November and December, 2004

Nancy and Bob Murdock, Editors - murmuse@comcast.net

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Clyde Howlett's Web Pages


CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:

JASON'S HOME LEAVE (Nancy Murdock) Click

THANKS FOR JASON'S PAGE (Amber Knox) Click

A LITTLE UPDATE FROM US (Wendy Morgan-Littlefield) Click

STRUGGLE, PLEASURE, CHALLENGE (Margery Aukstikalnis) Click

MOVING (Meredith Murdock) Click

FALL TRILOGY 1 (Darrel Murdock) Click

NOT AN OLYMPICS FAN (Gene Murdock) Click

MUSER TURNS 95 (Nancy and Bob Murdock) Click

Click here for Part 2.

Part 2

THREE SEVEN YEAR OLDS AT PLAY (Gene Murdock) Click

UPDATING MY WEBSITE (Darrel Murdockr) Click

NOT AS PLANNED (Teddie Salminen) Click

NEW ADDRESS (Don Schlicke) Click

BOB'S SURGERY SCHEDULED! (Nancy Murdock) Click

Click here for Part 3.

Part 3

YAY RED SOX! (Bob Murdock) Click

SOMETHING FOR ONA'S WEB PAGE (Priscilla Januskiewicz) Click

VACATION 2004 MEMORIES (Bob Murdock) Click

UPDATE (Christel Murdock) Click

MOM'S BARBECUE SAUCE (Don Schlicke) Click

NEWS FROM WANDA SCHINDO (Barbara DiStefano) Click

HELLO, BIRD LOVERS (Valerie Davidson) Click

KUDO AND UPDATE (Nicholaus "Rickey" Murdock) Click

CHANGES IN MY LIFE (Missi Howlett) Click


Muse Editors,
Sept. 1950
Wedding photo




Nancy's quilt,
"Let Joy In"
MD Fair 1997
(Blue Ribbon)

 Enlarged Picture





Jason Murdock's Web Pages




Annie (left) and
Jill Morgan

 Enlarged Picture



JASON'S HOME LEAVE
Nancy Murdock

Jason's family was thrilled to see him for his two weeks stateside in August. Bob has added Darrel's pictures to Jason's web pages .

Jason spent prime time with his girlfriend, Bevin, and also with his family, which included a barbecue. Now he is back in Afghanistan, working on the mission to get rid of all the landmines from decades of strife in that country. If you missed his description of the site and the specialized equipment they work with, you can find it in the September-October Muse.


THANKS FOR JASON'S PAGE
Amber Knox

Hey you guys. Its me, Amber Knox! I just wanted to say that I am really happy that you all put this really cool thing up for my brother Jason! I miss him so much and it makes me so happy to see that others are thinking of him too! Thank you so much! It brought a great big smile on my face when I read it!

Thanks again.


A LITTLE UPDATE FROM US
Wendy Morgan-Littlefield

Thank you so much for the Muse, I love reading it!

Here's a little update from us.

Annie has started her freshman year at Penn State for hotel/restaurant management. She loves it there and has made some good friends, settled right in. She is coming home for a visit next weekend to surprise Jill for her birthday. shhhhhhh..........!

Jill is in her sophomore year at Ithaca High School, she is doing well and has a very active social life. I'm glad she has good friends because she is really missing her big sister alot. Jill also takes dance classes, Jazz, Lyrical and Ballet.

My husband John is getting ready to move his Ithaca martial arts school, he has out grown the space he is in and moving to a studio down on the Ithaca Commons. It's an exciting move if a bit stressful because of the extra work involved. He works so much already, between his 2 schools and his personal training business! He leaves the house at 7:30 am and gets home at 9pm, 5 1/2 days a week. But it is paying off and he enjoys it. It's good to have work you love.

Speaking of which, I am back for my 11th year at Kappa Delta sorority as their chef and I LOVE my job!

John's daughter, Melissa, her husband Jake and their new baby Zak are doing their PhD's (well not Zak just yet) at Penn State so they are nearby for Annie which is really nice. John's son lives in Ithaca and works for a real estate agency.

Well that's it in a nutshell and here is a picture of Annie and Jill: Annie on the left. [Click here for photo.]


STRUGGLE, PLEASURE, CHALLENGE
Margery Aukstikalnis

Oct. 29: From time to time we will be sending a generic letter to select family and friends, just to let you know where we are and that we are alive and well. We can't predict the frequency or pattern, because it depends on a combination of our social life and our internet access. This does not preclude individual notes, so our apologies for repeat information.

Today we are leaving the gorgeous hills of Washington PA and heading 250 miles to New Paris OH. We plan a shopping excursion in Richmond Indiana, which is minutes away from New Paris.

The trip so far has been a struggle, a pleasure, and a challenge. We were delayed eight hours in Fitzwilliam with a towing complication. We did on-again-off-again driving through the night, and after several naps ended in Revere PA before noon on Tuesday. After being depressed by all the road kill we saw, Jack happily came face to face with a great blue heron in one camp, and a large doe in the next.

The pets are doing very well, They are making up games to play with each other as we go, keeping us amused as well as themselves.

The weather has been great: we got a great view of the lunar eclipse through nearly clear skies (between innings, of course). The drone of traffic noise both on the road and in campgrounds makes us yearn for the solitude of either the desert of AZ or the forests of NH.

But all in all, it goes well. We are healthy enough, happy enough, and enjoying the view.

Nov. 7: We are stationed in Nebraska, about 30 minutes from Gene. We have had two days of wonderful tours of the area, including SAC WWII Museum, some of the Lewis and Clark Trail, and antique shops. And yesterday we even visited a Barnes and Noble OUTLET store! What great prices! We are having a great reacquaintenance with Gene. We will be with him two more days and spend Tuesday catching up on bills and errands before we head out Wednesday for The West.

Iowa is BEAUTIFUL! The huge cornfields, planted on low rolling hills, alternately planted with soy for soil replenishment, are terraced to prevent runoff during the rains. Each terrace is divided by a row of tall grasses or short shrubs, rather than stonewalls. There are hardly any stones to be found around here. The soil is so rich and so deep!

I never imagined there were so many different ways to spell silo! They come in every different size, shape and color you can imagine, even some see-through ones I leaned they use for drying.

We are anxious to get to AZ now that we have been on the road. The Country is so beautiful, we can hardly wait to visit our own piece of it.

The pets are doing great, they are having just as much fun as we are, seeing, hearing and smelling all the new areas. They know when we have landed in a campground, and are right at the door ready to explore. They don't do that at gas stations or rest areas, only campgrounds.

More when we land.

Jack has found two (one in Illinois, one in Nebraska) of the most awesome milkshakes he ever had. They are made by special machines which can handle sub-zero ice cream. And I had Peanut Butter flavored Hot Chocolate!!!!!!!!!!!


MOVING
Meredith Murdock

Oct. 25, Almost Moving Day: I am so excited! I worked really hard yesterday packing and cleaning. So hard, in fact, that Charlie finally meowed loudly at me until I sat down. Then he jumped into my arms and collapsed - purring. It was very hard to start my spaghetti water with the cat in my lap.

Oct.31: Happy Halloween! I am now in my new apartment and the cats are just freaking out. Charlie hid under a bed for most of the first day and is just now beginning to look around. Kayla stopped being scared early yesterday and is now really happy and excited to be here. She runs around from room to room with her tail straight up, sniffing everything. She made me open the door to the living room at 6 am so she could go play and investigate more!

The refrigerator is 1/4" too wide to fit into the space allotted, so it is taking up most of the kitchen. I called the movers and arranged with them to take it to the dump, and then I'll buy another one for $75. This one is really not worth keeping, anyway.

I have some of my quilts and pictures up on the walls, but I need to buy some stuff at the dollar store to get the rest up. The pink and blue cat quilt is up, at least. It has been continuously on my walls since I received it about ten years ago.

NaTT and Tim were a huge help in the moving. We had a terrible time at the start. The power went out to this area, and the movers were five hours late. But everything improved after the power came back on. Natt was her usual efficient self, and Tim showed his strength moving things around and then did a great job hooking up the DVD. We celebrated the move by renting two DVDs, an older one for one dollar and a more recent one for three dollars. So we got four hours of movies for three people for four dollars. Not a bad celebration!
FALL TRILOGY 1
Darrel Murdock

When the fall colors began to trickle in, Kathy and I wanted to get as many pictures as possible taken of this magical time, especially of our favorite waterfalls. So we decided to go as soon as we read a fall color report from the Minnesota DNR stating that the northern-most parts of Minnesota were peaking in color.

The campgrounds and motels were chock-full on Lake Superior's North Shore, no surprise at all to us. After much research on the internet, we found a Day's Inn just south of Virginia in Evelith, MN which is in the heart of the Mesabi Iron Range. The town of Evelith boasted the highest point- the Leonidas Overlook, the Hockey Hall of Fame and of course, the world's largest hockey stick. When we arrived up there it was overcast, but we had much to see, so we headed out to the Superior National Forest a few miles up the road, to see what we could see. We found bright red and orange trees, the first of our fall color shots.

We went to sleep early that evening so we could pack a lot into the next day, and boy-oh-boy did we ever! Our goal was to make it all the way up the magical highway 61 on the North Shore to Canada, with the two most northern State Parks that we hadn't visited yet being the priority. It would be no easy task, over 150 miles with a dozen potential waterfalls stops on the way. We would adjust our agenda as we went, knowing the sun would set by 7pm.

We grabbed a quick continental breakfast at the Day's Inn, where we had soaked in the spa the night before, and headed out, so hastily in fact that we were treated to a friendly warning by a Highway Patrol officer on the way. We had discovered some non-State Park waterfalls sites that we wanted to check out first, shortly after passing through Duluth on the journey north.

The first one was Knife River, which was a delightful array of small cascading falls carved into the lava-rock just south of a dam. It looked like a nice place to hang out for a while, but we got our snaps and set out in search of the Beaver River.

We found the wayside rest along Hwy 61 that had a trail that wound around to Beaver River by the falls. Since we were limited in time, I slid down a steep ravine instead. Kathy chose another path, and we met in the middle of the falls area, a slightly larger set of cascading falls, finding some more color in our shots.

We had a long ways to go yet, so we raced back to the truck and continued north on 61. We couldn't pass up the most popular Gooseberry State Park with four separate waterfalls though, so we flew into the parking lot there at 10am, grabbing one of the remaining half a dozen spots. We snapped a couple shots of the middle and upper falls before taking a trail to see the strangely named Fifth Falls, the fourth set actually, that was more remote than the others. That being completed, we aimed ourselves back to the truck so we could make it to two familiar State Parks on the way, the Temperance River Park and the favorite of Kathy's, the Cascades River Park.

We knew where the paths went, and we hurried through the very unique set of falls at both of the Parks. These two sites have awesome red lava-rock bedded falls: Temperance with narrow, deeply cut powerfall falls cascading down powerfully from the calmer, wider river above; and Cascades with swirling eddys gracefully carving into the red rock below each of the several falls in the zig-zagging Cascades River. We were a little dissapointed in the lack of variety in the colors at the two parks that the DNR had said were at full peak, but we got what we could anyway, knowing we wouldn't be back before the area lost the deciduous leaves for the oncoming winter.

The clock was ticking. We grabbed our cooler and made sandwiches on a newspaper laid out on the front seat of the truck, then ate them on the way as we made our way to the border, with no more stops along the way.

We arrived at Grand Portage State Park on the Pidgeon River, which is shared by Minnesota and Canada. What a sight it was, two separate gushers spilling down a long cliff of black-red lava rock in a very large ravine. We would have absolutely loved to explore further, but it was still a mile back to the truck and the sun was really sinking towards the horizon.

We had seen on our DNR maps that the final stop, Judge CR Magney State Park had only a little over a half-mile walk to get to the falls there. We were thankful of that as we were getting a bit tired and sore by then, having hiked over 10 miles of hilly paths already in our quest for fall color.

The short path led to a shockingly long set of stairs trailing steeply down into what we later discovered was the deepest ravine in Minnesota. We walked and walked and walked until we finally saw the first set of falls peeping out of the wooded valley below. It was a relief and a beautiful sight all at once! We continued until we were face-to-face with the short but very powerful Lower Falls of the Brule River, spraying mist like nothing we had seen yet. We got so close our cameras got wet; what a treat this was! But where was the famous Devil's Kettle that we had saved for last? Oh my gosh, it was 700 more feet, and uphill too!

Our legs were rubber-in-pain as we scrambled up the precarious path to Devil's Kettle. What an awesome sight awaited us! The Brule River splits into two paths, the first to a regular waterfalls, but the second to a waterfalls that emptied into a seemingly-bottomless pit, the subject of much urban legend. We could even get behind the falls to get pictures of the raging river split by a giant lava-rock rudder. Wow, what a cool place indeed!

The sun was not waiting for anyone though, and after climbing back down the 700-foot hill we began our ascent back up the infamous million steps to the top trail, where we clicked a couple pics of the sun setting in this beautiful one-of-a-kind park.

We grabbed the bins and coolers, along with the propane stove, and in the next 30 minutes we cooked up thick pork chops with mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans almondine, then ate while we cleaned up and packed it all away. It was completely dark as we left the park; we had just barely squeezed in this last, very high priority site.

We made it back to Evelith three and a half hours of straight driving later, at 11pm, and by 8am we were back on the road, stopping first at Leonidas Overlook to get some shots of the valley and the lake-filled deserted taconite mine nearby. We found the giant hockey stick, snapped it and headed down the highway back home.. or were we?

About halfway home we decide to check out another State Park with waterfalls, the Jay Cooke Park on the St Louis River. We thought we could have some lunch, and if it wasn't too far, we could check out at least one of the two falls there, the one just before where Wolf Creek meets Saint Lou. But mild insanity had already set in, so instead of taking the main path, we decided to brave the deadly Hell's Gate, the path that had signs up not recommending children, the one that appeared to disappear halfway to the falls. We found out why as we hung from tree roots sticking out of the cliffs as we made our way across wet rocky 10-inch wide ridges above the giant sharp rocks below us.

We got some great rare shots of the wicked river pass, as well as some cool shots of the sink-hole tunnels and other limestone oddities. The path was now non-existent, so we had to climb up a few 30-foot rocky cliffs in the dense forest, looking for the trail that normal people used. We found it, got our shots of Wolf Creek Falls and then tried to make it back to the parking lot before dehydration set in.

We had really pushed the limits this time, only one week after I had received surgery on my back. We never would have believed that only 5 days later we would embark on another journey that rivaled this one.


UPDATING MY WEBSITE
Darrel Murdock

Oct. 31: I trust you enjoyed the extra hour of sleep. I decided just to get up an hour earlier today instead. So I finished the Vivid Garden Blooms section. Last night I finished the Trains and Lighthouses page also, adding the third train, and every posted pic on every page now has its own preview page. Now I can start putting together the Fall Color and Wisconsin Waterfalls pages. Then I will begin the "By Location" info/pictorials that will feature new pictures, starring AAALynx and Redfox, which will include things like the world's largest hockey stick, the ancient faces carved into pipestone, and a whole lotta scenery. During that time we will also be amassing the winter pictures.

[Ed. Note: Darrel has been working hard on his Website, which can be viewed at http://d21c.com/AAALynx/. All those photo trips with his friend Kathy are paying off. He has a terrific batch of pictures from Minnesota parks, etc. You might like to check out his steam trains and lighthouses, along with the scenic prints.-NAM]


NOT AN OLYMPICS FAN
Gene Murdock

Sept.4: Here I am! Here I am!!! Don't call the cops or the EMTs, I'm just slow. Bob put it well a while back when he called it "pokey, pokey!" I didn't watch any of the Olympics, I'm just not an Olympics fan. There's just too much all at once to make sense of. The one event I may want to watch is either on at an odd time or conflicts with something else I am doing. As I discussed this slant with Scott recently I realized that some of my thinking is rationalizing, for if I ever did start watching, I know I would get hooked on it. Besides, I'm an avid Cubs fan, and we get most of their games, plus my all time favorite TV sport is pro football, which has been having pre-season games all through the Olympics.


MUSER TURNS 95
Nancy and Bob Murdock

This to announce that our oldest living Muser, Clyde Howlett, turned age 95 on September 10. Clyde is the second oldest resident in his area. We are pleased to note that Clyde is still as sharp as a tack. We enjoyed visiting with him in July.
Click here for a pictorial tribute to Clyde.


Click here for Part 2 of the November-December Muse.

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