Thursday July 16th International Falls MN

The cold, unfortunately is ruling our lives at the moment. At 10am today, it was 10 degrees, and the day was typical of a Tarawera winters day, and watching the weather tonight it doesn’t look a lot better tomorrow. On the forecast for tomorrow for this area, they said “Incredibly cool Friday, 15 – 20 degrees below normal” so looks like we better prepare ourselves for more of the same! Felt saddened today that we were in the most beautiful part of Minnesota, hundreds of lakes, beautiful bush and it was cold and wet. But thankful that we were able to see Superior yesterday in the sun,

Enjoyed our stay in the Forest Park last night, really peaceful.

Went back into Ely this morning and first stop was the Laundromat, which I noticed had wifi. So set off with a weeks laundry, soap powder and laptop, and settled in to catch up on emails while the washing got done and Ian did the streets of Ely and checked out the sports stores.

Some great little craft stores in town, and the local pottery shop suggested that I should check out the gallery of Deborah Sussex, a local photographer www.deborahsussex.com Just loved her work which really captured the local scenery in quite a moody way. Spent time chatting with her and got some good info from her re album production companies.

Also visited the famous local National Geographic photography gallery of Jim Brandenburg. Really spoilt with the quality of photographic work in this town.

Found a really busy looking café and stopped off for a great sandwich and coffee lunch.

This was a small town and as we left the café and crossing a street, a car stopped and the guy put his head out “I saw you at the Laundromat, and after you left they said they had found a NZ T shirt, guess it must have been yours!!!”….what a town. So backtracked and found the shirt. Oh to be recognised as kiwi’s.

The rain had started falling as we left town and headed towards Canada and Winnipeg.

This morning we spoke with Barb Chisholm in Winnipeg…had last seen her almost 30 years ago when as a hitch hiker we had met her, and she spent time on the farm at Onewhero. Looking forward to spending some time with her in her “place’.

Final stop today was International Falls on the Canadian border, at 5 pm on a cold wet afternoon it looked pretty uninspiring, but will see what it looks like in the morning.

Few photos today, the trigger finger was getting itchy!