June 20, 2012 -- At Leech Lake -- First Day of Summer

The first day of summer arrives today at 6:09 p.m. CDT here at Leech Lake. But the weather here looked anything but summer-like. At 9:00 a.m. the sky was grey, a heavy steady rain was falling, the temperature was 60 degrees and the wind was out of NNW at 8-12 mph.

With moderate- to heavy-rainfall for the past 24 hours, most of the northern part of Minnesota is experiencing flooding. Many areas around Duluth have serious flooding, while here at Leech Lake the ground is thoroughly soaked. Of course, Leech Lake is a watershed for the Upper Mississippi Valley and the area is used to filtering runoff water. But the amount of rain we've had here in the past day is unusual; by some accounts as much as 7-10 inches.

Kathleen and I were busy this morning getting ready for our drive south to St. Cloud; which is also experiencing heavy rains and flooding. The plan is for us to see Kathleen's mother today before driving to the airport in Minneapolis to pick up Melissa, Jayden and Ashley later tonight. Then we'll spend Thursday in St. Cloud before heading back to Leech Lake on Friday. The forecast is for much better weather this weekend, which should enable all of us to spend time outside playing, swimming, tubing and fishing.

We arrived in St. Cloud late afternoon and immediately went to Kathleen's Mom's house where we got the beds made in preparation for the arrival of the kids tonight. By the time we get back to St. Cloud from Minneapolis it will be very late.

With the housed prepped, we made our way to St. Benedict's to see Kathleen's Mom. We took her dinner and spent roughly 4 hours hanging out with her before we said good night, and got ready for our drive to the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport.

We picked up Ashley first, at 11:30 p.m., before racing over to Terminal 2 to pick up Melissa and Jayden at the Sun Country gate. We then made our 2 hour drive back to St. Cloud and finally got to bed at roughly 2:30 a.m. It was a long, tiring day, but now everyone who is planning a trip to MN this summer is now here.

Good night.