Month: June 2012

Potholes and Hippies

Well, okay. Not necessarily at the same time.

I was in charge of the kids Wednesday. All day. Me. So I needed to come up with something to do and of course I decided: road trip!

First stop was Interstate State Park in Taylors Falls. They had a tour scheduled daily that walked through the “pothole” area of the park with a naturalist explaining all the unique geology. So when we show up for the tour, nobody else is there and the kids and I basically get a private tour. Cool!

Andy the naturalist explains how the potholes were formed

There was a  lot of neat stuff, including chipmunks and frogs and even some tadpoles to see.

The view from inside the “Bake Oven” which you can walk down to the bottom of

There were some YMCA campers doing rock climbing as well. We ended up eating our picnic lunch in the truck because it kept raining.

So, we were so close to Wisconsin that we just had to go over there and get Mary some cheese curds. We stopped at a couple places along the way, of course.

Looking at some exhibits at the St. Croix National Scenic Waterway headquarters
The Hippy store where we got the cheese curds

This is the store we stopped at in St. Croix Falls to get the cheese curds. Russell wanted to get something and he picked out what he thought was some chocolate candies. Turns out it was made of dates and sesame seeds! Darn hippies!

We then took a drive down the Wisconsin side of the river and stopped at the Osceola airport (KOEO). Nice little pilot’s lounge, with wi-fi and two (that’s 2!) courtesy cars available to drive into town for lunch when you fly in there.

The kids decided to play checkers in the pilot’s lounge

Then we went up to Stillwater and walked around in the rain.

Quick bite of nachos at the Chicago Dogs store in the old sawmill building

After that we headed home. Nice fun day and as we like to do, saw a few new things. See ya!

The North Shore

We took a short trip to the north shore this weekend. We stayed at Gooseberry Falls State Park and camped there on Sunday night.

As you can see under the table, we decided to bring the dog. We soon discovered that this really limited our options on activities, primarily because he has separation anxiety. From any of us. Any time we walked away.

The kids went climbing around on the rocks at the lower falls

We also went into Duluth and even visited Sky Harbor Airport (KDYT) and Two Harbors Municipal Airport (KTWM). Check out the picture of Sky Harbor. They land sea planes next to it in the water and the ones with wheels land on the asphalt.  Too cool!

We’ve got a state park pass now and the plan is to take our brand new tent out a few more times this summer and get some stamps in our state park passport. See you later.