The Pope roots for Italy

I was a little bit sad to see Germany knocked out. I like the way they play football.

I celebrated Independence Day a day early as I went down to southeastern Minnesota for some camping and flyfishing. I left the Cities at about 3.30 yesterday afternoon and arrived at the park around 7ish. I definitely prefer backpacking and I definitely prefer the mountains, but at least when you have a car you can store your food and trash somewhere where the racoons can't get to it. I stayed at Beaver Creek Valley State Park, which is situated in a beautiful valley in the middle of the prarie. You can't see that it's there when you drive by on I-90, so it's nice little secret place. Lots of hills with ash and elm and limestone bluffs. After about 6 hours sleep I woke up a little after dawn and, after breakfast, broke camp to go fish Beaver Creek. I didn't know this until I talked to the ranger, but apparently Beaver Creek is one of the most difficult places to fish. The creek, as I found, is very narrow in places and there's lots of overgrowth. My rod was longer than the creek sometimes. The park ranger said it's more like hunting trout than fishing for them. A little guy did bite at my line, but he got away. I should be so lucky, I guess.

I saw a lot of wildlife out there. Tons of fireflies. I almost got swooped at by a bat. In a span of an hour this morning I saw two deer, a bald eagle, a muskrat/beaver/otter (i'm not sure), and a bunch of other small animals. I heard several others as I slept in my tent.

Other Observations: The 400 Bar is doing Rondell White Nights for the rest of the baseball season. Pay Rondell White's batting average for bottles of Bud. 98 cents for a bottle of Bud? Crazy!

On my way south I stopped at Cabela's in Owatonna to get a license and some supplies. I've never seen so many stuffed animals in my entire life (granted, most if not all of them are replicas). I mean, they had at least 10 trophy pronghorns. Taxidermy kinda freaks me out a bit.

I recieved more stuff from Dalhousie in the mail, containing my payment plan and a visa application. I'm debating which passport to use. Being a dual citizen isn't all its cracked up to be. I feel like one false move will send me to the gulag. Still it's exciting to be at that next stage.

My family went to a Russian restraunt in Robbinsdale on Saturday night. It was pretty fun and crazy and great people watching. The food was incredibly rich and heavy on the dill (just as I remembered it). There was somebody celebrating their 60th birthday and the place was pretty wild. There was dancing and a band doing Russian and:00 AMerican pop music. I even saw the Hora for the first time. My dad sang along through the entire thing, which was pretty funny. Maybe if I get into trouble with fascists in Russia, I should learn how to say, "but I don't even know how to do the Hora!" I promised myself I'd start working on my Russian in 07/...better get on that...when I have the time....IF I have the time.