Photos: Dave & Barb Anderson Tour

June 9-17, 2007.

So it's June, and I'm offered a trip out of Phoenix, to Minnesota/Wisconsin. Sounds like a good deal. Unfortunatly, I must have brought all the heat along with me. Temps in the 90's almost the whole time, with a healthy dose of humidity to wash it all down. So the deal, for those of you who don't know, was that I was to be the helper/roadie/sound guy for Dave & Barb Anderson's June tour. Now if you don't know anything about them, or even if you do, also check out the rescue story too. Anyway, we had quite a good time, with only a few minor snags along the way. I didn't get pictures of everything I would've liked to, so there will be some more story to go along with this trip in the blog sometime soon too.




First stop was this wedding, at Thrivent's (that's a Lutheran financial organization) resort near Trego WI, Heartwood.
The lake at Heartwood. There was a thin layer of fog that I thought was photo worthy, not to mentino the awesome reflectivity. This was way early in the morning on Sunday, right before driving down to Rice Lake WI for our first "concert", which was really a church service... two of them.
The next night we stayed with some folks, he was previously in charge of 3M international. They lived on a river. This is from down b the river. We took their boat out the next day for a tour of the area.
Next we were in Dallas WI. We stayed in "grandma's house" (the house of one of the church member's mom, who passed away a few years back). I simply had to take a picture of this light switch. Yes, that's a light switch for those of you who have never seen one like this. It reminded me of the light switch at the top of the stairs at my grandparent's old farm house... this one, also at the top of the stairs.
Next stop was Sandstone, MN. We stayed at a lake house on Sturgeon lake a few miles away. Here's the lake and lake house, and the jet ski just off to the side. They had a pump to run the waterfall. I did take the jet-ski out, it was nearly brand new... and boy, did it have a lot of pep. I hit 70mph for a bit. I was fighting a crowd on the lake... all of one other jet-ski was out on the water.
Same cabin, from the front. Off to the side you see the bunk house, which had a ping pong table and a bedroom area. Further to the right was the 4 car garage with all the big-boy toys.
Someone else out skiing on Sturgeon lake. If there would've been time, I might've taken the jet-ski out and asked them to pull me around the lake too.
Friends of Dave & Barb, they built the log house you see, and have planned and built several buildings at their retreat center called wilderness fellowship. They sang a song for us while we were there.
One of the cabins on "wilderness fellowship", you can see the grapevine used for the handrail of the stairs.
Dave & Barb in the cabin.
This was the main fellowship center at the wilderness. Large building, with this awesome structure holding up the ceiling. The design and engineering is breathtaking.
Back in Minneapolis, we had a concert in St. Paul and then a day off, so we stayed for two days with some folks in Edina. This was my guest suite...
Let's just say we weren't suffering any while staying here.
I rather liked the light color brick. As you can see, very large house. Let's just say the garage was equally impressive.
We met up with a choir from Sweden, that Dave & Barb had setup a tour for. We took them to the Mall of America for dinner after meeting them at the airport. It was my first time inside the mall, so I took a couple quick pictures.
How can you not get a picture of Lego Land?
Back to the folks we were staing with in Edina, this is their golf course, "The Jewel", near Lake City, MN. In the background of the course (although not in this picture) are the mississippi river bluffs. We had lunch at the club house, and I must say it was very good. If I were into golf, even the least little bit, I would want to play this course... very nice grass, much prettier surroundings than most.
Lastly, we took out the Yacht on lake pepin. The lake is now formed by a man-made damn on the mississippi, but was first made by a natural damn where the Chippewa river flows into the mississippi causing silt and dirt to build up forming a natural damn.