does discover this place does provide a small laundramat on the floor above us. She does the laundry which we were going to do Sunday. Now I can take a shower and put on clean clothes. Life is good!

Around 10:15 I head to bed. No rush on getting up tomorrow.

Extra Photo's

Rachel checking her flight

Minnehaha Falls

Even the young sometimes need to sit

Sherri and Gary at Minnehaha Falls

Minnehaha Falls

Rachel in the garden area with the Longfellow poem

Minnehaha and Hiawatha

Gary wandering

Chiptole Dinner

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

June 16, 2026 - Minneapolis, Intro Walk

Title: June 16, 2026 - Minneapolis, Intro Walk
Hike Info : Description : Background : Extra Photo's : Flowers and Plants

Hike Info:

Type: Touring

Trail head: Hotel Indigo

Trail: Hennepin Ave, Grant, Marquette

Destination: Minneapolis Sculpture Garden Loop

Distance: 3.8 miles ¹

GPS Tracks

¹Distance is a guestimate from Google Maps

Description:

I slept well last night. I thought about getting up at 6am, but decided that California time it would be 4. Even with my penchantment for early rising, that seemed a bit early. I still got up at 7 and did my lightning report.

Breakfast

I would write in the report that no plan goes unscathed in the face of an enemy, or in my case, reality. I thought I had a good plan together. Yesterday Becca from Stanislaus NF said that she had seen there were 11 strikes in their forest. When I looked at EPG, I saw many strikes, maybe more than 11. That is good. But when I pulled that data, I got only one. I played around with that for an hour, with no success. Then I was able to pull the data by looking at three days. But when I pulled that data, I got not only Stanislaus NF data but strikes from about 40 miles outside of the boundaries I had set.

By the time I got to the ones I really wanted to do, around our three lookouts, it was closing in on 10am my time or 8 PDT. I decided to go with what I had. Even then things did not cooperate for me. Still I got something out with the above statement and saying that I suspected there were more strikes than I was reporting.

By the time I was done with the above it was after ten and we still had not had breakfast. We get ready. Last night at dinner, the waitress suggested the Hen House as a possible breakfast place. It is only three blocks away and looks promising. So down we go. Sherri had the biscuits and gravy eggs with a side of sausage. I had the Farmer’s Wife Omellete. Both were very hearty and tasty. We waddled out of there.

One of the buildings on our walk today is the Foshay Tower. We can see it from our hotel and it is only a block plus from the Hen House. We have heard there is an observation deck. We are thinking of the Columbia Building in Seattle and how wonderful that is. We went to the building and looked around on the first floor, but did not really see anything which indicated going up to an observation floor. As we were leaving the building, a valet was standing around. We asked him and he said that it is $20 a person and to go to the front desk and talk with them. We thought maybe later on today as we have various other things we want to do. Note: We would never get back to going up into this building.

In the cities we have gone to, we have used GPS My City. There has been an introduction walk which has given us a feel for the place we are in. With Sherri's foot bothering her, we decided to split the introduction and go on only part of it-the Foshay Tower was one of the places to go to. We went back to the hotel room to get what we needed for the rest of the day.

By now, it is closing in on noon. Our first stop is the Nicollet. Or more precisely, the Nicollet Mall. We get to the block where it is, but do not really see how to get in. But there is the Minneapolis Visitor Center here. We stepped in because we felt it might be of use to us. We were waited on by Jeanne who had a whole basket full of information. She heard how long we were going to be in the city and what kind of people we are. She then came up with a whole host of places which we would enjoy. I have listed them on the Background to this blog entry. I doubt we will be able to go to all of them, but there are some places we really want to go, such as the Minneapolis Sculpture Gardens

Basilica of St Mary

that were on her list of we must go-that was in the plans for today. Also the Mill City area-probably Thursday.

We decided not to find the Mall and just continue our walk. We go over to Hennepin Ave and start walking southwest on it. This seems to be an area with some older theater. GPS MyCity has on it is the Orpheum. On the outside, it does not look like much. Reading the history, it is pretty old. It also looks like this is not a place where you can go inside and enjoy any inner beauty, except when there is a show.

We continue on down Hennepin, past Minneapolis College-I think this is a community college. We come to the Basilica of St Mary

Cherry and Spoon

. From something we read, we knew that it was under renovation-and it is! There is scaffolding all around it and there is no way to go inside it for the next year or so. Something about the bishop does not think falling plaster on visitor;s heads is a good thing. We get a few pictures and move on.

This brings us to Loring Park-our first Minnesota park and as it turned out it was Minneapolis’ first park. If they are all like this, then Minnesota must be a great state. Actually, what we have seen in Minneapolis, this state has a lot going for it. We go into the park and sit and end a park bench for awhile and enjoy a pond in front of us Sherri gets enchanted by a red winged blackbird-we do not have these where we live. So it is understandable.

But where we want to go is across Highway 94 to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. There is a colorful and aesthetically pleasing pedestrian bridge across the 16 lanes of highway. It even has a name: Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge. An artist designed the bridge and his creativity showed. Sherri took the accessibility route up to the top while I climbed the stairs-which were not very steep at all.

We then spend about an hour and a half wandering around the gardens. The main exhibit is the Spoon and Cherry-that is what you see on all of the pictures for the garden. But there were at least 10 other exhibits, widely spaced out for us to walk around. None of them seemed outlandish-the ones in Seattle left my head aching. We just strolled around. Even though there is a cool wind blowing, the sun makes it seem hot.

Note: Evidently there is a lot more than what we saw. When you look at the Walker Center site, it looks like we saw only a third of the exhibits.

Fortunately, there is a frozen yogurt truck which we decided is what is needed for a good relaxing time in these gardens. We get a large dish between the two of us and find a park bench to enjoy and rest. Not bad tasting; it really hits the spot.

Frozen Yogurt

We enjoyed a few more sculptures, including one dedicated to St Laurence. Then it is time to head back. We go under Highway 94 instead of over and get back into Loring Park. A relaxing area. Apparently we are not the only ones to think so as there are people here who are doing the same. Upon exiting the park, we go down Grant until Marquette. Once passing Forshay we jog over to 2nd where we get to our hotel.

Fondue at the Melting Pot

For the next couple of hours we rested. Then it is time to go out for dinner. But first we go to Target to pick up some groceries. We had passed by a fondue place called the Melting Pot. When I think of fondue, I think of informal and friends. This place definitely has a different idea of fondue as we are asked if we are here for all four courses or just the cheese and chocolate. Turns out we are here for the first two courses: cheese and salad. As tasty as that is, it is enough. We enjoyed the Wisconsin Cheese fondue and then our own salads. Sherri also has a sangria while I am satisfied with an iced tea. Pretty good. The Melting Pot is a chain with one in Sacramento and one in Los Angeles.

We got back to our room about 9. We each take a shower. Sherri does some laundry in her scrub-a-wash bag. Drying will take a while.I string a line for the clothes to dry-at least the socks and underwear. The shirts will take a bit more. Looks tacky in this room. By 11:15, we are in bed.