Autumn in Minnesota

Last week I had a long trip through northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. For the most part the weather was gray and rainy, with temperatures hovering in the 30's and 40's. It wasn't exactly pleasant. There were a few instances with halfway decent weather - here's a photo of the colorful woods near Longville, MN:

I also saw this:


For over five years now I've been walking sites in the North Woods, and I've never seen a bear. Granted, these two are caged and "pets" of the landowner.

On Wednesday afternoon the temperature dropped even further, and the rain gave way to snow. It actually may have been preferable to the rain as I didn't get quite as wet, but it was miserable nonetheless. This is how it looked after about an hour and a half:

From here I drove on to the Twin Ports, with the heater on full bore. I had four more sites the following morning, then a five hour drive back to Madison followed by a Lucero show in Milwaukee. I'm still tired from last week, and I think I'll be headed back up later this week. Here's to hoping for no snow.