TODAY WE TOOK a little break from caretaking the Church O’ The Pines, and headed southeast toward the Bluff Country of Minnesota in search of eagles. And we found them—dozens of them! The iPhone camera does not capture them well, although you can see one soaring over the Mississippi here. Perhaps a real camera with a zoom lens lies somewhere in the future? We also saw hundreds of ducks—mallards, mergansers and especially goldeneyes—along with trumpeter swans and Canada geese. Most of these beauties observed between Red Wing, Wabasha and Winona.

In Winona we visited the magnificent Maritime Art Museum. Worth the trip all by itself. And along the way we also admired towering bluffs, a 9-hole golf course established on the snow and ice of Lake Pepin—with golfers taking mighty swings in bulky clothes—not a pretty sight—and finally, silhouetted in the last light on a sheer and lofty limestone bluff, the unmistakable figure of a Bigfoot—Sasquatch—gazing out over the valley.

Yes, that’s all true. Of course, he was a long ways off. And not enough light for a picture.