Spring, spring, spring

In Minnesota, the weather this spring left much to be desired--especially on the weekends.  As soon as Friday afternoon came around, it felt like clouds rolled in every week, leaving Saturday and Sunday damp and cool and even rainy for what felt like every single weekend.  That's good long run weather, so it didn't get me down too much, since I was logging miles on most Saturday mornings and spending a lot of Saturday afternoons planted on the couch in various stages of slumber.  But it definitely wreaked havoc on the spring sports schedules for the colleges around here and also for the general public's recreation and traditional emergence from a long, long winter inside. 

All of this context is necessary to convey how gorgeous today was.  The stats: 82 and not humid with partly cloudy skies and a light breeze.  My great friend Ellie and her boyfriend Andrew were in town for Reunion, and Ellie wanted to head over to Lake Calhoun, part of the Twin Cities gem known as the Chain of Lakes.  There's a massive trail system around all of the lakes and the Mississippi River, so you can make a 30-mile loop around the Twin Cities on bike trails, and each of the lakes (Harriet, Calhoun, and Isles) have a distinct little personality. 



Josh loved the dogs in particular and
snuck a photo with my camera.



One thing's for sure: Calhoun draws the crowds.  Today, with the perfect weather, there were hundreds and hundreds of people laying out on the grass and beach, dozens of dogs chasing tennis balls and splashing around by the lake's shore, and tons of beach volleyball games going back and forth. 



We walked over to Lake Harriet to get ice cream at the bandshell's concession area, which is named Bread and Pickle and is so much nicer than the concession stands of my youth.  It also featured an enticing list of some of my favorite treats:

Ellie and I both got vanilla ice cream--the wonderful kind with vanilla bean flecks--and the four of us sat on a picnic table in the sun.  Here's a peek at what Harriet looked like today:

We finished the walk, jumped in the car, and waited in a long line of cars crawling along Calhoun Parkway--no surprise, given the number of people actually hanging out in and near the lake.  There's one hill on the parkway, and as we crept up it, I saw a view of Calhoun glittering in the sun framed by the leafy trees.  I never thought I'd actually see that again, I thought dramatically, remembering all of the miles around the lake in the fall and winter and cold spring.  Josh obliged my request to open the driver's side window to try to get it on camera, for memory's sake.