Normandale Lake Park in Bloomington, Minnesota
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for November 15, 2020
Our quest to spend every Saturday visiting a new place where we can explore while safely social distancing brought us to Normandale Lake Park in Bloomington, Minnesota.
It's starting to get cold again so we had to bundle up pretty good. The temperature read at 28 degrees as we readied ourselves to walk.
It's a pleasant 1.9 mile stroll around Normandale Lake. It was pretty busy for as cold as it was in my opinion. I guess Minnesotans are a pretty hearty bunch.
We started seeing ice forming on some parts of the lake, but we have a ways to go before they're totally frozen. Still probably a bit too cold for swimming, though.
When we first moved to Savage, Minnesota some 25 years ago we visited this park with our first golden retriever, Rudy. This was our first time back and we brought our 3rd golden retriever, Blue. Our 2nd golden retriever, Sunny, never experienced the joy of this place. That kind of makes me feel like we are really bad people.
We walked by a really nice bandshell that I never realized was here. Guess we'll have to come check out some bands here sometime. Or maybe some shells.
The park is right next to Hyland Hills Ski Area. I've always found this place unique because it's the only ski area I've seen in Minnesota that has an actual Ski Jump. I've always wondered how you know if this is something where you have skills. I'd hate to be one of those people who have tried it and then figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't something they had a knack for doing.
We discovered that it was much warmer while walking in the woods than out in the open where the wind was pretty chilly. I don't think that's a unique quality of Normandale Lake Park, though. I guess we will have to do some further testing before coming to a conclusion on that hypothesis.
When I worked for Oracle, I was based out of the building all the way to the right. I remember sitting in the office there and looking out the window at this lake and thinking about walking here. Now I was walking here and looking at the building thinking about when I worked there. Crazy how that works.
Winter is coming. I guess in some ways it's already here. It's probably going to be a tough one with all the Covid isolation we still have in front of us. I was excited by the news on Monday of the positive results from the Pfizer vaccine, but it still seems like it's going to be quite awhile before we're back to normal.
Our neighborhood Albino Squirrel was in our yard a lot this week. I like to think that he's bringing good Karma to help us all avoid the virus. It's also quite possible he's here because we have lots of tasty acorns. However, that doesn't make me feel nearly as good so I'm sticking with thinking it's the former. Stay safe, everyone!
This Week's Tik Tok Videos
@toddswank More snow in Minnesota! ##minnesota ##snow ##winter ##bang ##switch
♬ Bang! - AJR
@toddswank I wasn’t expecting that to happen! ##minnesota ##snow ##winter ##wonderland ##snoopdogg ##pitchperfect
♬ this is our dance give credit lol - kara
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