On Saturday, August 21st, M and I went out to breakfast at
The Copper Dome in St. Paul. We were going to go canoeing however we woke up to warm, humid weather but complete overcast. After breakfast we drove around St. Paul a little bit, particularly Cathedral Hill. I never get sick of admiring the cathedral or architecture of some of the old buildings and houses in the area.
Once we got home, we bummed around for a bit before deciding to go on a motorcycle ride. We had no destination in mind but I had suggested driving down to Rochester. I've never been to Rochester and not even sure what's there besides the Mayo Clinic. We headed down Highway 52 and realized very quickly it is a boring drive and not conducive to a beautiful scenic motorcycle ride. I also realized that I have never been that far down Hwy 52 and have only been as far as Inver Grove Heights, which is kind of ridiculous because it's less than 20 miles from my house. What's even more odd is that just past Inver Grove Heights it totally becomes a rural area and less than 24 miles from my house there is a city called Coates that I had never heard of until that day. It's an easy miss though....after looking up Coates, it's only 1.4 square miles and boasts a population of 163 as of the 2000 census. I guess I haven't been missing much.
As we continued down Hwy 52, M decided he didn't want to drive all the way to Rochester because it was so boring and it was making him tired, plus the weather didn't look good. We had open sky to look at all angles over the cornfields and it looked like it was going to rain. We headed down as far as Cannon Falls instead. We stopped at a park at Lake Byllesby before heading into the little, quaint downtown. We stopped and took a few pictures at Minnieska Park. The sun came out for a couple of minutes before turning gray again.
We then headed northeast towards Hastings to make our way back up to the cities via Hwy 61. On our way to Hastings, we could see beautiful blue sky and sun and while it was already warm and humid, it really started to get hot. We stopped in downtown Hastings, a city right on the Mississippi River and saw there was a car show going on.
Our last stop before heading back home was to Battle Creek Regional Park, just off Hwy 61 and Upper Afton Road. At the beginning of the park, there was a cave, that we believe is made of sandstone. We walked back on the windy paved path that took us to somewhere we weren't sure of. The sun was beaming over all the greenery and it was easy to forget you are in St. Paul until you heard the harsh bang of the railroad cars crashing in the near distance. We walked about a half mile into the park before deciding to turn around. After we got home, we realized there wasn't much more to the park than what we had already seen.
We finished the evening with tacos and heartburn from one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Acapulco, before returning home, cracking a bottle of red wine for me and beer for M and listening to music before going to bed. A great day!
