Site Seeing

Spiderman at Lake Calhoun

I started out the day by visting Lake Calhoun. You can just barely see the beach house on the far side, and off in the distance is downtown Minneapolis. The park around the lake is in readiness for winter. The snow fencing is up, the trees have all lost their leaves, and they already have signs that say "Don't go out on the ice you idiot."

Spiderman visits a church

walker_center

I then headed north towards downtown. It's time for a fun fact (by fact I mean my observation from my semi-random wanderings) about Minneapolis. The per-capita number of churches that feature tall pointy things is much higher here than in California. In California each of these churches would be called a cathedral. But there are too many of them here for that. So they are just churches. They are so amazingly huge, they would make anyone feel like they were only 6 inches tall. But maybe that is [part of] the point. Right across the street from that church is one of the enemies of modern religion, modern art. The new Walker Art center is still under construction, but the outside looks like it is almost done. The finish is some kind of polished metal, over which they put battered screens to give it a textured/many faceted look. When it is in direct sunlight it is very stunning and amazing. Personally I'm about done with the polished metal/shiny object look.

Spiderman Visits Loring Park

Geese at loring park

Our last stop of the day is Loring Park. Loring park has the first "dirty" lake I've found out here. It doesn't have the trash that you usually associate with a dirty lake in California, or the water polution (which is at least partially linked to the trash). What it has is poor water circulation and lots of geese. So it smells a little bad. In the background you can see another church that would be a cathedral in California. Approximate distance from the church in the last photo: .25 mile. I saw a few geese there that had been 'tagged', I presume for tracking or some such thing. The collars look extremely uncomfortable, but I can't tell if the geese care or not. See ya later.

spidy