Take advantage while you can

Get it while you can

Some color on the Mississippi

Awe on today’s hike

Superior Hiking Trail @ Devil’s Kettle

Don’t see that every day

Approach to nine green, peak color, The Wilderness at Fortune Bay #nofilter

Gold Mine Trail 🍁

River Oaks in Cottage Grove

She is so talented

Fall colors in Hastings

A Dwan maple in Bloomington

Don’t know what those are, but great to have late season flowers

Pope Family Ranch, Forest Lake

Phalen with Curtis (plus Craig and Jeff)

Too bad our Cheese Dog wasn’t working

Summer in full swing at Brookview

Cold front really dropped the temp, though

It’s been hot, but pretty

Approximately 127 turtles are hiding in this photo

Mississippi River, Saint Paul

Dead mayfly party in Lowertown

Cross River, Schroeder, Minnesota

Pretty awesome for a “weed”

Today’s bike ride sight: the Anson Northrup

Devil’s Track River, Minnesota

Just learned what “tombolo” means this trip too

Mississippi River, Saint Paul

My favorite part of spring

I don’t think that is in the brochure

Valleywood #8, Apple Valley, Minnesota

My city is awesome

Morning walkies around Lowertown

The Dahlgreen cows were impressed

Cannon Golf Club, Cannon Falls, Minnesota

Highway 52 bridge over the Mississippi, Saint Paul

Not many choo-choos these days

The root beer boots are back!

Hello again, Union Depot Christmas tree

Fun stop on the way to the airport

RC Burger Shack

Haleakala National Park

Cows too on the road to the summit

The silversword of Haleakala

Sounds like a lost Wilbury song

Day one on the beach

Not what I wanted to see before the first tee time of the day

Far from peak, but starting to show in the metro

Rush Creek is still first class

SK with Chrysanthemum in Mears Park

Felicity came home from the fair in a cocoon

Go, sheep, go

Miss the bunnies per mile ratios

We love you now, Goldenrod

New(ish?) mural downtown

It was so, so awful

Nice to see Mr. Berry too

Just in time for the big grad party too

If you ever wanted to visit Minnesota, weeks like this are the time to do it

…but most everything is late this year

Don’t wanna be buried in debt or in sin, so we pray to Jesus and we play the lotto…

Worst one since we moved to Lowertown

…can’t you smell that smell…

The Como conservatory has always kicked ass

Half had already flown away too

…how many times does it get compressed or down-sampled?

Hurry before it freezes

The huntin’ time has arrived…

Wide range of weather at The Wilderness

Last weekend we did a very quick jaunt up to Grand Marais to shoot senior pictures for kid two. Sites included Jay Cooke State Park, Grand Portage National Monument, Naniboujou Lodge, Croftville Road, Grand Marais lighthouse and Gooseberry State Park. Not the greatest weather (and light), but we ended up with a bunch of good ones (full gallery after the jump).

Side note: a photographer friend of ours recommended West Photo in Minneapolis for gear rental. I priced out renting a Nikon D750 with a nice portrait lens for the weekend and found the $150 fee to be reasonable, but then they asked for a “first-time renter” deposit of $4200. Ah, nope.

So we ended up with my trusty old (like really old – 2004?) Nikon D70 and my iPhone X with portrait mode. Surprisingly, I was happiest with the majority of the iPhone shots and only a handful of the Nikon shots. Anxious to get my new silver iPhone Xs later this week, since Gruber wrote a ton about the upgraded camera features on that model. Still not taking the D850 off my wish list, but it’s surprising how the world of photography is changing.