Terry Pearson’s Blog

Jessica and I had a great time this weekend in Two Harbors, MN. This town of about 3,500 people is located just a little North of Duluth along the shore of Lake Superior.

Day 1

We left on Friday evening, and drove straight through until just before 11pm.

We had reserved a “normal” hotel room with two queen beds. Upon arriving at the AmericInn in Two Harbors, we asked the attendent at the desk if they had any of the King Suites with whirlpools remaining. She said that they did, and that it would cost $15 per night more. I just said “oh that much?” and did not say anything else. After a moment of silence, she said that we could have the King Suite at no additional charge! (Thanks Dave Ramsey for your tips on negotiating a sale).

Day 2

We got up at about 8:30 the next morning at ate a delicious breakfast compliments of the hotel! They had a waffle making station, along with bagels, doughnuts, fruit and more (all free). This sure beats the Embassy Suites I stayed at last June where it was $13 for a small breakfast!

After breakfast, we explored Two Harbors. What an amazing town.

Our first stop was at “Sweet Peas“. This store was simple on the outside, but great on the inside. I could not believe the great deals on gift items in this place. If you need to decorate a north woods cabin, or just want some souvenirs, stop here first. You will likely find all you need and more.

Next, we went down to Agate Bay. As the name implies, this is one of the two bays in Two Harbors. The other bay is Burlingtin Bay. We walked a long way out onto the ice of the bay while we were there. (As a side note, I learned that Agate Bay is actually deeper than the harbor in Duluth, which makes it all the more scary that we were walking on it.)

I took the opportunity to make fun of Man vs. Wild’s Bear Grylls. I love the show,  and if you have ever seen it, you will understand this video:

After touring Two Harbors, we went up the North Shore, and ate at “The Rustic Inn and Cafe” in Castle Danger. The food was great, but this was certainly not a very quick eat. It took a while to get our food, and we were starting to regret that we wasted precious hours of daylight at a sit-down restaurant. For dessert, we had some of their famous pie. It was a huge piece that was enough for the both of us.

Jessica and I headed up to Gooseberry Falls State Park. On our way to the visitor center, we encountered several deer. They were working on stealing food from the bird feeders and only seemed a little worried that we could practically reach out and touch them.

At the recommendation of a park ranger, we started out on a loop that runs along some of the major waterfalls of the park. We stuck to the snowshow trails as she suggested. There were a couple times that I made a slight deviation from the path, and I quicly learned that the unpacked snow is very, let me repeat… VERY deep.

You get a false sense of security walking along snow packed hard by snow shoes. Sometimes I would step off the path to get a better picture, and end up past my knees in snow. Off the main path, the terrain is rugged, just what you would expect on the edge of the Sawtooth Mountains.

After our hike in Gooseberry, we went a little further Northeast to Split Rock Lighthouse. Sunset was at 5:05 pm that day, giving us about 45 minutes to enjoy the famous lighthouse. Since we were not planning on major hikes, this was an easy thing to do. We took some great pictures, and saw an amazing start of a sunset on Lake Superior.

There are really too many pictures to post here, so if you want some amazing pictures of the entire trip, check out here and here.

We then headed back to Two Harbors for a relaxing time at Culver’s. Then went back to our hotel for a swim in the pool and some time in the Sauna.

Day 3

On Sunday, we had a much more relaxed day. We returned to Sweet Peas and bought some decorations for our house (someday we will put them in a cabin that we would like to own!).

Jessica got some Iced Coffee from McDonald’s to start her day on a caffeinated note, and we set out for Duluth. We traveled partially on the express highway 61, then jumped on the scenic route near the French River. We stopped briefly to admire the awesome scenery at the mouth of the river.

We kept heading Southwest along the shorline until we hit Duluth. Jessica and I had planned on eating at the Burger King near Canal Park (it was the first place we ate after getting married), however, they recently knocked it down to make room for a bigger hotel next door. So we took off toward the famous Grandma’s Saloon and Grill.

After stopping at Grandma’s, we stopped in downtown Duluth to look at the Duluth Pack store and a surplus store. Then we left for home.

Summary

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. We had a lot of fun, and can’t wait to get back up in the area. Fortunately, we will be heading up North of Duluth to stay in a cabin on Pequawyan Lake with our family in a couple weeks.

I went out to Lebanon Hills with Pete Stopfer (Securian Financial Group) and his neighbor John McDevitt (Best Buy). We had an awesome time. Originally, I was not going to take my camera with because I thought it would be hard to keep up with these guys. However, I am glad that I did.

Pete, John, and I went cruising through the first section with no problem. This was probably the fasted I had ever taken the first part of the course. I usually get pretty tired on this part, but get a “second wind” after a few minutes. I am usually ready for almost anything after this intense warmup!

We stopped at the second intersection with the ski trails. You can see Pete cruising in below:

…and here comes John…

Here are a couple pictures of Pete Stopfer, racing around a corner…

And once again, John McDevitt is right behind. This was as we came to the intersection of the Intermediate and Difficult trails.

The only way a person can possibly take a picture like the one below is if they made it part way through the Difficult loop. If you ski/snowboard, think of this as a black diamond. We had to get some pictures since we made it this far.

We decided that we should avoid the Most difficult loop because John was already running low on water. We figured we could do the trail again, expert loop included, if we had time.

Here is a Securian Information Services picture. This was such an amazing trail. None of us had ever tried the Most Difficult section. So this was a major feat. This was the absolute most fun time I have ever had at Lebanon Hills.

The Most Difficult section came with a warning. The sign somehow reminded me of the Buffalo Goring warning signs in Yellowstone park. The fact that they put a sign up, just makes some people (mainly crazy people) want to continue down the dangerous trail. We would have except for the water shortage. Maybe next time.

Yes, I did say we skipped the Most Difficult section, but not all of it. Trail traffic was lighter today, so we were able to perfect our log jump to “professional” level.

We finished with our small part of the Most Difficult section, walked back, and continued on the Difficult trail. It eventually connected back to the main trail. If I hadn’t been going so fast on the new banked sections, I would have stopped and taken some pictures. If you have not been to Lebanon Hills since July, check out the improvements that MORC has made.

Last time I was at Lebanon Hills, I encountered a gigantic log jump. I made it up most of the pile, only to fall back and land on my cross bar coming down. This hurt a bit.

On this trip, I re-challenged the monster log pile, and it bit back pretty hard. My bike nearly cleared the top when I lost momentum and hit a bigger log. This caused me to fall backwards down the jump. Fearing a repeat of last time, I tried to come down at more of an angle. Instead of recovering gracefully, my bike tilted sideways and I fell of the edge. My metal bike pedals dug into one side of my leg, while rocks dug into the other.

John saw me wipe out and made sure I was ok. When Pete came around the corner, we analyzed the jump, and tried to figure out a way to beat it. Always ready for a challenge, John jumped on his bike and gave it a try. He protested at first since he might fall. Of course, there would always be the chance that he would succeed. I filmed, knowing that this would make for a good video either way.

While we were biking, we had a conversation about helmets. John and I had both never been fans of them before doing serious mountain biking. He traced his need for a helmet to the Minnesota River Bottoms trail. I said that I first realized a need for helmets at Lebanon. I remember that on my first ride, I found broken pieces of a helmet on the trail. I then knew that if I wanted to be a serious mountain biker, I would need one. My mom and my wife were also great at encouraging a helmet.

What happened next would help us all to see the importance of a helmet. John took a small jump that was by no means a tough one for him. His bike landed on the front tire, he bounced forward and landed on his face. He skidded across the ground pretty hard, scraping his legs, face, and arms.

The visor even snapped off John’s helmet. A later look at the helmet showed something more serious. His helmet actually cracked in several places. If he had not worn one, we may have made a special visit to the emergency room today.

After his fall, John said he felt Ok. His heart was beating a little faster, I can’t imagine why. When we finally finished the course, and rested in the parking lot, he said he was starting to hurt a little bit more.

My leg actually really started to hurt after leaving the park, but hopefully it will make a speedy recovery. I am up to date on my Tetanus shots, so that won’t be a factor. Fortunatly, I was able to clean my wounds with baby wipes when we got in the car.

Even though we had some pretty great battle scars, we were all pumped to do it again. Pete said he would like to get out this year yet. If the weather cooperates, I will be out there in a heart beat. That Most Difficult section is calling my name.

After leaving Lebanon Hills, Jessica, Abigail, and I headed to Walmart for some first aid stuff, then went to CiCi’s pizza buffet. It’s a great place to go if you are not on a diet. It comes to about eight dollars per person for all you can eat pizza (including deserts) and a pop.

Photo sharing site Riya.com has pioneered new technologies in graphical search engine technology. Using highly advanced facial recognition, they are able to auto detect faces from within your online photo album.

It works through a training program. This is not unlike other similar technologies such as speech recognition. It requires several pictures of a person to be “identified” and then it can begin to “find” the person in other pictures.

Overall, the algorithms involved in such a search can be highly complex. This is a much higher complexity than fingerprint analysis. In fingerprint analysis, a program can map points where ridges split or join, and then calculate a distance and direction between each. When recognizing a fingerprint match, it simply checks for a proportional picture of these points. If it is basically the same, the software identifies a match. If not, the print is rejected.

Facial recognition is vastly more complicated. For more details on facial recognition algorithms, check out face-rec.org’s page on facial recognition algorithms. There are several algorithms that can be used. An algorithm that I thought sounded “easier” was the Elastic Bunch Graph Matching Algorithm. It uses a graph and vectors to map the face based on fiducial points (such as noses, eyes, etc.).

By the way, Riya.com is currently giving away unlimited space to store your photos and has an automatic upload tool for your My Pictures folder on your computer. It is worth your time just for that. I found the web interface easy and intuitive, and overall, I am quite satisfied with the site.

I recently began geocoding my pictures as described in a post a couple days ago. However, I found that Flickr was not automatically placing my geocoded pictures on their Flickr Map upon import. I would have to re-input the data to Flickr after uploading.

But a few minutes ago, I found my solution on Jannis Herman’s Blog. It appears to be a somewhat hidden setting in Flickr’s interface. You can find the setting page for automatically extracting EXIF geocodes to the Flickr geotags here.