Breakfast of 4-H champions

When you start your morning at the Park & Ride at 7:43.

We spent the day at the State Fair, hanging out with Minnesotans when they are having the peak Minnesota experience, which strangely makes them act less Minnesotan.

They are much more likely to talk to strangers on the bus, in line or at a show. They become nearly Iowan in this regard, speaking as a reformed Iowan.

They also become more like Japanese in that they are obsessed with novelty while deeply rooted in tradition. Hence the longest lines for the newest foods, but everyone still has their must-have staples. So we got the Kentikky Chicken Sliders from Hot Indian Foods, the shrimp cheese fritters from Funky Grits, and our must-have fix of Danielson onion rings. (Just south of the Food Building; grab some to go with a flight from the Craft Beer Hall nearby.)

They also become more European, in that they get to wander around in public drinking beer, like a civilized nation. This probably contributes a slight amount to their increased loquaciousness, but they seem to start the day more chatty than usual.

Some 13,000 steps and three music acts later, we're sated again for another year. There's only so much fried food a person can take, however tasty.

Sorry, no picture of those sliders. Trying to eat them in the middle of a sudden downpour was not conducive to photography.

Sunday breakfast in Red Wing

We had a very nice Sunday breakfast this morning, and for once I didn't have to make it or do the dishes. We took a very brief getaway to Red Wing, where we took in the Jeremy Messersmith concert at the recently restored Sheldon Theatre, dinner at Oliver's Wine Bar, and capped it with a refreshing stay at the Golden Lantern Inn. The latter was the home to three generations of the Red Wing Shoe exec's family before it was converted into a B&B. It makes a lovely one. And it was a lovely break from reality.

Lake Superior's milder cousin

The view of Lake Michigan out the motel window was just dandy, as was falling asleep listening to the waves.

We just got back from what turned out to be more or less an extended beer run to Wisconsin. We had time for a mini vacation, and opted for Door County, where we'd never been.

We default to Superior's North Shore, for good reason. It's much closer to us, has much more dramatic, spectacular scenery and is a tad cooler and (slightly) fewer bugs. That said, I can see the appeal of Door County if you live closer and Lake Michigan's West Shore is your lake break option. Very different character, though, with more golf courses/wineries/shopping and far fewer aging hippies or adventure-minded hipsters. Dave described it as the Okoboji area writ large. I'm glad we went during the shoulder season gap between the hordes of summer visitors and throngs of fall color season tourists.

We chose our destination and motel at the last minute, an arbitrary decision based on which town seemed to have the brewing company with the most promising beer list and then googling motel and "lake view" in that town. That landed us on the island's quiet side at the Beachfront Inn in Bailey's Harbor, which is like the Shoreline of Door County, so it suited us just fine. Great view, minimal but comfortable accommodations, a nice fire lit every night on the beach where guests make mildly awkward but pleasant conversation and get a fantastic view of the night sky. (Oh, and it's dog friendly, so be prepared to be sniffed and have petting opportunities.)

It was an easy stroll to Door County Brewing, where we happily hung out and added more brewvenirs to the cooler. We bopped over to the other side of the island for lunch (Shipwrecked Brewing) and supper (Wild Tomato's wood-fired pizza, try the Paisano), interspersed by attempts to hike it off.

We came home with a full cooler, with a stop at Red Eye Brewing Co. in Wausau. It's a three-hour drive from the Cities, which makes a good breaking spot on the long trip, and they make quite nice beer and food. With the right road burner, I could see buzzing over for lunch, providing we can get a smallish cooler in the saddlebags for more brewvenirs.

And now reality awaits and I'm just trying not to spend time googling how to retire early. (Short answer: Spend less, save more. It's about as likely to happen as eat less, exercise more. Both are good advice, but no fun.)

And this is the view of the sunrise shot through the window because I didn't wake up quite early enough to run outside.

Fish taco quest, taprooms and fall colors road trip

Seed Savers is in a lovely valley in Iowa's Driftless region. Hence all the go Driftless T-shirts for sale in town.

We had a few days of vacation to burn and after a spate of wedding/funeral runs, decided to make a trip to Iowa that didn't involve an officiant. We hadn't been in Decorah in 33 years, and blissfully know no one there, so we booked into the restored Hotel Winnishiek and hit the road.

We made a detour to Lanesboro after Rick Nelson's recommendation in his fall colors food tour. Since we never pass up the opportunity to try out a new-to-us version of fish tacos, that was the obvious choice on the Pedal Pushers' menu. I'm not sure if the fish picked up some bacon flavor from the grill, or where that nice smoky note came from, but the fish was tasty, and guacamole and black bean salsa made for a nice combo. Then we got mildly lost on some really pretty roads before landing in Decorah in time to do some hiking at Dunn Springs waterfall and in Palisades Park along the river. The two restaurants we'd most wanted to go to were closed while we were there, but La Rana was a decent substitute.

The next day amid bouts of museum-going, I had another fish taco opportunity at Ede's The Angry Pickle. This was the winner for sheer size and for the taco wrap itself, a toasted sun-dried tomato version. Tasty, but a tad unwieldly as it was plate-size. Then it was on to Seed Savers for some gawking at exotics, shopping and hiking on their extensive trail network. As a reward, we checked out the taproom of the much-buzzed-about Toppling Goliath, so Dave was happy.

Didn't find the label for this monster at Seed Savers, but it was taller than us.

We wound our way back on some roads that cry out for a motorcycle next time (Hwy. 43 squiggles adorably through cliff-lined valleys.) We took in the newly expanded Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, which now has an even more fabulous collection on exhibit with all the usual suspects in such an unusual spot: Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Constable, Turner, Corot, Morisot, and oddly my favorite, a Kandinksy. Lovely silk screen exhibit ends soon.

Then our last stop was a two-fer: fish tacos and a taproom. Reeds Landing Brewing Co. has a great setting along the Mississippi, tasty beers (a dark porter with dulche de leche notes was oddly my favorite of those we tried), and most importantly, the best fish tacos we've had in the state of Minnesota, and you know how we keep trying. Nicely minimalist, with a fabulous lime aioli that puts it out in front.

It's possible we might make it back to Decorah before another 33 years pass, if nothing else just to have a place to stay in between the best parts: the trips down and back.

Dioramas and disasters

Diorama factoid from the Bell Museum: River otters once lived near Minnehaha Falls.

Winter Sunday afternoons when I was little were spent endlessly looking at the same dioramas, mammoth tusks and backlit quartzite stones in the basement of what I now realize was a truly amazing museum for a small town, complete with planetarium. Many a post-church trip to the Country Kitchen buffet ended at the Sanford Museum, where I circled the same small collection continually until the adults were ready to leave whatever occupied them at the exhibits upstairs.

So Sunday was a flashback when we went to the Bell Museum of Natural History to check out the current Audubon exhibit. The outing was part of another of my resolutions this year: to at least monthly check out a museum or historical site, making sure we enjoy our fair city to its fullest. While the Audubon exhibit is indeed worthwhile – it will reopen Feb. 1 and run through June 8 – the real fun for me were the hallways filled with visually stunning dioramas that dwarfed the tiny vignettes I found so fascinating as a child. Look! Dioramas! Clearly, the throngs of excited offspring of families taking advantage of free Sunday admission were testimony to the fact that the video-game generation still appreciates a good diorama in a quaint setting. It’s not quite lions and tigers and bears, oh my, but there are bears, and moose and lynx.

Luckily, Dave survived. The roof not so much.

Then we came home and made the mistake of looking up. Never do that. There were telltale stains on the office ceiling indicating ice dam problems after this weekend’s snow. Dave went up on the roof in an effort to cure the problem while I kept anxious watch out the upstairs window. Usually this drama ends in wonderful anticlimax. This time after watching him clear mounds of snow there was a horrifying crunch as the porch roof collapsed, the porch frame separated from the house and my husband’s head disappeared. I set a land-speed record running downstairs and outside to find out that he had survived the 10-foot fall, unlike our porch. He was unhurt and mainly wondering how to get off the porch on which he was now trapped. We managed to wiggle him in through the back door. And we’ve now settled the question of whether it’s time to spend money fixing the back porch.