June 2026

Hello, wonderful people. This blog post is a bit late, but it's not too late!!

I went to my parents' house for a week. Nothing that remarkable happened, or I just can't remember what happened. Here's the family dog, Fran. I've mentioned her before. She's very precious, and she's showing her age even more. Small creature..

camping

The more exciting stuff was camping with my partner for a couple of nights. We went to Afton State Park which isn't too far away. We were mostly testing our gear for future adventures and hikes. The drive was mostly chill. Driving through St. Paul is kind of strange. Things wind around in weird ways.

While hiking to the campsite, we quickly learned that we could not stick with just daypacks. We're gonna need some bigger bags. The hike to the campsite was uphill, so it was HARD. It was hot and humid, but at the same time, really cloudy. It looked like it was going to rain that whole first day. We specifically reserved a spot because it over looks the St. Croix river, and it's pretty private.

We set up the tent, a tarp over the picnic table, and ate a strange backpacking meal. My partner and I thought it would be funny to eat backpacking meals just for the hell of it. For the first night, we had this chicken fajita rice thing. To go with it, we got cheese and tortillas. Honestly, good as fuck. Dessert was this weird chocolate cheesecake thing. It was just glorified pudding. I fucked with it to be honest. We also did some wandering, but nothing too intense. The next day was the hike. We just wanted to explore.

The sun set pretty quickly, and we found out what kind of people were camping around us. Most notable was this group of young guys that were really drunk. One would be so drunk that he was lying on the ground in the middle of the path while on facetime with his girlfriend. Basically had to step over him. The fireflies were amazing though. I had truly never seen so many in one place. The area around the campsites was this prairie on top of a hill. Fireflies were visible in every direction. We used the red lights on our headlamps to not bother them hopefully. The light looked funny in the biffy.

When we got back to our campsite, our hiking bags looked like someone ransacked them. However, our wallets and such were left alone. The culprit would return later in the night.

Nighttime was insane. I didn't sleep AT ALL. We were very irresponsible with our food storage, so our friend showed up again.

I heard little sniffing approaching the tent. The sniffing came under the rain fly, and it sniffed ME. It then walked off, and as he walked by, he stepped on my feet by climbing over the corner of the tent. Within ten seconds, there was loud rustling. I sloooowly opened the tent to peek out. It's a fucking raccoon eating the tortillas. We shouted at it, made lots of noise, etc. Nothing scared it. I started throwing things at it, and it took a few tries to get it to leave. It took the tortillas with it. It ate them while occasionally glancing at us. This guy did not give a fuck. We learned our lesson and tied up the food the next night.

I can't remember when in the night this happened, but I was shook to my core by another creature. It started with twig snapping. Then, a deafening call. I jolted up. It was so loud that it felt like my skull was rattled. The sound was within 20 feet of our tent. It was from a Barred Owl. I'm really glad that I didn't look out the tent to see her cause I would have shat my pants. Barred Owls look horrifying. I say she because there was distant screeching which I learned was her young. She hooted the second night too but at different campsites.

"Who cooks for you?"

The sun rose, and my eyes matched the redness of the sky. Somehow, the tiredness didn't affect me. We had oatmeal and coffee. We began our hike pretty early. It's hard to talk about hikes in Minnesota because they're all pretty similar. I also didn't take many images. It started with a wonderful prairie with cartoonishly perfect clouds. The sun was warm, but we had gone early enough that it wasn't too bad. Our bags were much lighter too. Towards the corner of the park was the Trout Brook trail which was so wonderful. I didn't see any trout (wasn't expecting to), but it's wooded and cute. Along the trail, we found evidence of a bird's meal.

The Trout Brook trail was painful though. We came into the trail downhill which meant that we'd have to go up to get out. This park is very hilly because it's all former and current tributaries that go to the St. Croix river. All day, we were going to be going up and down. Towards the end of the hike, there were these teeny tiny toads that I thought were spiders. They were literally so small that I thought they were bugs. I assume they were American toadlets, but they were so dark that a pattern was hard to see. They were so tiny that I couldn't pick them up. I was scared of hurting them. To end the hike, we stopped at the xB to grab more food, and we hiked back to the campsite.

Lunch was more backpacking meals. I had a weird spaghetti thing, and my partner had this teriyaki chicken thing. Mine was better. It was only about 1pm which meant that we got to pass out in the hammocks. No one told me how amazing hammocks were. What the fuck. I want to sleep in a hammock always. I loved it so much.

We also planned to swim, but we did not want to have to hike uphill again so we chilled out until dinner. It was Annie's mac and cheese. Annie's is far better than Kraft.

I slept better the second night because I was just so exhausted. As we packed out the next morning before the storms came, the turkey vultures stopped by. I was so charmed by their little bald heads. I love them so much.

The drive home was quick. We had tiny ticks on us, but we were able to find them pretty quickly. Tick count was only two. Thank god. Fuck ticks.

other stuff

Here's a few images of the sky. The sky was fantastic all month long. This was due to constant storms.

On the topic of storms, my partner got his skyspotter ID. I was supposed to too, but I forgot to do the registration. Now I have to wait until next year RIP. My partner is wanting a ham license, so that's why he did his skyspotter stuff.

We also went to a car meet/show thing that was on our friend's birthday. Here's some of the cars that were there.

A bee befriended my partner one day. This same bee stung me the next day. That was my first bee sting. I was terrified.

My friends bought a house. Here are their cats in that house. The white one, Crimini, was freaking the fuck out. Sera, the tortoiseshell, was chillmaxxing. She loves the place.

More on that house in the next blog post I think. Good things about it.

A beloved brewery in the area has gone out of business. They hosted big parties towards the end. It feels kinda sad cause I loved their weird 2015 millennial brewery vibe. None of the others have the same vibes!!!! I want the cringy hipster vibes!! RIP Bauhaus Brew Labs

I've been watching a lot of Stefan Milo on youtube lately. He's an archaeologist talking about early humans from around the world. I had never been that interested in the subject except when my partner talked about it, so it's surprising I've gone so deep into this subject. My partner did knapping while we were in college, and we have many of the tools he made. I was so fascinated by what he would tell me, but if I was in my art history class learning this stuff? Sooooo boring.

Because of this current fascination, I've been feeling inspired by Neolithic iconography. I do a lot of little doodles around my drawings sometimes, and I'd love to incorporate the iconography found in European sites. I just think it's so cool. Humans are so interesting.

july

My partner and I are doing a spontaneous Duluth trip this month finally doing things that we want to do on our own. I'll talk about what we get up to in the next blog post!

We're also going to end up cutting down a lot of our items. Maybe I'll talk about stuff I wanna get rid of, so people local to me can have free things. I'm not sure what it'll all be, but I'm thinking of downsizing bags and coats n stuff. I'd rather give away things to people that will use them rather than donate to places that might end up getting rid of them.

Anyways, have a good July everyone! :) Stay cool especially y'all in Europe.