The zoo...

A couple of days ago, the kids and I went back to the Minnesota Zoo, our fourth or fifth time there this year (thank you Missy/Pete for the membership)...considering it was 35 degrees outside, it was a great day to hang out at the zoo...

We saw all the usual animals...like the komodo dragon taking it's usual spot on the branch (we've rarely seen it on the ground making the tail-drag marks seen in the picture)...

Lex saw her favorite animals (because they're pink) there...the flamingoes....

Kieran saw his too....the penguins...

Luke saw his too...the 14-foot long python (turns out I took a picture of it with Kieran's phone....it was a good picture too, sitting in the water right up against the glass)....

All the kids enjoy the amur leopards....

The Hawaiian Monk seals are pretty cool too...

The kids were also 'buzzed' by a shark in Discovery Cove...

We'll be back to the zoo soon I'm sure....

Frozen Waterfalls

A couple of days ago, the kids and I headed to Mankato to see some frozen waterfalls.  We got to Mankato around 3:00 pm (Kieran had basketball practice until 2:00 in Hamburg) so the sun was setting...

Our first stop was Minneopa State Park, I bet we visit this park 5-8 times a year, which happens to be on the southern side of the Minnesota River Valley.  It was interesting how little light got into the gorge below the falls, with a little help from some passing clouds...

It's always cool to see waterfalls frozen (mostly)...

Once the sun peeked out behind some trees, we got the best look that we would with the diminishing light...

From Minneopa, we headed across the valley to Minnemishinona Falls, which is on the northern side (full of late afternoon sun) of the Minnesota River Valley...

This waterfall is often dry, but considering we received an inch of rain on Christmas, we figured it'd be running....we also want to get beneath the bridge (that'll be next summer) for a better view...

You all know we like waterfalls....right?

Safari Island's 'wibit'

Last Friday night, the boys and I went swimming at Safari Island basically so we could try out the 'witbit'....basically, an obstacle course in the pool.  We knew Kieran would be able to do this, but Luke was a concern (especially as he got more tired, he's not the strongest swimmer) considering he would have to swim out to it and swim back to the wall.

To start, you have to swim out to it and climb up...

Then run across the thin, middle portion...

Once across, you have to start climbing up the to the top of the ramp...

Sometimes, you run to fast across the middle portion and slip...

Right into the wall you're supposed to be climbing...

Once on top of the yellow ramp...it's time for a dismount...sometimes you jump, sometimes you slide...

Pictures probably don't do enough justice...here's two videos, one of each boy...

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from all of us to you...here's some pictures from the last two days...

The kids in front of the tree on Christmas eve...

They began tracking Santa on Google Maps sometime in the afternoon and took one last look before going to bed (he was in Nova Scotia)...

Before church, Luke wanted to see a 'really' big Christmas tree, so we went to Chaska...

Christmas morning was spent opening all of their presents and having some fun...

We're getting ready to head to Papa's house and a quick look at the weather app on my phone shows that the weather is pretty confused in Minnesota...It's been raining all day (thunderstorms are predicted for later today) and we should get at least one inch of rain total...I'm sure the roads will be fun..

Merry Christmas...

Cold, Snowy Weekend...

Looks like we're going to have an old fashioned Minnesota winter....we haven't had many of those recently, in fact, the last to Christmas' have been brown.  Not this year...

For the second weekend in a row, we picked up 6-8 inches of snow.  It started Friday afternoon...here's a picture of me from Friday night (10 pm) after shoveling the driveway the first time...

I'm having a little fun with the icy, crappy looking beard....I woke up at 6:30 on Saturday morning knowing I'd be shoveling again...here's the after picture from then...

The kids just laugh....Luke loved all the snow, he and the neighbor kid spent almost 3 hours outside Saturday morning before we left for a family Christmas afternoon at my cousins...

The trouble with this weekend wasn't the snow, it was the arctic cold that moved in Saturday afternoon/evening...man it was cold.  Here's Sunday morning at Lake Benton in Cologne...

 Lot's of people were saying that it was warmer in Antarctica or Alaska this morning (true), but it is also true that it was warmer at the Gale Crater on Mars (where the the rover Curiosity is currently exploring).  Interesting that on July 21st, we had a high temperature of 94 degrees (with a heat index of 115).  That gives us an approximate 150 degree temperature range for the state of Minnesota, that's what living in the center of a continent can/will do...

When the temperature is that low, the cold finds it way into the house anywhere it can...

What do you do when it's so cold outside?  It was still -21 when the kids and I went to Waconia to watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  We all loved it...all three of the kids said "when do we get to buy it and bring it home?"

 After the movie it was a balmy -6....a good day...

***Does the current cold spell mean that global warming is a hoax?  Only people like Jim Inhofe or Donald Trump would be stupid enough to say it's cold, therefore there is no warming...

Want to read some of the effects of man-made global warming?  Read this link Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis ..(plus, our winter weather is going to be partially driven by whats going on in the Arctic...being so much warmer than normal, the jet stream is 'wavier' than it should be, the result should/could be more arctic air masses heading our way...)....

Baraboo Region - Wisconsin

While we were at Wisconsin Dells, the kids and I took a great opportunity to do some exploring, we took a look at some fantastic geology in the Baraboo Hills region.  If you want to know the geologic history of the area, check out this site.

Saturday morning we went out to do some hiking, we started at the Abelman's Gorge State Natural Area, near Rock Springs.

One area in the gorge is an abandoned quartzite quarry and there are some nice trails through the area...

What we were looking for were ripples preserved in the 1.6 billion-year-old quartzite.  The sand grains (which became sandstone before being metamorphosed into quartzite) would have been deposited by water horizontally...

Except that these ripple marks are now standing near vertical...obviously, some intense pressure took place to shift or fold the quartzite into a vertical position...

While in the gorge, we also stopped at Van Hise Rock, which is listed as a National Historic Landmark --- how many rocks are on that list?  The rock in the picture below is not Van Hise Rock...

Kieran loves to read signs in order to learn about things...he did here too...

The rock preserves a look at the folding event that occurred in the Baraboo region...

Though Luke was more interested in climbing on parts of it...

Kieran read every sign available...

It was a good hour spent outside...

From Rock Springs, we headed over to Devil's Lake State Park for some more hiking and geology...we learned very quickly that this is a park that we need to spend some time in during the summer months...

Devil's Lake is a moraine damned lake and supposedly very, very clear....there were two large swimming beaches the the kids noticed...

But we were there for some geology, in particular, a very large unconformity.  The Baraboo quartzite is roughly 1.6 billion years old, the conglomerate and sandstone is Cambrian aged, meaning they're both roughly 500 million years old.  Therefore, that point where the conglomerate is sitting on the quartzite represents more than 1 billion years of missing time!!  Wow...

Here's another picture from another angle...can you see the contact between the quartzite and the conglomerate?

After seeing the unconformity, we decided to drive to another area and take a hike to see what's called 'balancing rock.'  We learned that it involved hiking a trail up a talus pile...

And it was a long way up this talus pile...

It required breaks along the way...

Eventually we got to the 'balancing rock' but found out we really couldn't get close to it...it was still nearly 100 feet away...

We could've gone down the way we came, but we decided to continue with the trail (which would be almost 3 miles long by the end) and eventually got to the top of this quartzite hill we were climbing...

It was a long ways up...in the parking lot below, you might be able to make out the gray van (next to the white SUV), that's ours and where we started from...

Walking up a talus pile implies we would be walking down a trail through the talus pile...which we did later...

Just trying to give you a sense on how big this bluff was...Lex took most steps on her butt scooting...

But eventually we made it to level ground on the bottom and the trail back to the van (and waterslides)...but before we got too far, Kieran needed a 'break.'  It happens...

It was a great break from the water park, but we were all ready to get back in the water....