[AbbyDawg]

Favorite Place in My Home State of Minnesota:

Dell, MN - in the 1960s before the white country church burned and the country school and store were torn down - about 4 miles from Frost, MN, and 2 miles from my Grandma's farm on the Blue Earth River. In the 1850s, my fraternal great-great grandparents came from Norway and built their log cabin near there, and my Swedish great grandmother was born in a dugout by the river. They lived there until their log cabin was built. All within 12 miles of where I live now in Blue Earth, MN. Dell was an official town and I doubt the population was ever much over 15. In my childhood years, every Thanksgiving and Christmas we would harness up Red (the horse), complete with a strap of sleighbells, and a single-bench red sleigh (cutter). All of us cousins would pile in with Grandma and my Aunt and sing off-key, "Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh, through the white and drifting snow...." We'd ride in the cutter from Grandma's farm to Dell and back. ............ Heaven on Earth.

Favorite Places in Colorado (Where I Went to College):

The town of Ouray, high up in the central part of the Rockies. The view of Wolf Creek Pass near Durango. And riding the Durango-Silverton steam train in the Fall.

Favorite Place Outside of USA:

Southern Germany - The view on the way up to Berg Eltz ... a castle on the Mosel River). A slightly steep walk through thick forest in a light misty rain up a natural slate path ... then around a dark hidden turn it opened into a view of the castle in the sunlight.

AbbyDawg