Author: Susie

I write a lot about God’s Grandeur inspired by a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. On eclipse day a NASA astronaut talked about seeing the eclipse from the space station and he waxed eloquent. I grabbed a pen to try to capture his words describing how the moon comes between the earth and the sun and we are treated to an eclipse. "The dance, the clockwork that goes on between the sun, the moon, the earth…. Power and force we cannot control." He said more but I didn’t get it all with my paltry pen… He and many other people were overwhelmed!!! God’s Grandeur. God bless you.

Let me catch up: Yesterday on August 22 Tuesday, we were at the Backyard Deli for the Tuesday special of "any burger with choice of side $6.95." After Chuck ordered the Rajun Cajun and I ordered the Barbeque Bacon burger… I raised my water glass in toast to "another great day!" and Chuck said, "Yesterday wasn’t great with a rain storm on eclipse day." And I said, "Yes, but we had fun at dinner… Rookies with $1.00 burgers and popcorn." Then I realized that August 21, eclipse day, was for us like watching everybody else in the US get eclairs and we didn’t…. Chuck was unkind enough to remind me that I chose to go to Clear Lake Iowa. Naughty Chuck.

Today dawned a beautiful albeit chilly day, and we fell into our Wednesday routine of 8:30 Mass in town, the bug man coming, work on the 1500 piece puzzle, and plan the few days of labor day weekend when we will be back on the road (we will go north to the Apostle Islands and take a boat ride). Then it was time to go on the boat to the Landing Bar and Grill to sit outside in the sun. The 2 lake side pubs close for the winter: PM Pub which we will go tonight closes on Labor Day night and the Landing closes October 1. Boom that’s it and the docks are pulled out of the water. School has started most places, and my great neice Abbey is starting her senior year of high school. Her grandma and mom are all teary eyed. !!!! Have a wonderful end of summer. God bless you.

We packed our picnic and I loaded up our books and a bottle of wine…. And the sky got darker and darker……. and the lightening and thunder started. So we gave up and went back to the condo. And then the rains started! So we watched the eclipse on TV. NASA did great coverage! We will celebrate by going into town and getting burgers! Have a great evening! God bless you!

Chuck made chicken salad and cut up cheese for our picnic out on the boat! The day isn’t hot and the sky is a little muzzy…. clousy? But I have full faith that we will see something of the eclipse. We should get 89% totality or more!!! I’m going to watch the EWTN Mass on TV (11am central time) and then get out to the dock because Chuck is ready to pack the boat!!!!! Have a wonderful eclipsy day! God bless you.

Seeing the headwaters of the Mississippi was way up there on my wish list! Been there, done that, got the photos! Next, believe it or not, was going to the beautiful little town called Northfield, Minnesota where the Hallmark Christmas movie "Love Always Santa" was filmed… The way I tracked the town down was they were filming the street and there was a VFW post sign! They’re all listed by post # and town they are in. Found it is right below Minneapolis right off I35 that we planned to take to get to Clear Lake. A big part of the film was shot in a cafe called The Bun Also Rises. The female star loved Ernest Hemingway and her cafe had a nook full of Hemingway quotes and (I can’t remember the place) One of the places in his novels she wanted to go……. We ate lunch of beautiful sandwiches there, sitting in the window seat to eat. Just a little bit of fun. Next on my wish list are Mass, both Sunday and daily, at the little church in Clear Lake AND watching the eclipse from the middle of Clear Lake! We arrived at the condo on Clear Lake but Tim and Kyla were off playing so we went to town for a beer at the VFW. Greeted Tim and Kyla at home about 4 and quickly renewed a friendship begun in the No Name Pub in Big Pine Key. They have stayed with us in the Keys and Lake house in Miami and we have stayed with them here at Clear Lake. Today is bright and clear. We did not get rain last night and all is well. God bless you.

Today dawned dark and rainy but we went to the art museum and Runestone museum and saw an amazing collection of photography from the Minnesota plains and some grand boats and cars… and gardens. Over at the Runestone museum is a rune stone that scientists believe was carved by Vikings in the early 1300s who got here over the great lakes. You could probably boat from top to bottom as we are constantly running into lakes and of course the Misissippi which if the Vikings had stayed might be the Vikingisissippi. I was tired today so took a long rest and nap and went to an early dinner of 1/2 price appetizers at a little pub. MMMMM delicious walleye (a local fish) and steak salad. just hit the spot! Chuck’s treat was calimari and chicken wings. He told me they weren’t hot so I took one and practically spit it out! Brat and liar! He just laughs. Hot! Then we went and took another picture of Ole the giant Viking, this time in the sunshine as Mother Nature got all sweet and warm. Then we went to the concert i bought tickets for yesterday at the bookstore! Oh my how lovely. It is called Festival of the Lakes (Alexandria is surrounded by lakes) and it is the 25th season of a concert series that goes all summer long. We got Bach and a harpsicord "The Wedding Cantata (Song)" and some lyrics from Elizabethan times, some Greek pieces "after Ovid Metamorphosis" and closed with a lovely aria. The soloist was a beautiful and talented woman in a long white dress. Very romantic! Tomorrow we drive to Clear Lake Iowa!!! God bless you.

The rains began yesterday with a giant Low over Des Moines, Iowa headed east. Despiite the rain, we managed to pack the car and get out of Bemidji and head south towards Alexandria, Minnesota. The rain did not stop, but when we arrived in Alexandria, we managed to eat at the Italian restaurant Bello Cucina and at the Firehouse…. (I forgot to mention that in Bemidji, we ate at the Italian restaurant Tutto Bene and the barbeque restaurant named Fuzies) Rain does not stop us! In Bemidji we also did the Art Walk actually a sculpture drive around town to find all the statues that were made and placed for the Art Walks up to now. Some were really cool and hidden in gardens. One was two giant bicycles that actually were a bicycle rack. We found a big moose in a garden with a mural of men in canoes behind it. Beminji is a beautiful little town. We left early Wednesday, just finishing repacking the car before the rains started. A note on traveling great distances in a car: Take one bag that goes into hotels every night. Our problem is we have one bag with "clothes we will wear for a few days" but we also have a pretty big bag full of "ditty bags" shampoo, conditioners, creams, tooth stuff, cosmetics, all the etc stuff we need when we get ready after a shower or before night. On top of that is the computer bag, the 2 pillows, a bag of maps as I’m constantly changing our route, my purse, Chuck’s Bubba coffee cup, …. The reason I carry a bag of maps and the computer into the hotel room is I have to do a reconoitering on a town and find everything fun… for example when I settled on Alexandria Minnesota as the stop over place before we get to Clear Lake, Iowa Friday afternoon I went online to find hotels, resturants, events and "things to do". Alexandria thinks the Vikings visited so there is a giant Vikings statue, a Vikings museum with a rune stone, an art museum with "Sky photography" and out door cafes on several lakes that surround the town. I’m looking out the window and it looks like it might brighten up by lunch time… otherwise, we’re inside for lunch. Yesterday we went to the Rotary "Corn and pork chop jubilee" at the local fire house. It was great barbeque for charity! I got to look at fire trucks and uniforms (really the children enjoyed it a lot more!!!!). I went to a great book store on main street (called Broadway – actually a 4 land main street) to get concert tickets and proceeded to stay and talk to the lady for 15 minutes. Chuck came in to see if I was OK and he found me chatting about everything Minnesota with a most friendly group of women. I’ve found only friendly happy people in these small towns! Hatred and vitriol is playing out on television… I worry about marches in Boston and San Francisco and more this weekend. Chuck and I have discussed what the Confederate statues and relics do to a town…. Things are not well in the big towns, but here in tiny Minnesota, communities seem to be pulling together. Of course I don’t live here… In the bookstore and on the hotel check in counter in plain view was a poster for a lost girl… the woman at the book store counter suggested that because of the near by interstate, "sex trafficking" is suggested in her disapearance and I thought about the difference between this town and Bemidji which is 1/2 a day away from an interstate. The interstate running by on your south flank might influence the development of your town… What about when the expressways cut you into bits? God bless small town America. Off we go into the rain! God bless you.

Today we traveled to the headwaters of the Mississippi on a beautiful warm and sunny day. We got lost on the way to Lake Itaska but finally found the state park and walked over several "creeks" to see the big Lake Itaska and a stream that comes out of it becoming first a series of creeks and then it gets bigger and runs all the way down to New Orleans. It was very important to explorers to find these headwaters. So explorers with Indian guides braved huge mosquitoes and swamps and found Lake Itaska. Amen. Been there done that. Up here as the stream meanders and we got lost following it we kept "crossing the Mississippi" maybe 10 times! Today we also explored the Beminji college campus and tomorrow a community of language villages. God bless you!

From a poster in the dining room this morning I’m reminded that the Mighty Mississippi is born in a lake in north western Minnesota, wanders through the city of Bemidji, into Lake Bemidji and out…. on a long south eastward crawl through some of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes towards Minneapolis (dividing Minneapolis and St Paul) to emerge and head south and be what we all know: the Mighty Mississippi!!!

The Army Corps of Engineers has been influential in turning the weakling, shallow and scattered river into an organized channel for carrying logs and grain out of the north down south. There are a series of locks and dams that help big barges float in the correct direction down to the Port of New Orleans. Army Corps also occasionally stops the Missississippi from meandering and eating up towns like Natchez (a few years ago we viewed a whole street and houses wiped out and gone in a big Mississippi meander through Natchez)Today we’ll drive to the headwaters park south of Bemidji and picnic! Yesterday got cold… In the 50s, and it rained. Brrrrrr. I told the priest after Mass, "I’m from Miami and I’m freezing!" (delicate flower!) God bless you!

My friend Mickey plies his camera as a tool to capture the beauty and Grandeur of sunrises, sunsets, animals, birds, flowers and people on Big Pine Key. Today Mickey sent out a special sunrise photo captioned "ain’t no time to hate." I answer with God’s Grandeur in all colors. You can find Mickeys work on Facebook under Mickey A. Foster. On this trip up the Mississippi from poverty stricken Mississippi into the land of 10,000 lakes Minnesota the only place I’ve seen anger is on TV news so I’ve limited that… The front page is littered with the white nationalist rally and the death and injury there in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I am astounded as I always am at man vs man… Hey we should be shaking our fists at cancer and heart disease not each other. The sky is cloudy this morning, but I am sure it will be a beautiful day as we drive north west towards Bemidji and Lake Itaska the headwaters of the Mississippi! We had a good time with Navy buddy Mike Utech! His home has many windows and even on this cloudy day, is light and bright. We visited a crowded Mall of America yesterday! Lots of people out playing! God bless you.