Wednesday, July 12

Today I was able to enjoy driving Great River Road from La Crosse, WI to St. Paul, MN in good weather, and it did not disappoint. Since I had followed the Wisconsin side of the river last year I spent much of today on the Minnesota side with excursions back into Wisconsin where it looked better. The only stops I made were at two well known viewpoints in Alma, WI and in Red Wing, MN.

The Alma stop was at Buena Vista Park which consists of a parking lot, a little patch of grass and a 50 yard path to the viewpoint some 500 feet above the river.

The Red Wing stop was also an opportunity to break the journey as you have to hike to the top of Barn Bluff. Although it is only 350 feet high it was 90^o, humid and mainly in sunlight so I took my time. The views were worth it.

The map/video has some good views of the river as well as downtown St. Paul and you can check it out here.

Thursday, July 13

I am staying in St. Paul for two nights and made sure I got a downtown hotel so that I could walk to the main sights. In the morning I started off at the Minnesota State Capitol which is beautiful, at least on the outside, I didn’t go in.

I then visited the St. Paul History Center which was interesting but also occupied by two large groups of primary school aged kids who were very noisy. The museum is well suited for kids with many interactive exhibits but, for me, the most interesting and creative exhibit told the story of St. Paul by describing and visualizing the lives of the 50 families who had occupied a normal house over the 117 years of it’s existence. The displays were well researched and showed the waves of immigrants that have influenced the city.

Finally, I visited the magnificent Cathedral of St. Paul.

The afternoon was spent at the hotel fixing my camera. I have used the same Panasonic compact camera for the past six years and had noticed some dark spots in photos and videos I took last year. When in Milwaukee I noticed a number of dark lines in the bottom half every image and I have been using just the top half of the frame to take photos since then. Clearly this could not continue so I decided to buy a replacement camera. My current camera has a built-in GPS sensor that embeds the location of each photo in the file and I need this when creating my  road videos. However, none of the currently available compact cameras seem to include this feature.

I found an instructional video on YouTube and decided I’d try to repair my camera even though it meant taking it completely apart to blow out the debris and clean the sensor. I went to Sears to buy the tools I needed and opened it up. When re-assembled it didn’t work so I repeated the process and now, four hours later, it works and seems to be better but not perfect. We’ll see how it goes.

View of the Mississippi from Buena Vista Park in Alma, WIand from Barn Bluff in Red Wing, MN

The magnificent Minnesota State Capitol
The St. Paul History Center had creative displays and was housed in an attractive, modern building
The Cathedral of St. Paul is impressive from the outside and beautiful inside without being overly ornate.