Manhattan Beach 2015: Traveling Art Pub

 

During the break: backgrounds are done

I've  been intrigued by online offers for a session of painting with a glass of wine, thinking that I really should "do this" and uncover my hidden painterly talents. The chance came unexpectedly when I saw a Traveling Art Pub promotional poster in the breakfast room. I signed up for the Thursday evening event and tried  to sell Bob the idea of taking the class, an offer he adamantly refused.

I had been led to believe we would spend a lovely evening on the lawn painting. I imagined a Trout Lake sunset and myself in the picture, working happily on a modest but competent little piece of art. I skipped over to the Red Room where we had played Bingo the night before.

The woman in the center had the best painting -- different from everyone else

The room was set up with dozens of easels on long tables. Each workstation was equipped with an apron on the chair and a palette of five colors (black, brown, yellow, blue, white) of acrylic paint on a Styrofoam plate, two brushes (small and large), and a mason jar of water. A few women seemed to be handling registration and money collection, as well as maintaining some kind of order. It really wasn't clear who was in charge.

About fifty women ranging in age from mid-twenties to older than me milled about, holding glasses of discounted wine and beer. A few had appetizers and small meals at their workstations. A couple of waiters took orders and delivered the food and beverages. It all felt very chaotic to me, a little bit like a child's theme party right before the birthday kid's mom loses control.

My masterpiece before I messed it up

Finally we began. I was doing great as long as we stuck with backgrounds. I was so good at blending colors, deviating a little from instructions shouted at the other end of the room. I like to add a  personal touch to my creations, and there were so many students that the teachers didn't care about one uncooperative budding artist. They did care when I went to the paint table to get more yellow paint. The pump was defective and big yellow splats squirted into the air before squiggly stripes of paint landed on the carpet. Oh oh. Time to get back to my canvas.

The responsible parties cleaned up the mess and  the evening wore on. Bob dropped in to check my progress and I promised him a canvas for his garage. Noise increased with alcohol levels and I missed the relative quiet of Bingo Night, when even the unruly were silent during number calling. I got a little more sloppy when we started using the small brush to paint dandelion stems with black paint. I figured I would correct my rough edges with a Sharpie later.

Unsigned Dandelions in the dusk by CAT


By eight o'clock I had really had enough and decided that I needed a glass of wine to help me finish this thing. The wine helped all right. I got even sloppier and splashed a little too much white pain on the dandelion fuzz flying in the air. Attempts at correction diminished the quality of the finished product and created a kind of dark aura around the dandelions blowing in the wind.

As my fellow artists gathered on the lawn for a group picture (I was not the only "no-show"), I returned to our room with my wine and dripping painting to see the last of the setting sun. A non-conformist to the end. While I wouldn't really recommend this particular experience, I think similar events might have a little more structure in a comfortable venue. Add a couple of congenial companions and you've got a winner!

Manhattan Beach 2015: Bingo Night

Bingo Night Ladies

The cold weather persisted through yesterday - rain on and off all day. We decided to check out the effects of the Brainerd area July 12 storm, still very evident at Cragun's on Gull Lake. Proximity to  Bar Harbor, established in 1938 like my own BH, called for lunch and a couple of drinks (margarita for Bob, with a huge ice cube; Gull Dam Scotch Ale for me, a nice medium dark beer). Late in the afternoon, I went out for a walk. I seriously wondered if I should have brought gloves and my face was numb from the cold by the time I returned around 5:00 o'clock news time.

One of the lodge employees was watching TV in the breakfast room. She engaged me in conversation and, as my face thawed, I realized my nose was running, so I was eager to get back to our room, but not before listening to a pitch about Wednesday evening bingo with $5 hamburgers. Bob was not enthusiastic, so we bypassed the bingo room and stopped in the bar area, where huge, expensive items on the menu -- for much bigger appetites than ours -- persuaded him to try a little Bingo, sponsored by the Northern Lakes Lightning Youth Hockey Association.

The "Red Room" was full of players of all ages from neighboring cottages in the area, as well as guests at the resort. We filled a couple of spots at a table in front of the large windows facing the outdoors. Turns out we really hit our own jackpot with Mike, his wife, brother Dave and two blonde children, a pretty older middle-school girl and a cute nine-year-old boy.

Mike is a commodities trader with Cargill who recently returned to the US to live after 9 years at Cargill Worldwide in Geneva, Switzerland. We spent a very enjoyable couple of hours with that welcoming family, laughing and talking like old friends. Dave won $13 on the very first pot but our table was unlucky for the rest of the evening, except in the fun department.

The Bingo ladies, all three of them a "certain age", ran the show, selling cards before each game, calling numbers and verifying winners' claims. Each "card" is actually a strip of three torn from a pad. A flyer explains the games played (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, four corners, "kite", full card), and I actually remembered how to play from long ago grade school days. I easily played two strips of three cards each and Bob had no trouble at all. The dauber, a colored marker, made number tracking easy.

We each had one of the good burgers, along with a beer (Bob) and wine (me), all the while enjoying the back and forth banter. We got a dinner tip for later in the week from Mike and his wife, who were heading  to Norway Ridge on a night, while the kids spent the rest of the evening at their cottage with their adored uncle.

By now, dark had fallen and we were looking forward to the promise of a sunny Thursday. Bingo Night was a great success.

Manhattan Beach 2015: Trout Lake in the Rain

Manhattan Beach on a cloudy afternoon

This summer has been spectacular so far, so beautiful that summer vacations have been the "best yet" for anyone who spent time at any of our lovely Minnesota lakes. However, we've been busy with projects around the house and just haven't taken the time for a few days at "the lake".

Bob called Manhattan Beach Lodge on Sunday and got a reservation for a few days this week. We should have checked the weather -- as we always do, but the endless good weather made us careless and we forged ahead without a second thought.

Today, we drove through mostly light rain to get here, and since a downpour seemed imminent we didn't even launch the boat today. Fortunately, we got to be outside for part of the afternoon and enjoyed our little cocktail hour in our room, watching the light rain through the window looking out at Trout Lake. Then we had a breakfast supper at Pine Peaks in downtown Cross. It wasn't very good but I was in no mood for bar food and drink.

I think it will rain all day tomorrow so we're planning our day around non-water activities, a new thing for us. I'm really OK with the rain, as I can always find entertainment as long as I have something to read. I am a little disappointed with the resort, which seemed so upscale years ago when we first started coming here for a drink or an appetizer, when we were campers at the Corps of Engineers campground.

Members of a rather scruffy family have spent most of the afternoon in the lobby not far from our room drinking beer and eating various snacks. They go outside to smoke and talk to hotel guests entering and leaving the building, occasionally returning to their chips and salsa in a large Tupperware container, plunked on a lobby coffee table. The venue has something of a bar room feel, just a little tacky.

Meanwhile, the Twins beating the Yankees 4-1in New York but the bases are loaded in the bottom of the seventh inning, and a good outcome seems unlikely. Ah, but the view is priceless and the water is clear and clean only a few feet from our room. The weather will clear by Thursday and we'll enjoy a fantastic sunset after a day on the lake. Life is pretty good.

Click for more stories about Crow Wing County and Manhattan Beach. Summer photos here.

Spring in Prescott

Southern section of St Croix River Byway

The St Croix Scenic Byway stretches all the way from Askov to the Great River Road near Prescott, at the confluence of the Mississippi and St Croix rivers. I like to look beyond the railroad bridge there, where the rivers meet and the St Croix disappears into the muddy Mississippi.

When I first moved to Minnesota nearly 32 years ago, teenagers from the Twin Cities would head across the border to Wisconsin to party in Prescott. Bars still line the main street just up the hill from the river, and we've certainly been to a few of those establishments for a beer on a Sunday afternoon. On most days, though, we simply make a stop beside the public dock and watch the people and their boats.



Railroad bridge at Prescott

On Friday, Prescott seemed like a good destination, less than 30 minutes door-to-door. We took off in the Corvette, happily soaking in the sun and enjoying unseasonably warm mid-April temperatures in the mid-seventies. Boaters and fishermen were on the river, but the heavy summer boat traffic is still weeks away.

St Joseph Church, Prescott

I had half hoped to see late migrating birds but I suppose most of the waterfowl have already flown north for their summer nesting places. A few bald eagles glided above the tree line, too far away for photos or decent viewing. A kid -- late teens or early twenties -- stopped to talk to Bob and pointed us in the direction of a peregrine falcon nest high in a tower of the railroad bridge. The falcons weren't in evidence, but I'm looking forward to sightings later in the spring.

The trees were "greening up" along our route and a few early cherry trees competed with the magnolias, now in full bloom. It was another perfect day.