Last night just after Travalon and I went to bed, we saw a train go by our bed and breakfast on the boat that was twenty minutes long! This morning we had a delicious breakfast of French toast with bananas, strawberries, and whipped cream, then we disembarked and headed to Como Park. They told us we had to go to the zoo first and then the conservatory, so we did. Here are some photos. First, a monkey.
This gorilla looks like Rodin's "The Thinker."
What's up, ostrich? No really, what's up? What are you looking at??
The arctic foxes looked like fluffy toys.
The snowy leopard looked sort of sleepy.
The Amur tiger was very alert.
It even played with its toy ball.
The cougars were vigilant.
This reindeer was chewing on a stick.
The female Dall's sheep have smaller horns.
But the male had very big, curvy horns.
Then we went into the conservatory. My favorite room is the fern room.
There is also a lovely room full of flowers. I wish I could have posted the scent!
Isn't this tree cool? I don't remember what it was.
Finally, there was a room full of bonsai trees.
After that we went to the Twin Cities Model Train Museum, and I loved that too. We took loads of photos, so it deserves its own post - hopefully tomorrow. I felt like a child at both places, full of wonder: for God's beautiful creation at the zoo and conservatory, and for people who would spend hours painstakingly creating a small tree for their model railroads at the museum. Nobody who does such a thing is looking for money or power. They are trying to reflect the wonder of God's creation in miniature.
We stopped for a late lunch in Hudson, Wisconsin, a really cute town built into a hill on the St. Croix River.
This is the boat we took on a cruise there a few years back.
We had lunch at an amazing restaurant called Pier Five Hundred - everything on the menu sounded delicious, and the things we ordered really were. Considering that it was busy at 2:30 in the afternoon on a Monday, it must have a great reputation! It would be lovely to go back in the summer and sit on the deck overlooking the river. After lunch we took a walk by the river, and we kept seeing large white birds flying around. I said I thought they were swans... and then they flew right over us!
They make kind of a honking sound, but softer than a goose's honk. There were about seven of them, but these two flew right over us.
The rest of the drive was uneventful. We saw the purple haze in the sky near Alma Center caused by some sort of large factory thing with large, purple windows. What on earth do they make there? Travalon looked it up, and it's a large aquaponics facility called Superior Fresh that grows organic crops and raises salmon and trout.
No comments:
Post a Comment