Wednesday we took a bus trip (through the senior group at church) to the German-settled community of New Ulm (about 2 hours southwest of Minneapolis).  What a perfect time of year for a visit!  They had already celebrated Oktoberfest the previous two weeks, so we had a perfectly lovely (and not too crowded) day for a visit.

 Starting at the top left is a photo of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity off in the distance.  The cornerstone was laid in 1866.  A close-up photo of the cathedral is right below, lower left.  Following along the bottom is a tree in all its fall glory.  Sorry, I’m not good with tree names, but by its color, could it be a maple (Doug, are you reading me)?  And the photo to the right of the tree is of a path down the hill along the Way of the Cross.  Each of these small buildings is a station of the cross.  It is a lovely walk, and at this point we were on a hill overlooking the town.  Really beautiful.  The path is lined with pavers now, but was originally a dirt path.  And we “topped off” our tour of New Ulm with a stop at Schell’s Brewery!  (Did I mention this is a German town???)  The most fascinating (to me, anyway) part of the brewery tour was the peacocks and hens that roamed the property.  And isn’t this guy inspiration for a quilt!  Just look at those greens and blues.

While I was browsing around the web this morning, I happened on Mary’s site.  She is using this fun collage feature of Picasa 3.  It was easy to install and get started.  What a neat way to display pictures!  You’ll have to check out Mary’s site as well (she’s a quilter in neighboring Minneapolis), and she has some lovely fall pictures of the Minneapolis close-to-downtown area.  Thank you for the inspiration, Mary!

And don’t you think this collage format would be wonderful for a Christmas card picture, or how about for a postcard?  Oh, the possibilities…

Sue

Here are some more pictures from our trip West (thru ND, Montana, family time in Seattle, Oregon (Hells Canyon), thru Idaho, into Yellowstone, home through MT, ND, and Minnesota).  Worth every gallon of gas!

Family Tree.  Here we are in the Grove of the Patriarchs, an island of land surrounded by the Ohanapecosh River, allowing these trees to survive, protected from fire.  There are trees over a thousand years old here.  In front of this fine specimen are some of our own Matriarchs and Patriarchs (and these six fine specimens, all siblings, total over 410 years!!!  John, we missed you.  You could have made the total 480 years!  Pretty soon you guys will be older than this tree.)  This is in the Mt. Rainier National Park.

Douglas, fer sure.  Here is Nephew Doug in front of a giant tree.  Doug, is this a Douglas Fir (or a Douglas, fer sure)?  I know some of the trees are.  Doug would know.  He’s our forestry man!

Stumped.  Here I am with DH Jim.  One of these giant trees fell over at some point, and you can climb into the empty stump.  Very awesome.  I look slimmer.  I’m going to only have my picture taken in stumps from now on.  Who knew???  (I think the scientific explanation is, it’s the dump-your-rump-in-a-stump effect.)

I’m posting these vacation pics according to various stops, so check back for more pictures.  And if you’re looking for quilts, check back too! 

Sue

(Additional information on this post:  I was searching the Web to see why this river has such beautiful turquoise water.  I didn’t enhance this photo at all — it truly is this amazing color.  It turns out that there is a glacier on the southeast flank of Mt. Rainier called the Ohanapecosh Glacier.  So this is glacial water, similar to what we’ve seen in Alaska.  This effect is caused by rock flour in the water.)

We had a wonderful time on our West Coast trip.  One of the first outings we had was with extended family.  We went to the Grove of the Patriarchs, a park part of the way up Mt. Rainier.  I would highly recommend it if you get to the Seattle area.  It is truly awe inspiring.  And a BIG thank you to Niece Julie who planned this outing for us and was our leader!  We all had a great time.

We crossed the beautiful Ohanapecosh River on a suspended bridge.  The water had the same sort of color as the glacial water in Alaska — kind of a milky green-blue.  I understand it’s from the snow melting on the mountain.  (Please honor my copyrights on this site.  Thank you.)

~Sue