Saturday, August 18, 2018

Coffee with Coopdway, a family reunion and a smoky sunset

Friday was mostly spent driving from west of Des Moines, IA to Holmen, WI.  Not much to report, parked the URRV in the side portion of my FIL's yard in Holmen.

Martha flew in late and joined up with us shortly before midnight.

Saturday.  Busy day today.

A foggy morning in the Holmen, WI area

Left my FIL's house at 6:30 AM to ride north along US Highway after picking it up at Winona, WI and once again being in Minnesota.  You ride on the west side of the great Mississippi River but fog would block whatever river views were available this morning.

Soon, almost 60 miles later, I was in the town of Wabasha, the home locale for one of my favorite movies: Grumpy Old men.  Nothing that would show up in the movie is actually in the town that I could find though.

I wandered about a bit taking pictures; since I wasn't due to meet up with Coop until 9:00AM.

 Bridge in Wabasha, Minnesota, leading to the town of Nelson
on the far side, which is Wisconsin



Monument to Chief Hapahasha II, three Dakota chiefs
with the name....leaders of their tribes.


I then went over to the Eagles Nest Coffeehouse and met up with Coopdway aka Doug.  He's a motoblogger as well: LINK.


We spent about 90 minutes chatting, getting to know each other and in general solving the problems of the world as riders are wont to do when they gather.  :)



We parted company around 10:30 or so, me to rejoin my FIL and Martha as they prepared for the reunion in the afternoon and I believe Coop went for a ride.  We discussed doing a ride together tomorrow, Sunday.

The reunion had a great turnout and folks enjoyed meeting or rekindling relationships, everyone trying to figure out who was who within the Granum family tree.  Genealogy materials were on displayed for those who were interested, lots of food and drink of course as everyone contributed something to the gathering.


After everyone had left, I went off to see what kind of sunset we'd get with the smoke that had drifted down from the ongoing Canadian forest fires.  It proved a bit disappointing in terms of colors.



2 comments:

RichardM said...

That looks like a very smoky sunset. I remember seeing that often while growing up in CA only it was smog not smoke. Things have really improved. They are much better at making the smog transparent…

Pretty nice to meet up with Coop! And he graciously brought something that the Ural jay be able to out run. It’ll be interesting to see what he rides on Sunday for your ride.

redlegsrides said...

RichardM, I didn't get very excited by the sunset...it was very dim. All the smoke I guess.

Meeting Coop aka Doug was quite the priviledge and fun time. He brought something much faster for the Sunday ride!