Author: bbpeck

Bob and I left St. Louis Park about mid-morning on Thursday and drove the 6+ hours to our new housesit for Mr. Gus, a Cairn Terrier, on Lake Shore Boulevard in Chicago. We had a great walk through and visit with the homeowners Thursday night before they flew to Boston to do their own housesit and visit with their son.

Today, Chicago dyes part of the Chicago River green for St. Patrick’s Day. Our friends from Austin are in town for her mom’s 89th birthday. We took the express bus downtown about 11 am to meet up with them and see the newly green river.

Trying to get in another good walk as well as enjoy a beautiful spring-like day (highs in the upper 60s F), Bob and I headed off towards Medicine Lake (the lake). Medicine Lake is also an independent municipality (population of 330) on a peninsula that juts into the lake that we visited. It is surrounded by the suburb of Plymouth, but voted to separate from Plymouth in 1944.

To get to Medicine Lake (the lake), we traversed roads, sidewalks, pedestrian bridges, and trails through the municipalities of St.Louis Park, Golden Valley, and Medicine Lake. As the blog title indicates, it ended up being about 12 miles round trip.

Bob and I arrived at our housesit in St. Louis Park, MN, (suburb of the Twin Cities) at 4:30 pm on Thursday for a walk through before our homeowners left for a week-long Arizona vacation. We’re caring for the sweet Rico, who is blind but has managed to teach himself to get around his two story house.

Yesterday afternoon, after Bob and I got back from a short neighborhood walk, Bob’s uncle who lives in the area reached out. We ended up meeting up with him and his wife for happy hour sushi. We had a great visit.

Today, we decided to do a longer walk to start getting ready for a walking trip that we will be doing in England in April. We headed to Westwood Hills Nature Preserve, which ended up being about 7 miles there and back and around the lake at the preserve. We’ll definitely need to get more mileage in, but it was a lovely park and a nice winter walk with temps in the low 30s but the wind making it feel cooler.

Bob and I left Mason City, Iowa, about mid morning to head to Austin, Minnesota, on our way to Minneapolis. The attraction for us in Austin was the SPAM museum , which we learned of when living in Austin, Texas, which had an annual SPAM festival.

SPAM is a canned luncheon meat created by the Hormel company in Austin, MN, in 1937. It gained popularity worldwide after its use in WW II and is now found in over 40 countries. The free museum in Austin celebrates this product in a colorful and engaging way.

According to the museum, the name SPAM was chosen after a naming contest at a Hormel New Years Eve party, believed to be the combination of the words spiced and ham.

Bob and I had a lovely, sunny day to explore Mason City. This city, of approximately 28,000, has the Winnebago River running through it to give it its moniker of River City. Mason City is the county seat of Cerro Gordo (named for a battle in the Mexican-American War) County in Northern Iowa. The city is about a two hour drive north of Des Moines and a similar length south of Minneapolis.

While there is evidence of some hard economic times (a mall with only 2 open stores and other closed stores in the downtown area), Bob and I still enjoyed a walk around the greater downtown area, which was highlighted with lots of public art, more examples of Prairie School architecture, an art museum, public library, and a tease of Music Man square. We saw evidence of the work of the 3 famous people (so far) tied to this small town.

One of the highlights of the walk was the local art museum, which had a lovely second floor meditation space (with a big head sculpture), a collection of puppets from Bil Baird, who grew up in Mason City, and some Monet-inspired paintings from an Midwestern artist.

Late Sunday afternoon, Bob and I left the very sweet Bebe and her equally awesome humans. All three of them have left a special place on our hearts. We are thankful every day for Trusted Housesitters, which has allowed us to meet such great people and care for the best animals.

Now, we are making our way to Hopkins, Minnesota, but before that we are spending a bit of time in Mason City, Iowa. Bob found us a beautiful, historic hotel for our stay. It’s the Park Inn Hotel, and it is the last remaining Frank Lloyd Wright designed hotel. It was built in 1910 at the peak of Wright’s Prairie School period. It reopened to the public in 2011 after a $18.5 million dollar restoration with 27 rooms, restaurant, and lounge. It is lovely.

The other thing that Mason City, Iowa is known for is the musical “The Music Man” written by Meredith Wilson, who was born in Mason City, Iowa, and which is inspired by the town as well.

We’re hoping to explore some of those sites tomorrow as well as more Frank Lloyd Wright architecture tomorrow.

While we haven’t been blogging of late, we are staying busy at our repeat housesit in Des Moines for Bebe. We’ve been going to doctor’s appointments (Bob), getting dental work done and going to PT (Beth), getting our Iowa drivers licenses, getting work done on the car, and we even had an unexpected trip to the vet with Bebe (minor issue and all good now). Bob has also had some quick visits with family and was able to spend time with his mom on her birthday this week. Whew!

The weather has been gorgeous, so we have been getting some walks in as well, mostly exploring the neighborhood. Today though, we made a quick 10 minute drive to Raccoon River Park to check out a non-concrete trail that had been recommended to us. We walked 3.2 miles around an asphalt and crushed rock path around Blue Heron Lake in the park.

The park was very nice with many different types of facilities.

Bob has been holding down the fort in our housesit in Des Moines while I was in Austin, but as of about 9:30 last night we’re back together. We are caring for the adorable Bebe in the Waukee area of Des Moines that we had housesat for back in December. This time, we’re here until March 3 while her humans are spending some warm time in Punta Gorda, Florida.

Before all the Super Bowl game hoopla got started, Bob and I walked some of the paths through our temporary neighborhood. It’s a great, quiet neighborhood with a lot of impressive homes.

It’s been a great trip back to Austin. It would have been better if Bob were here too, but it’s been fun to catch up with old friends, check out the changes to the city, and care for some sweet cats in a great old Austin neighborhood. I leave about midday tomorrow and will connect back up with Bob tomorrow evening at the Des Moines airport.

Here’s a last look at this visit to Austin.

There are a number of things that I love about our former home of Austin, Texas, but nothing more (excluding friends of course) than the 10.1 mile trail around Lady Bird Lake, also known as Town Lake (actually a dammed section of the Colorado River but not the famous one). I walked it today on a beautiful 70F degree sunny day in February.

The trail and the buildings around the trail have changed quite a bit since Bob and I first started running here and are continuing to change to meet the needs of the ever growing population. Bob and I have been blessed to walk and run on trails around the world, but this trail will always hold a special place in my heart, as it transformed me from non-athlete to long distance runner.

See below for views of the trail and downtown Austin.