We woke up to a strange sound - the bison bellowing on the hills.  One went walking behind our tent too, but I think it was on the other side of a fence.

On our drive out of the park, we saw a bison getting harassed by (or playing with?) two coyotes.  Shortly after, we saw one rolling on its back in the dirt with all its feet in the air.

After that ( Read more... )

Or maybe day 0, since we didn't actually start backpacking until we got to the Winds.

Mostly driving.  Left early, drove across all of Minnesota and South Dakota pretty much, without stopping.  We wanted to avoid all the motorcyclists heading to Sturgis, so we went south at the Black Hills and camped at Elk Mountain Campground at Wind Cave.   ( Read more... )

We went canoeing and we did not drown.


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We ate our breakfast at the hotel, since we got vouchers.  I drank coffee, black.  At some point I guess I started not minding coffee.

We took a quick walk down by the beach while we waited for the post office to open so I could mail my postcards.  There were some really nice banyan trees.  It's really hard to do justice to them in a photo.

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Got some more pepper seeds from my dad since my hadn't come up, but when I got back to the Twin Cities after visiting for Easter, look what greeted me:


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My dad claims I planted them upside down. :( Germination time was supposed to have been 7-10 days, and it's been almost 14.

Tomatoes are doing okay though, although I somehow ended up with 2 in the same pot, so I should transplant one.  So I guess I have 10 tomato seedlings.

Some seedlings came up... no peppers yet though.


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This year I am planting:

Peppers:

6 California Wonder, bought from Park Seeds for last year

9 Early Jalepeno, bought from Park Seeds for last year

6 Thai Hot, from a plant I bought from the farmer's market last year (and which survived in my greenhouse over the winter, to my huge surprise, and to my even huger surprise just started flowering again ( Read more... )

We got up on the early side, ate breakfast at the hotel restaurant one more time to use up most of our food credit, and then checked out so we could drive back to Volcanoes National Park.

Sadly, the weather was not so nice -- cold and rainy and windy.  We stopped up at the Jagger Museum again since supposedly the crater was supposed to be more ( Read more... )