Hangin' With Mr S

Mr Swami has a four day vacation this week, so we are just hanging together, going for lunch, going on short road trips and doing a couple fo house projects. Including (finally!) carrying the last couple of boxes of Christmas stuff into the basement. Swami doesn't carry heavy boxes up & down stairs anymore. :)

Yesterday, just for fun we drove around Lake Pepin. I always enjoy stopping at this Historical marker for Fort St Antoine, which is on the Wisconsin side.
I think you can click on the pic and make it big enough to read. Anyway, at this site in 1869 (back when Wisconsin & Minnesota were the wild, wild West) a French explorer and diplomat named Nicholas Perrot took possession of all lands from this point to all points west in the name of Louis the XIV. In the summer you can vaguely see the outline of the original fort building, although now a railroad bed runs close by, and the actual site appears to be owned by some guy with a small very downscale house (is shack an acceptible word?) who feeds a couple of steers from the back of a dead pick-up truck. Anyway, until the Louisiana Purchase Fort St Antoine and several other later, smaller forts on the Mississippi held the West in the name of France.

We did a driveby of the National Eagle Center in Wabasha MN. We didn't go in because the place was just chock-a-block with people & their binoculars, watching the bald eagles. As the ice on the Mississippi melts, eagles follow the melt North to their breeding grounds. We saw quite a few eagles. The ones who weren't hunting didn't mind sitting on the shore and posing for pictures.

We also stopped at Lake City MN, which is where water-skiing was invented back in 1922.

We had brunch on the Veranda at the St James Hotel in Red Wing MN. This photo is from their website:

Tomorrow I take a break from the vacation to go to the dentist. Stupid dentist appointment made 6 months ago!