March 29th Ice Storm

It rained just about ALL day here today and the temperature rarely got above 32 degrees all day. Needless to say it's ICY outside.


This is the railing on the back porch.. there's 1/4 inch of ice on it.


This was an attempt at showing the ice on the box elder. Hopefully the ice kills the thousands of box elder bugs that have been showing up.


Yes, the siding on the house needs to be replaced, that's this summer. All of the glare is ice. I don't dare try and open windows either.

Not the greatest bunch of pictures, but they were taken at 11:30 pm in the dark.

NHL Alumni Game, Cloquet

This was an attempt at indoor pictures, they're not the clearest with this camera indoors but anyway they're at the NHL Alumni game in Cloquet March 14th, before the CCM high school all star game.


Group Photo, look in the back, the last green jersey on the right of #44 Chris McAlpine. I won that one in the raffle during the 3rd period of the high school game. Some of the other "old" NHL Alumni in the game were Norm Maciver, Brian Bellows, Ian Kidd, Sean Toomey, Jeff Nielsen, Robb Stauber, and Reed Larson.



The CCM Duluth All Stars logo at center ice.



The post game handshake, the Northern Alumni won 6-4 as you can see on the clock. The goaltender #29 in white, Matt Klein, who never made it to the NHL, but was the 3rd goaltender for the University of Minnesota, Duluth made diving saves and was all over the ice. He of course is a few years younger than the players they played against, but he made the game more fun to watch.

Photos March 13, Springlike weather

As the title says, it's warm and springlike here:


A view FROM the 'Swinging Bridge' in Jay Cooke State Park


Another view FROm the bridge


This view across the swinging bridge really doesn't do it justice, I'll take a video walking across it some day with my camera.


This is a side view of the swinging bridge, the bridge is one of the more popular parts of Jay Cooke State Park, and it's at the beginning of the park.

A cool Agate, a Voyageur, and some food.

As I'm going through some old pictures on my computer (it crashed in Feb 06 so I had to start over) I'll post a few.


One of the cooler looking agates I've found.


This is the Cloquet Voyageur. It is in the park by the river, if you drive up Highway 33 through Cloquet you'll see him to the East from the bridge heading north.


I don't just take OUTDOOR pictures though, I like to cook and occasionally will take a food photograph. Here is Beef Stroganoff.


Here is my first attempt ever at homemade chicken soup. It turned out really good, but the noodles I used were too thick as you can see in the picture ;)


This last picture for today is what I grew up knowing as Pizza Hot Dish. It's sort of a lasagna bake type dish that I like to make and it gets better the day after as most Italian food does.

A few FISH pictures from 2006

Below are a few photographs from the 2006 fishing season. All of my fishing is catch & release, especially from the St. Louis River, which has high mercury levels.


Smallmouth Bass


Another Smallmouth Bass


A decent LENGTH Northern Pike, but man was it skinny for it's length.

Minnesota State Bird?

While the Loon is our state bird, and the Mosquito is joked about as the state bird...



If you've ever been to Duluth, you'll see that THIS could actually be considered as much the "state bird" as any.

My Camera

Just for reference, as mentioned I take all of my pictures with a HP Photosmart 3.2 MegaPixel camera, until I can afford to buy a more expensive 7 MegaPixel or better camera. This is what the camera actually looks like, (picture from an online catalog):



It's a nice little camera, that I use Energizer Lithium batteries in for now, but I will be buying Engergizer Rechargeable AND the charger in the next week or so because 4 batteries costs over $10 with tax and 8 is still over $17.

EDIT: October 2, 2008: Obviously I dont' have that camera anymore, as I've gone through it, and a Kodak Easyshare, to a Canon EOS Rebel now.

A few winter pictures, from this past weekend

Below are a few pictures from this weekend... that I took between the Section 7AA championship game and the UMD men's hockey game.


The first picture is the parking lot in Canal Park by the hotels and Grandma's sports garden AND Little Angie's Cantina. I wanted to get the snowbank height without getting right up to it. Click on the picture to see the actual SIZE of the snowbank. Usually you can see the entire Grandma's restaurant from this vantage point.


The Aerial Lift Bridge in winter, with the sun basically in the same place as the earlier blogged photo, but being early March it's a couple hours earlier.


The lighthouses again, this time in winter from the Lakewalk.

A few more pictures to start with.

Here's a few more pictures:


This is a nice Northern Pike from the St. Louis River.


Another picture of the spring Geese. There are hundreds of geese here every spring.


I've posted THIS picture a lot of places on the net. I call this one Cloud Man, but many people have said it looks like Santa Claus or one of the greek gods Poseidon or Zeus.


More geese, the younger ones are older in this picture.


A nice fall colors picture from Jay Cooke State Park.



One more fall colors picture, also Jay Cooke State Park

First blog post

Welcome!

In this blog I'll be posting pictures of everything I do.. there will be pictures of just about anything if I decide I want to take a picture of it. In the next week or so I'll be posting older pictures of stuff, as examples etc. My camera of choice right now is an HP Photosmart 3.2 Megapixel. I'll be making a better purchase in the near future, but this camera does take really good outside pictures.


This first picture is a closeup picture of an agate from Lake Superior. It's only the height of a quarter but I like picking them. It's decent exercise walking the shore.



This picture is of the Aerial Lift Bridge in Duluth this past fall (06). This bridge is probably the most photographed thing in Duluth other than:


The light houses on the Entrance to the bridge and Harbor.


This is the kind of stuff I'll have pictures of.. and also:


Photo opportunities I have while going FISHING


Hope ya enjoy.. there's lots more to come.