Carley State Park

[lydamorehouse]

 
Image: a river runs through it

On Saturday, we had arranged to meet my parents at the Apache Mall in Rochester (Minnesota, not to be confused with Rochester, NY,) and since Shawn and I are not ones to waste a drive anywhere we started looking into things to do around Rochester. Turns out, not far away was Carley State Park.

I do not mean to imply that our trip down to see meet my folks was not its own adventure. We had a lovely time eating out at a place called The Workshop, catching up in-person, and making the exchange of goods--my aunt had collected some church cookbooks that were being passed on to us. 

But, after all that excitement, Shawn and I headed to the woods where we continued to perfect our "retirement plan." The current plan is that i will do the nature hikes and Shawn will set up in some lovely spot with our glamper (this is the dream, at least,) and read while I walk. Absent the glamper, Shawn found a lovely picnic table while I tackled the Minnesota Hiking Club's trail....

Image: A sign that says both "Hiking Club" with an arrow pointing this way and CAUTION, to which *I* say, "WTF, MN Hiking Club. What. The. F*ck,."

Yeah, so I almost died.

"Died" might be an exaggeration, but let's just say I am glad I had my asthma inhaler and that I still mostly bounce when I fall. (People say there's no good use for body fat, but PADDING is definitely one I personally appreciate now that the bruises are setting in,.) The trail was lovely, though I would have loved to see this sign at the start of my hike rather than when I was 2/3rds the way around. The maps were also less clear about the elevation change. 

That being said, the official hiking trail did have lovely views of the river... if deeply treacherous bridges.


Image: concrete slabs that I had to jump across. Not for the faint of heart. Or the wobbly of knee.

Then, despite GPS's insistence that she could find us a faster route, we meandered home via Scenic Highway 61, stopping off at Pepin Heights for bags of fresh apples. Even though it's been dangerously dry (partly why I slipped on the trail, the ground was basically slick, dry leaf covered dust), the fall colors were still surprisingly lovely. The October blue sky is just so amazing against the russets and golds of the last of the leafed trees. 

Sunday we spent catching up on some house chores--we finally put the air-conditioners in the attic, etc. I also had signed up for a game (via Discord) at Gamehole Con on Sunday afternoon. I played Lex Arcana again, which is a system and a world that I'm really very fond of. You play in as Praetorian Magical guards in a Rome that never fell (thanks to precognition magic.) I played an assassin... excuse me, "diplomat" which was fun, although his super powers only kick in if he manages to deal damage and so we nearly got our butts handed to us by a bunch of Egyptian god-infested Libyan workers. Again, for me, the fun is in the playing pretend and I had a pretty good group for that, thought it's always so much harder to have character moments in one shots. We still did, though, because tallgeese had some clay dolls that, my character was deeply terrified of, which was only exasperated when they started to MOVE.

So. Good times.

Today, I managed to get our Halloween decorations up and we took Clover, who is now officially Rhubarb (Rhu for short) to the vet for her two week post-surgical check-up. She got the big thumbs up from the vet tech. Rhu is also now fully vaccinated for a year. We are still having some issues integrating the cats, but we are bound and determined to go slowly.  We got some advice from the vet and reassurance that it can sometimes take MONTHS if you do it right. The trick is that you have to go at the speed of the most stressed cat, and that can just be... however long it takes. So, we're still doing one cat gets free range, the other has to be in a single room switch (which we OF COURSE call the "Big Switch-a-Rhu.") 

Buttercup is either convinced there is only Willow Big and Willow Smol or is actually as intensely kind-hearted as we always suspected he was, as he is chill with both lady friends. Possibly Both.

So, that's us. I hope y'all had good weekends. What are you looking forward to this week, anything?

Comments

[sabotabby]

I am looking forward to getting this week over with? And only having two horrible after-school things.