Tag Archives: Fall

Fall 2025

We had an incredibly beautiful fall. Like, this is probably the most amazing fall I’ve had in Minnesota. It reminded me a lot of fall in the black hills. Here is why:

– complete lack of wind

– lower humidity

– no rain

– stayed warm

Minnesota is a very windy place. The fall color season is usually pretty short because the wind usually rips the leaves off the trees in short order. One of the photos has a boat driving up the Mississippi on a completely still day – it is a very rare day for there to be zero waves / ripples in the Mississippi.

Minnesota is a very cold place. We have had years with a hard frost starting in early October and all the leaves, regardless of color, turn brown and fall off the trees.

Minnesota is a stupidly humid place. All these freaking lakes make it very humid which means the cold is really cold unless a person is wearing moisture blocking clothes / gear.

It was awesome driving around the cities with my windows down around November 20th, the warm weather had been incredible.

Alas, it couldn’t keep up. Frost and snow have started and true late fall / early winter has started.

I made sure to enjoy as much of the beautiful weather as possible. It was wild to see our raspberries fruiting until mid-November, our clematis flowering until early / mid November, and our grapes mature / fruit so late into the year. I’m not complaining, it was beautiful and delicious :).

This year we also had the most amazing northern lights I’ve seen. The northern lights were so bright we could see them from our driveway in the core / center of the twin cities metro. It was truly stunning.

Outside of the weather, we enjoyed a lot of fun fall activities like cider making and a Day of the Dead celebration. Fall events are the best events – the celebrations and traditions different cultures have made for the fall are absolutely the best because of the color, the sounds, the smells, and, the tastes. The twin cities is a fabulous place to experience allllllll the different traditions often for free or very low cost.

All in all, it was an amazing fall. I hope our falls continue to be so beautiful. It made Minnesota be that much more tolerable 🙂

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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Late Summer / Fall 2023

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What a spectacular late summer and fall. We’ve had quite a bit of heat, some of our flowers started to bloom again, but the fall extended into November and it’s been pleasant.

This year, the wind did not rip off the fall leaves immediately too! I think, for the 20 years I’ve been in Minnesota, this is the best fall so far.

Probably the craziest thing was that we ended up going to the Minneapolis “River Rats” which is a very large group of individuals who do trick water skiing. It was wild to see. The River Rats have been doing their thing for a very long time and this was the first year we went to it – it was so fun to watch and everyone loved it.

Otherwise, we’re super appreciative of global climate change and the great weather we’ve been having here in Minnesota!

General 2019

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So I’ve been really bad at updating this website this year. Life has been busy. That said, I figured I should add a few photos of our adventures over the last six months. I have changed jobs and my new work has brought me to rural Ohio and Phoenix. I was treated with the most amazing sunrise over the Rockies on my way to Phoenix and an illuminating life experience when visiting the Amish in Ohio.

We celebrated four years home this year. It’s weird to think that we’ve been back in the US for four years since it feels like yesterday we were coming back from our travels. Now, the memories we have are no longer current and the world has changed quite a bit. We talk quite a bit about World Trip #2. Maybe it’ll happen sooner than later 🙂

Enjoy the photos!

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North Shore 2018

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We finally made it to the north shore when there nice fall colors! After years and years of trying we discovered the north shore does in fact have beautiful fall colors. Who knew?

Minnesota does not have gentle fall weather. It’s usually quite windy, often rainy, and sometimes snowy. More often than not, the leaves are ripped from the trees well before the beautiful fall colors can be displayed. For some reason, this year was different and we were able to see it. The colors seemed to stretch for miles and were quite lovely; our touring around reminded us of our time last year in the Smoky Mountains NP area.

Fall on the north shore starts a bit sooner so we still have a couple more weeks in the twin cities area before we get our peak fall colors. It’s nice getting two falls :).

Enjoy the photos!

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Fall is Fantastic! Minnesota & D.C. 2015

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Fall and spring are the best seasons. While traveling we hit shoulder season almost everywhere and managed to miss most of the extreme cold / heat associated with winter and summer. It was fantastic. Now that we’re back to the US we’ve spent some time enjoying the beautiful fall weather all around the country. I’ve found some great parks in Minnesota to go hiking in solitude and we’ve had quite the indian summer weather. In a different post, I put up photos of Colorado, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. I’ve decided to show a few more photos I’ve taken during our travels around Minnesota and the Washington D.C. area. The leaves are pretty much gone so I figured this is probably the last fall related post this year.

We had a nice little trip to D.C. to see family and enjoy the sights. We flew Spirit Air, at $167 round trip for the both of us, it was a fantastic deal and we have nothing to complain about. It seems as though people don’t like Spirit but all one needs to do is read and follow the rules. The food, company, weather, and views were all fantastic in D.C.! D.C. is probably our favorite city in the U.S. after Minneapolis/St. Paul simply due to all the free things to do. However, unlike D.C., we would not visit Minneapolis/St. Paul for tourism but I’m not exactly sure where else we would live.

The night skies this fall have been very good too! I’ve had a chance to get some neat moon shots and I was able to get a very blurry image of Jupiter and some its moons.

All in all, this has been a great fall. It’s good to back in the USA, it’s been great to catch up with family, and we’re so very happy to be starting our lives up again in Minnesota.

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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Being Home

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It’s good to be home, it’s good to be home!

It’s been five weeks since we landed and we’re still a bit nomadic visiting family and friends all over the Midwest. We have signed a lease in our old apartment complex and I almost have a job squared away so our nomadic life is almost over. I am really, really, really, looking forward to a normal life. I traveled 50-75% of the time during my last 18 months of my job, spent 13 months traveling around the world with Jacquelyn, and will have traveled around the US for around two months before finally settling down. After almost three years of being a nomad, my feet are no longer itchy and I’m ready to have some sort of roots!

It’s been fun to hear what we missed during the last 13 months and catch up with the people who mean the most to us. I thought we did OK keeping up with what was happing back in the US but it’s clear we missed a lot. I’m happy we’ve had a handful of weeks to catch up with family and friends before jumping back into real life!

We haven’t had any real difficulty coming back to the US and haven’t had ‘reverse culture shock’ at all. I have a couple theories why: 1) we never had time to fully adapt to a different culture since we moved around so much, 2) we were ready to come home. The most difficult issue I encountered, driving on the correct side of the road, is no longer a problem so I’d say we didn’t have any problems returning and were able to sort of pick up from where we left off.

The weirdest thing I encountered was realizing I have lost A LOT of English words. This has been especially difficult when interviewing for technical positions as there’s a lot of words I haven’t used for some time so I’ve had a difficult time explaining technical/complex problems simply because I’ve lost the words! But that’s not the worst, the worst is forgetting simple words like ’rust’; I’ve had to resort to saying things, ‘that red stuff that grows on metal when it’s wet’. It has been surprising to say the least.

I’m happy we came back to the US in the fall. It’s been great weather so far and I’ve been able to enjoy some hiking, star gazing, and beautiful leaves. Overall, it’s great to be back :).

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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