Light rail

Here are few photos from when Tammy and I took the light rail train from the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis.  This was the first time I have ridden the train as it was built after I moved from Minnesota.  The ride lasted 39 minutes and had stops every two or three minutes.  The train is only two to three cars long, which was plenty to hold everyone wanting to ride.

The train passed by the snow deflated Metrodome, home to the Minnesota Vikings football team.

Downtown Minneapolis buildings on Nicolette Mall.  I don't see tall buildings where I live now.

We also walked a few blocks around downtown.  I wanted to see if the 1st Avenue club was still there.  Yup.  It did have a fresh coat of black paint.

We walked around some of the other stores and skyways along Nicolette Mall.  Not much going on in the stores.

A few of the stores Christmas displays.

One place had a life sized art sculpture.

Lego Land at the Mall

The Mall of America also has Lego Land. It was a busy place.  Here are a few large Lego structures around the store.

At the Mall

Last Thursday when Tammy and I visited Macy's Christmas display, we also visited the Mall of America.  It was cold and snowy outside so spending time inside was the better thing to do.

It has been many, many years years since I lasted visited the Mall.  The Campy Snoopy rides have been replaced by Nickelodeon.  The rides have been improved as from the upper floors I could see a number of new rides that are more scary and exciting.  I didn't get a chance to see all the Nickelodeon changes as by the time we got down to the lower level we had been in the Mall almost three and a half hours.  By then we called it quits as we had worked our way down from the 4th floor to the 1st floor.

The Mall is like most other malls: lots of clothing stores, jewelery stores, chocolate stores, and other stores with stuff that isn't really needed.  We didn't find anything to buy - even at the "As Seen on TV" store.

Macy's Christmas display

Last Thursday Tammy and I drove to Minneapolis to see the Christmas display on the 8th floor of Macy's downtown Minneapolis store.

From the Mall of America we took the light rail train to downtown Minneapolis.  A train station stop was several blocks from the Macy store on Nicolette Mall.

In front of the Macy store is a statue of Mary Tyler Moore.

Tammy and I rode the escalators to the fifth floor where we had to go to another part of the floor to find the escalators to the eight floor.

The fifth floor was eerily empty except signs directing us to the escalators.  No one else was around.

On the eight floor we found people.  A line.  A kind of long line.  A line with lots of mothers and kids.  The good part was the line kept moving and the wait wasn't as long as it could have been.

The display had moving parts as seen in the two short videos below:

Dance competiton

Last Saturday Tammy and I watched the dance competition at the Lake City High School that her youngest daughter,  Emily, participated in with her high school dance team.  There were about six to eight high schools competing depending on the category.

The competition went from noon to 5 pm.  There were lots of families in the stands supporting their daughters.  Some of the mothers yelled and shrieked when their daughter's team competed.  I think I lost more of my hearing.

The dance competition consisted of two routines: high kick and jazz. For high kick dancing think of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.  The girls would do high kicks in one big line and also in various combinations of smaller groups along with other dance steps as they changed combinations.

The various songs in the high kick dancing was techno music with a fast tempo and strong beat, even if the original song was some 1980s style of song.  Even so, most songs would kick it into high gear with the beat at some point in the song and the girls would get in a line and kick harder and faster.

Here is a video of a short part of another team's high kick routine.

For jazz dances there was more variety of moves and the music didn't always have a strong techno beat.  One routine was danced to Sugarland's song "Stuck on You".

Emily is one of the team captains on both of her school's junior varsity dance teams: the high kick and jazz teams.  I was busy videotaping her routines so I don't have any photos of her dancing.  I did get a couple photos below of other teams.  The dances seen are jazz dances.  I thought the high kick dances were more entertaining but those dances were faster so the photos came out blurry.

 

At the end, while the judges finished scoring the teams, all the teams came out and waited on the gym's floor for the results.

It took a half hour for the judges to total the results and then announce them and hand out trophies to the top two or three teams in each category.  While waiting, more music was played and often the kids would dance around.  I think this was all a plan to wear the kids out before the bus ride home.  For us spectators it was a long wait.

Train to Minnesota

Thursday I took the train from Montana to Minnesota.  The train was on time so that meant an early start to my day.  Still, I was ready when Patti came to give me a ride to the train station.  Or I thought I was. Halfway across Montana I realized I had left the bag of fruit at home.  At least I had left it in the refrigerator so I might have something edible when I return next month.  Or maybe not.

Since the train had not run on Wednesday those people were taking Thursday's train.  This close to the holiday season the train normally has a lot of passengers, today the train was close to full with all the extra people.

It was still kind of dark when the train arrived.  Inside the train the interior lights has not been turned yet for the day so it was difficult to find an open seat.  Many people were still sleeping and spread over two seats.  Several other people were in the same situation as me and we went up and down the car looking for the right seat.  I avoided sitting next to people going to Chicago.  Not all people going to Chicago are crazy, but enough of them are that the odds aren't good, and in the dark I couldn't tell the crazies from the normal people.

I chose a seat next to a woman going to Winona, Minnesota.  Once I woke her to get her to move off the second seat I discovered she was quite large.  She was nice - though attending college in another state (Oregon) and not really going off campus in over three years to exploring this new city and state showed a lack of depth, and she didn't have much of an outgoing personality.

A number of people got off the train several hours later at Shelby, Montana.  A pair of seats together opened up and I moved over to them so as not to be crowded in my own seat by a person who couldn't quite fit in her own seat.

That worked for a few minutes until just before the train left the station when a father and daughter got on the train.  No two seats were open together so the train car attendant went up and down the car until she decided to ask me to move and sit next to another guy in order to open the two seats.

*sigh*

I sat in that seat all the way across the rest of Montana and until we reached Williston, ND when the guy across the aisle left and two seats together opened up.  These seats were in the first row and near the door so they were not the best seats.  But I figured they would be the last seats to be filled so I took the seats.  That lasted until Minot when a huge number of people got on the train.  So many people wanted to get on that the train attendant had to move eight or so people to another car to find seats for them.

I got a seatmate.  A high school kid for whom this was the first time he had every ridden the train.  He later asked me if it was ok to go downstairs to get something from his luggage.  Yes, this is not an airplane.  You can move around the train.  And the bathrooms are also downstairs.

He rode the train all the way to Minneapolis so I had only one seat to sit in overnight.  And as I was in the first row I couldn't stretch my legs out completely as I couldn't slip them under a seat in front of me.  Still, I can sleep about anywhere so I made it through the night fine.

I had two seats from Minneapolis to almost Red Wing when the train attendant moved a young woman to the seat next to me.  Oh well, it was for only the last 15 minutes of the trip.

Also increasing as I went from Montana to Minnesota was the amount of snow.  During the night as the train went through Fargo, ND I looked out to see, under the lights, trucks dumping snow near the Red River.

While the train was on time when I started my trip it steadily lost time.  By the time I arrived in Red Wing the train was over two hours late after 11 am.  Tammy was there to meet me.

The Amtrak train was 14 cars long: three locomotives, a luggage car, the dining car, observation car, four sleeper cars and four passenger cars.

If the train runs

In the morning I plan to be on the Amtrak train to Minnesota to spend the holidays with Tammy.  So far it looks promising.  Since Sunday the train has not run due to flooding in Washington state and the bad winter weather in the Midwest.  The lack of Amtrak service has been on the local news today.  But Amtrak says they will be re-starting service tomorrow.  Good.  However I imagine the train will now be full as Amtrak needs to carry the people who were suppose to travel on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  Oh joy.  A jam-packed train.

I am pretty much ready to leave.   I need to go over my list of what I packed, what I have left to pack, and what I have to do around the house to lock doors, unplug appliances, etc.   Usually I am in the middle of packing at this point and do not get to bed until 1 or 2 in the morning.  The past few days I have leisurely packed.  One afternoon clothes, another time magazines to read, yet another time food, and so on.  I feel disjointed and wonder what I have forgotten as it appears I am almost done and it is not even midnight.

Tracks

My friend Darrel thinks he knows what animal made these tracks.  He thinks it was either a mink or a weasel.

Here is where the animal came through the snow.

For those of you interested, here is Darrel's reasoning.  (Darrel is an excellent tracker as he has studied with the best).

Here's how I approach track identification.

First, I count the toes.

On the first 2 photos (which I assume are of the same 2 tracks) I count 5 toes.
(Note:  Some animals have a different number of toes on the front feet compared to the rear feet.)

Canines and felines have 4 toes on both front and back, as do rabbits, so 5 toes rule out all of these.  (Darn.)  The tracks also rule out hoofed animals, so that rules out deer, antelope, elk, moose, bison, horse, cow,  goat, and sheep.  It also rules out all birds.

The 1st photo shows 2 consecutive sets of tracks, and I think I count 5 toes on each.  The 5th toe is not as far forward and is held closer to the side of the heel pad, almost like a thumb.

This rules out mice, shrews, voles, squirrels, chipmunks, and woodchucks.

As you can see, much of track identification is a process of elimination.  This leaves us with ...

A. Bear (black or grizzly)
B. Beaver
C. Fisher
D. Mink
E. Muskrat
F. Opossum
G. Otter
H. Porcupine
I. Raccoon
J. Skunk
K. Weasel

... all of which have 5 toes both front and back.

The tracks look to be 2" long (give or take 1/2") so that rules out Bears, Beaver, Otter, and muskrat which have larger feet and thus larger tracks. Beaver and otter also have webbed feet, and I don't see any sign of webbed feet.

This leaves us with ...

a. Fisher
b. Mink
c. Opossum
d. Porcupine
e. Raccoon
f. Skunk
g. Weasel

Raccoon prints look like miniature human hands, as do opossum front tracks.  Opossum also have a
rear track that has a distinctive thumb-like toe that projects off to the inside and back, and I don't see either of these in the photos.

A porcupine has a very large heel pad, about 3 times longer than what the photoed tracks have, and they have longer toes.

This leaves ...

1. Fisher
2. Mink
3. Skunk
4. Weasel

I'll have to defer any further narrowing of the list based on size.  There are subtle differences in track size, but if my guess on size has an error range of + or - 1/2", it would be very hard to eliminate any of these based on size alone.

It would help to know the exact length and width of the tracks, as well as the straddle (inside distance between left and right tracks) as well as the stride (distance between the heel of one foot and the next heel track of the SAME foot).

At this point, it's pretty clear that these tracks were made by a member of the weasel family, which includes all 4 of the above.

My final best guess requires that I look at the exact shape of the heel pad.  This eliminates a skunk.  I also think it eliminates the fisher.

I can't decide whether its a mink or a weasel. Both have a heel pad like those in the first 2 photos.

Feathers

Monday morning I found this south of the house.  I don't know if this used to be the Flicker I had seen last week, but it is in the same area.

A few days ago when it last snowed I found interesting animal tracks that went along the top of these concrete blocks.  I don't know what kind of animal made the tracks, but I never have seen tracks like this before.  Hopefully my friend can decipher the tracks soon based on my photos.

Snow and bird

While I shoveled snow again today I noticed a Flicker in the box elder tree by the house.  I guess Flickers don't fly south for the winter.

 
The bird came out of a hole in the tree.  Last year I boarded up the prior holes in the tree only to have the birds create new holes this year.

Also today I noticed a pine tree branch leaning against the top of three power lines that go to my well.  The snow weighed the branch down.  We have had no wind since the cold weather blew in early last week and each day the snow stacks up higher and higher on everything: branches, fences, roofs, etc.  You can see that in the photo with the bird.

To prevent a problem I carefully knocked the snow from the pine branch then got a ladder and a pole saw and began trimming the branch back. The problem is I had to cut the branch in sections to try to prevent it from falling on and breaking the line.  Still some small sections fell on a line or two and got hung up.  I carefully removed those branch segments.   Here is the branch after I cut half of it back.

I also trimmed a few other branches near the power line.  With all the snow on the branches I ended up soaking wet by the time I was done.  The temperature was just above freezing and the snow was wet.  It was also snowing (of course!) and the flakes were big, wet, and many.

With the warm temperatures the snow slid off the buildings' metal roofs.  Not all at once as sections of snow would break off and fall with a "thump" to the ground.  I had to shovel away the fallen snow on the side of the pole shed I use else I would have a frozen mound of snow once the temperature dropped.

Snow and box elder trees

I'll give you three guesses as to what I did all day today. It shouldn't be too hard to guess if you've read my recent blog posts. I'll give you a hint... it has something to do with snow... and a shovel.

Yup.  Another 2+ inches.  We had 13.8 inches of snow during November.  Winter is off to a fast start.  And of course snow is in the weather forecast each day for the next week.

When I was shoveling the snow at the end of my driveway today a woman walked by on the road.  She asked - with an amazed look on her face - if I shoveled my entire driveway by hand all winter.

Yup.  Guilty as charged.

She kept walking.  I think she didn't want to linger near a crazy person.

I'm going to go to bed early tonight as I am a bit tired.  And I probably will have to shovel snow again tomorrow.

You've seen photos of snow and pine trees. Here a few photos of snow and the box elder trees next to the house.

The first photo is of a female box elder tree. She doesn't release her seeds until Spring.  Seed pods on a female box elder tree are a favorite food source for box elder bugs.  I didn't have near as many box elder bugs this Fall on the house walls near this tree.  I think our cool wet Spring may have had something to do with that.

The next photo is of the male box elder tree that I had cut back last year around this time as the upper parts were dying.  The tree was in much better health this year.  Last year's photos can be seen here and here.

More curved snow

Another day of shoveling snow.

Here are more photos of snow that curves off the metal roofs of the barn and the pole shed.