Graphic above from the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors Housing Supply Outlook (Sep 09 PDF)

We talk about buyers markets and sellers markets and have been experiencing a buyers market for a couple of years now. 

For the last few months we have gotten closer to what looks like a sellers market for homes priced under 500K.  It is a sellers market for homes priced under 120K.  Except for condos and townhouses. There is still a glut of them on the market and prices will have to go down a bit before the inventory will move. 

I have been saying it every month for months but the inventory of homes on the market continues to shrink. There are fewer to choose from.

Foreclosures have slowed up but more are coming.  We keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and the next wave to hit and it will. Maybe they will dribble through the system or maybe they will flood the market.

People seem to either love cats or hate them. This is my cat.  They do sleep 23 hours a day and then spend an hour looking for a place to sleep, and then there is the thing with the litter box.  At any rate they are popular pets.

Sometimes when people lose their homes they leave their cat behind. I have written about that before and I really don't want to write it again. 

Recently I encountered two situations where ther was a cat in an abandoned house. In both cases the animals had food and water but neither of them were happy.  One was injured or maybe sick and hiding in the basement.  I made some phone calls and understand that the situation has been taken care of. The other cat I found was starved for attention and kept trying to bite us. It sounded like it was crying when we entered the house.

I know my cat gets mighty upset if I am gone all day. She is a companion animal. She doesn't like to be left alone, even though she does sleep 23 hours a day.

Please don't leave your cat in your vacant house. Either bring it with or maybe a friend or family member can take care of it for you. 

Also see Domestic murderers

The barges are lined up and waiting to go. I have always liked barges, especially rusty barges.  They are so low tech. They get pushed along the river from point A to point B and have been around since ancient times. They are 195 by 35 feet and can carry up to 1,500 tons of cargo. St. Paul is a river city, and tons of cargo drifts through it every day . . until the river freezes. 

by Erik Hare

In Saint Paul, it’s pretty common to find yourself sitting at a railroad crossing waiting for the train to pass.  There’s nothing to do when this happens but watch the different cars pass by with all the different names of railroads across the nation.   If you’re lucky, you might see one of the engines with the faded red, white, and black of the Soo Line, the once proud railroad that made Minnesota proud.  It’s a tale of grit and determination, a maze of wholly owned subsidiaries and bankruptcies, and it’s a big part of what made Saint Paul what it is today.

It started in 1883 when WD Washburn, owner of the flour mill in Minneapolis, incorporated the line to ship his products out of the state.  It was a simple business move to own the route to distant markets in order to make the product worth more.  Grain and processed flour was what Minnesota was all about at the time, producing over 20 million bushels of it.  The Minneapolis, Sault Ste Marie and Atlantic Railroad was chartered to get it all through Wisconsin and into the Great Lakes.

The alternative was to move it all through Duluth, but that port was already establishing a monopoly on grain.  By getting it out as far as Michigan, it could then move to the east by other railroads.  It was a daring move, but by 1887 they connected with the Canadian Pacific and the Duluth South Shore at the top of the Upper Peninsula.  The line was also being pushed westward under the equally grand name Minneapolis and Pacific Railroad.  Much of this was consolidated into the Minneapolis, St Paul, and Sault Ste Marie Railroad in 1888.

Neither line made it anywhere near the oceans that were in the name, and along the line it was clear that the operation was always going to serve the grain belt of the upper Midwest.  It went from Minneapolis to Bismark and on to Winnipeg by 1903, and in 1913 reached Whitetail, Montana.  Another piece was operated as the Wisconsin Central to Chicago.  All of these pieces of track relied on connections to the Canadian Pacific to ultimately move everything east and west and ultimately to markets as far away as Europe and Asia.  It became known as the Soo Line, the phonetic pronunciation of “Sault”.

The 1930s was hard on the line, which was in bankruptcy from 1937 to 1942.  They decided to start using the nickname “Soo Line” as their official name, with MStP&SSMRR under the logo on the official stationary.  Soo Line just worked better.  The Wisconsin Central piece didn’t emerge from bankruptcy until 1954, and following that all the pieces were reorganized under the one name.  Many smaller lines, including the famous Milwaukee Road, were purchased by 1985 in an effort to make the big railroad they always wanted to be, but it was too late.

In 1992, the Canadian Pacific took full control of the Soo Line.  By 1997 it was operating as the CP, a true coast-to-coast operation going as far south as Chicago, with the distinctions in the US no longer needed because of NAFTA.  Today, the yard in Saint Paul that grew up as the main Soo Line center of operations is a CP hub, and all the traffic for this part of the line routes through there.  Their main line through all of this is called the “Short Line” through Saint Paul, defining the base of Crocus Hill.

It’s been a while since we had our own little railroad that could, but the Canadian Pacific is a class operation that keeps the trains and tracks in good shape.  Once in a while you’ll see an old one with the Soo logo on it, but they’re all being repainted.  Consider yourself lucky to see a bit of history in the middle of your drive.

Join Us for the first weekend of
St. Paul's "Welcome Home Tour"!

Shining a spotlight on our most historic neighborhoods to give people a glimpse of the wonderful opportunities that exist for families in Saint Paul. Thanks to a wide coalition of partners, potential buyers will get the tools they need to make home ownership possible and affordable for the long-term,” Mayor Chris Coleman said. “I want to thank SPAAR and our community partners for stepping up to the plate to secure resources and develop the Welcome Home tour to encourage responsible home ownership in our city.” [Read More]

This is something you don't see every day probably because it was taken at night. Chestnut Plaza in the Upper Landing Park  just off of shepard road.  This shot was taken looking toward Harriet Island. This park was completed late last summer and I think they had some problems with the fountains because they were off and on. It all seems to be working now and the night I took this shot there were a lot of people in the park enjoying it.

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. I am just loving this stretch of perfect weather we are having. It looks like July finally came and I can't get enough of it. I have been taking photos as often as I can because it is the best time of year to take them. It is warm out and the sun is at a lower angle than it is during the late spring and early summer months and the days are shorter. 

In the winter when it is way below zero one camera battery will take 19 photos or last 20 minutes, which ever comes first. I bring two batteries and when one dies I take it out and put it in my pocket and put in a fresh battery.  The battery in my pocket can be used again after about twenty minutes and is good for 19 more photos.   As for me I rarely last long enough to use both batteries but some day I might. Usually my hands get cold first and seriously the worst part of it is touching any part of the tripod that is made of metal which is most of it.

I could take pictures of sunflowers in the winter but they don't look as pretty when they are all brown and dead and cold.  . .

Enjoy the weekend and make some time to go out and play.