Anthony Bourdain in Cabo Polonio, Uruguay

Anthony Bourdain is following in my footsteps!

Hubby and I have taken to watching the show, "No Reservations," on the Travel Channel. We have our DVR set to record them all -- new episodes, old episodes -- we have such a backlog!

The other night we sat down, scrolled through the choices and saw there was an episode in Uruguay. We pushed play and what do you know?!?!?! Anthony Bourdain went to Cabo Polonio and met Raul!

I too met Raul! I mentioned Raul in an article I wrote about Cabo Polonio. I'm glad to know he's still there doing his thing.

Watch the No Reservations Cabo Polonio segment here. It's kicks off right away in Cabo Polonio.

It's Still Me Wig Studio

I met a fascinating woman the other week.

Her name is Jan Strassburg. She survived breast cancer and then went on to open a wig studio so that she can help other women who are suffering from hair loss regain some dignity during their own battle with disease.

Her wig studio is called It's Still Me -- words she heard herself say to her step-daughters the first time they saw her wearing a wig.

If you'd like to learn a little bit more about the wig business, you can check out my article here:

Nurturing Growth


Photo by Mark Tockman

Into the Beautiful North -- Great Mexico Read

I lost myself in this book! I wanted to do nothing more than sit on my back deck with my eyes sheltered by a picnic umbrella and my feet basking in the summer sun while sipping iced tea and reading.

Not only was it a winning piece of fiction, it also took place in a region of Mexico I recently traveled to -- the swampy mangroves north of Puerto Vallarta.

I didn't know this when I picked up the book. I only knew that I had read one other book by the author, Luis Alberto Urrea.

A few years back I read his nonfiction book, The Devil's Highway, which blew my mind! I pushed it on everyone I knew for months. I still think of it and wonder at how fantastically it was written. It's about the trials of crossing from Mexico in the U.S., about the coyotes and the loans they give and the interest they charge. It was soooo interesting.

But anyway...back to the book I just finished -- Into the Beautiful North. This book is a work of fiction.

It starts in a dying Mexican village that is so tucked away in a mangrove swamp that even the Mexican government isn't exactly sure whether the town is in the state of Nayarit or the state of Sinaloa. The village is dying because all the men have left to seek work in El Norte.

One day, the young women of the town suddenly realize that there are no men left, which poses a very big problem as it means none of them have boyfriends. And what is life without a little romance? Nothing!

And so, they devise a plan. They also plan to go to El Norte, but they aren't going there to stay. They are going to find young, able-bodied men. They plan to recruit them and bring them back to their town.

Can they do it? You'll have to read the book to find out -- which isn't a bad thing at all as the book is -- did I already mention this? -- fantastic!

Canoeing the Cannon River

The "stay-cation" is all the rage this year. With the struggling economy in mind, all the local press is pumping the idea of summer vacations that keep you close to home.

We did a mini stay-cation the other day, taking the day off and driving to Cannon Falls to go canoeing on the Cannon River.

We rented boats from the Cannon Falls Canoe and Bike Rental on the banks of the Cannon River just beyond the quaint downtown of Cannon Falls.

The canoes carried us 8 miles downstream and then we got picked up in a van and taken back to the starting point.

It was a beautiful day, not too hot, with a gentle breeze to keep us from sweating to death in the sun.

Since we've been so short on rain this summer, the water level was pretty low. We got stuck on the rocks a couple times and had to push to get free.

One of the best parts of the day was our bald eagle count -- we spotted three!

That brings my summer eagle count up to seven.

Bali Restaurant in Minneapolis

What a fantastic restaurant find!

The other night I had dinner with friends at a place called Bali in downtown Minneapolis. It serves Indonesian cuisine.

Everyone ordered something different and then we all sampled from all the plates. There was a chicken dish, a snapper dish that had great presentation and two different beef dishes, one called Daging Rendang, which the menu said is the country's most famous dish. Whether it is or isn't, it certainly tasted delicious.

We had appetizers, dessert and cocktails, too. It was a great summer evening in a funky new restaurant.

Taco in a Bag at Twine Ball Day

About a month ago, I wrote a post about the "limited food options" I faced while traveling in a small Mexican town.

Well, now it's time to poke fun at my own backyard.

While spending the day in Darwin, Minnesota for the small town's celebration of Twine Ball Day, once again my food options were limited.

True, hot dogs and hamburgers were firing on a grill under the Lions tent. But I'm not really a hot dog and hamburger fan.

So, after checking out all the food options in town (which didn't take long), I settled on what looked to be the most popular choice. Nearly every other person, it seemed, was walking around with a bag of Doritos and a fork. Hmmmm.

Turns out, they were eating "Taco in a Bag." Slit open a bag or Doritos, dump in a spoonful of ground beef (ugh), some shredded lettuce, some shredded cheese, chopped onions, some jalapenos and top it all off with some salsa. Yum.

It wasn't so bad. I was really hungry, though.

Twine Ball Museum, Darwin, Minnesota

The Twine Ball Museum in Darwin, Minnesota houses all sorts of memorabilia submitted by townsfolk. This was my favorite:

Twine Ball Day! Darwin, Minnesota

This was Jen's idea.

She owns a book called Oddball Minnesota and its full of interesting tidbits about where you can find goofy things like the state's biggest chicken and a two-story outhouse.

However, she didn't care about either one of these. She wanted to see the biggest ball of twine.

Yes, twine.

So she went. Last year she road tripped it to Darwin, Minnesota to see "The World's Biggest Ball of Twine Made by One Person."

When she got there, the place was a bit in disarray as the day before had been the small town's summer celebration: Twine Ball Day.

She had missed Twine Ball Day -- an entire day dedicated to the glorious ball of twine -- by just a few hours! She refused to miss the celebration this summer! And I was to be her lucky companion!

Twine Ball Day was a packed house! People had come from all over to see the parade, play in a volleyball tournament, tour the Twine Ball Museum, drink beer and watch a tractor pull.

It was a humid, sunny day and it felt good to be out of the city and participating in something that was designed for nothing other than a bit of fun and foolishness.

Sadly, though, while we could look at the biggest ball of twine -- which is 13 feet tall -- we couldn't touch it.

It's housed in a glass gazebo to keep curious hands, and volatile Minnesota weather, away from it. They don't want that twine ball to start rotting!

Painted Turtle Chocolatier -- Yummy!

A new chocolate shop opened up in town.

The sweet shop, called The Painted Turtle Chocolatier, sells these really unbelievably delicious chocolate covered potato chips.

I know about the potato chips because I was at the store and sampled a few too many of them!

I was there interviewing the store's owner, Patty Godfrey, about the shop. My article about her and her chocolate was published this month.

If you're interested, you can see it here:

Sweet Stop

Photo (c) Plymouth Magazine

Bananas in Cambodia

After digging around in my Cambodia pictures last week, I came across this one -- baby bananas!

I was obviously enamored with them because I took several shots that all pretty much look the same.

And why not? Bananas just don't grow in my neck of the woods and no matter how many times I have seen them growing in another country, I'm still thrilled at each encounter.

Where to Spa in Las Vegas

There's more to Vegas than black jack, all-night buffets and risque showgirls.

There are also spas -- glorious, relaxing, totally self-indulgent spas.

And lucky me, I got to live the utter bliss of a Vegas spa this spring when I visited the city.

My article about the experience was recently published on GoNomad.

If you'd like to check it out, here's a link:

Las Vegas Spas: Why Gamble When You Can Relax?

You can also read my blog posts about the trip:

Las Vegas Blog Posts

Minnesota or Cambodia?

After our visit to the Wat Munisota, I was so intrigued with the architecture of the temple that I dug up my pictures from Cambodia to compare the images.

What do you think...Minnesota or Cambodia?

A.


B.


C.


D.

Cambodian Temple in Minnesota

It was big news a couple summers back -- a Cambodian temple opened in Minnesota.

The newspaper was full of pictures from the temple-opening ceremony, and after looking the over, Hubby and I decided we needed to check the place out. The images looked so similar to things we had seen while traveling in Cambodia ourselves.

And then...well, time passed. Somehow we never found the time to drive out and visit it.

Well, we made the time. We took a mini road trip to visit the Wat Munisota, which is about an hour drive from our home and just south of the Twin Cities.

But once you make it all the way out there, you feel like you're in the country -- the country side and an actual other county.

Our map took us down a dirt road and passed several corn and soy bean fields to get there. The temple is seriously out in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by green.

As soon as we pulled into the temple entrance we were greeted by a bald-headed monk in saffron robes painting light posts.

We wondered at the name ... was "Wat Munisota" supposed to be "Wat Minnesota"?

The temple was open to the public and full of ornate gold-painted Buddhas, vases of flowers and strings of glimmering beads. The life of the Buddha was retold in colorful paintings all the way around the worship hall.

We weren't the only "tourists" there either. A few other city folk had made the drive as well--a couple moms trying to give their elementary kids a cultural experience.

Besides them, the one monk we saw out at the main entrance, and a couple of landscapers who were working on a retaining wall, the place was pretty quiet.

It was really neat to see, though, and we were glad we'd made the time to go and check it out.

Lost City of Z by David Grann

I just finished a fantastic book. It was called The Lost City of Z and it was written by David Grann.

The book is a biography, a history lesson, an adventure tale and a travelogue all rolled into one. Seeing as how I love all of these things, I was completely captivated by this book.

Plus, it was so well-written that it was just a joy to read. I lost myself for hours and can't thank the author enough for pursuing the trail of this story.

The book is about a man named Colonel Percy Fawcett, a British man who lived from 1867 to 1925 (presumably that is, no one knows for sure when he died).

Fawcett is an explorer obsessed with the idea that the Amazon rainforest is hiding a secret from the rest of the world: the remains of a long-lost civilization and its once glorious city now buried beneath tangles vines and jungle ruins.

Fawcett makes many trips into the Amazon seeking these ruins and eventually his obsession is the end of him.

If you'd like to read an excerpt from the book, a short section was published on GoNomad a while back.

The Lost City of Z reminded me of another great read that came out not so long ago -- The River of Doubt by Candice Millard.

In fact, one of the characters from River of Doubt makes a few appearances in The Lost City of Z.

Both are great books and I recommend them!

Haiku By Two in MN Women's Press

I wrote a piece that was published in this month's issue of the Minnesota Women's Press about my poetry web site, Haiku By Two.

It is for the regular department, Book Shelf, in which a reader shares her fascination with a particular subject and a list of five books written by women on the topic.

The piece I wrote explains the origin of Haiku By Two, offers a collection of haiku titles and shares a couple haiku.

Read the article by following this link:

How to Haiku

Lundstrum Center for the Performing Arts

A few months back I interviewed the Casserly sisters. Well...not all of them. Just three of the five. And there's actually a Casserly brother, too.

The Casserly siblings run a nonprofit performing arts center in Minneapolis for local youth.

Their story is pretty cool. They inherited the center -- The Lundstrum Center for the Performing Arts -- from Dorothy Lundstrum, the woman who started it back in the 1920s.

She was of no blood relation to them, but considered the Casserly siblings to be her "star" pupils. Since she never married herself, she willed the center to them when she died.

If you'd like to learn more about it you can read my finished article about there here:

Sisters Everywhere

Photo -- by Amber Procaccini