OutSpanding: Denard’s rise from washout to standout: When Denard Span, the Twins’ 2002 1st round draft pick, was optioned back to AAA Rochester at the closure of spring training, it was widely reported that he openly wept. It wasn’t the first time that Span displayed overt emotion off the field. But for those who whispered about Span’s manhood, his rapid ascent to pivotal and necessary component to the Twins playoff run since his (2nd) recall on June 30th has quieted all doubters.
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Tricia and I were up at our cabin this weekend for a fairly relaxing weekend, though it ended up being a weekend full of driving around, which I enjoyed. Traffic on our way up was a bear, and stops in Becker and St. Cloud to look at furniture made our normal 3.5 hours drive more like 7 hours.
On Saturday we drove over to Detroit Lakes to visit our friends Jamie and Nell who were vacationing from Portland, Maine. The drive over to DL from our place near Dorset only took an hour, but we took a scenic trip back through the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge. We were mainly on dirt roads for the first hour of two, driving on the Blackbird Auto Tour Route, where we saw quite a few eagles, an owl, a yellow warbler, and a few others that we couldn’t identify. I’d really like to go back there in the fall, when the leaves are changing and there might be less bugs!
Sunday morning was our relaxing time, with a nice canoe trip through the channel to the neighboring lake, some reading, and a few games of Carcassone. The weather was perfect for an August weekend (80s and sunny), when it could have been hot and muggy.
Sunday night was our drive home, and instead of our usual drive home, we decided to drive over towards Brainerd and then down to Little Falls from there, instead of driving down Hwy 64 and Hwy 10 like we normally do.
The drive from Nevis over to Backus and then down to Pequot Lakes and Nisswa was very nice. It felt like “up north”, with a lot of older looking campgrounds, resorts, and little towns. I very much enjoyed this area, and look forward to driving around there again. But as we passed Gull Lake and came up on the Brainerd/Baxter area, everything changed. All of a sudden, it felt like we were driving through suburban Minneapolis, with large shopping areas full of Starbucks, Caribou, Target, Best Buy, and gigantic Realty companies were everywhere.
So much for being “up north”.
But it was easy to see why it became what it did. With the number of large lakes between Millle Lacs and Leech Lake, and being only a little over two hours away, I can see why that was a popular destination for early resorts and cabins. And as that desire for a cabin grew, that became a prime area.
I’ve heard stories of subdivisions popping up in Brainerd, as it became too expensive to buy a cabin, so people would spend a little less to be three or four lots off the lake. Rental cabins closed up and were developed with huge lake homes. The new Brainerd area full of SUV’s and expensive “fishing” boats wouldn’t have existed without those early station wagons and canoes, and it really made me wonder what it was like 20-30 years ago.
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