Roadtrip: Scenic River, UFO Days Parade, and back to the Joynt

Drove with Andy and Kristin down the scenic river road to Pepin to go to the Harbor View Cafe. This is the harbor they have the view of.

There are many scenic overlooks along the river so we stopped at one on the way back as the sun set.  I had no intention to do it, but I did two exposures pointed slightly different directions so I edited them together to give you a panorama of Lake Pepin.

Elmwood is a small community nestled in the Eau Galle River valley.  In the mid-70's a veteran police officer reported seeing a UFO hovering and flying off over a hill east of town,  followed by numerous other folks reporting similar occurrences. Ever since, the local summer festival has been known as UFO Days.

In the parking lot of the local supermarket, one is greeted by this little fellow with it's flying saucer.

We came to see the Grand Parade on Sunday. Before the parade, other than the inevitable carnival rides, there wasn't much going on except the inevitable beer tent, so we sat down to await the beginning of the parade.

For some reason, the only thing available were several brands of light beers.

The parade began with just about every emergency vehicle in Eastern Pierce County.

Most of the parade consisted of floats pulled by a variety of tractors and pickup trucks promoting the weekend festivals of all the other little communities in Pierce and St. Croix counties featuring six or seven young women with titles of Queen or Princess.  About the most colorful was the somewhat generically named Hudson Fest.

It's been a long time since I've attended one of these local parades, but nowadays one of the main attractions is tons of candy thrown from the floats and scrambled for by the local children.

We asked if there were any sights relating to the UFO landings and were told that the only one was the aforementioned flying saucer, but there would be lots of others in the parade.  Alas, the only one we saw was mounted on the back of Elmwood's own float.

After the parade we opted to skip the pig wrestling event and country music concert, and proceeded to Eau Claire, where Sarah and I met, to meet up with Gene and Laura and let Kristin experience the Joynt.

Andy's high school friend Katie, who works in Eau Claire,  came down to join us.  She is one of the eleven people who purchased a paper copy of The Pinhole of Nature.

While we were there, the owner of the Joynt, Bill Nolte, stopped by. Frustrated with his academic career, he bought the 322 Club and from the mid-70's until the 90's got many of the greats of jazz and blues to perform there in between gigs in Chicago and Minneapolis, now pictured on the walls behind him.

All with The Populist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36mm frame.