Today's been way too long, but was fun. I got up sometime around 6:30 to get ready and head over to Dave's by 7. Shortly after that we piled into the car and hopped on 35W north. We made pretty good time after that and ended up in Duluth sometime a little before 10am. The current temp was -16F, so I put on a windbreaker much to the delight of Ross and Dave (I don't think they've seen me with a jacket for years). Then we went shopping since Ross wanted to, and he bought a Nalgene bottle while Dave and I just looked. He knew about a little coffee shop up there, so that was our next stop. We played a game of Chess followed by a game of Scrabble, followed by a few minutes of thinking of shopping and then back to the car for some sightseeing. We went out to Park Point and went out on the lake a little bit from the beach. It's sorta weird seeing sand mixed with snow on the beach. Looks more like a big pile of stuff to put on the roads. :) Anyways, got some good pics, unfortunately forgot I had the camera set to small mode so the pictures are only around 1.5megapixel, which thankfully isn't that bad. We proceeded to drive up the mountain and take some more pictures, followed by stopping at First United Methodist Church and taking more pictures. In case you haven't figured it out, the trip quickly turned into a photo trip more than anything, as I had my new Canon Digital Rebel, Dave had his film camera loaded with black and white film, and Ross had his new Canon A80 along. We got a lot of pictures, and I have mine posted here. Of course I'm still learning about my camera which is why there's quite a few pictures with duplicates at different settings - just trying out and seeing how the auto interacts with the full range of what it is willing to pick for the image. Anyways, after taking pictures at the church we decided it was time for lunch so headed off to Grandma's for lunch. While getting reasonably stuffed we decided that a trip up to Two Harbors and Gooseberry Falls would make a good afternoon, so started off there. Stopped a few times along the way to take pictures, which mainly turned out good. After arriving at Gooseberry we walked down to the falls which was pretty much deserted. There were a couple other people looking around, but the cold weather sorta kills tourist season. Of course this meant good pictures without near as many people around, but unfortunately a lot of paths had already been trampled. The falls being frozen also meant that it was a lot easier to get around to places to take pictures, provided the fact that it's a river and you have to watch the ice because of currents is taken into consideration. Got some good shots without slipping too much. Although I need to invest in a couple filters and a tripod if I'm gonna do a lot more photography like that. Unfortunately carrying more stuff means it's harder to pull yourself along with your elbows on the snow (yea, maybe I'm crazy, but that route was a lot shorter than climing over the and walking around the big rocks, and workable since the river was frozen). It's sorta interesting to see how the river changes when it freezes and how much of what is normally dry ground is covered with ice (including parts of the paths). Gooseberry pretty much marked the end of the trip so we called it a day and headed back south to the cities. Afterwards we were all very tired and Ross went home while Dave and I watched The Time Machine. That movie isn't really that great, although could have probably been done a lot better. Some of the effects were pretty bad, not to mention the continuity issues and plot holes. Anyways, pictures are all uploaded and I'm tired, so maybe I'll update more tomorrow.