The Twin Cities

It was three weeks ago that we were pulling into our campground, Lebanon Hills Regional Campground. Three weeks seems very long ago and part of that is because of the major vacation week that took us to many campgrounds, and part of that is because that was the last time we had full hookups. There has been a LOT of water monitoring and dump stations around here and seeing that sewer hose outside of our camper at this campground in Montana has never looked so sweet.

It was by chance that I grabbed the movie, "The Mighty Ducks" to give to Oliver for his birthday. We happened to watch it our last night with Mike and Nana in the Southern part of MN and I had forgotten it takes place in St. Paul which was a nice send off to the next place, The Twin Cities. We've never been there and we arrived on an early afternoon on a Saturday. We pulled into our campground, dropped the camper off and went exploring in the city to the big Mall of America. Typically exploring malls is only fun for me once per year, when my dad, sister and I go on our annual Christmas shopping/watching trip and walk around drinking warm drinks and mostly sitting and watching the madness. Chris can't even say it is fun for him once per year, so for us to drop the trailer to go explore a mall felt a bit like a waste of an afternoon, but we wanted to save Sunday for a lake exploration day, so off we went. Little did we know what the Mall of America is. That place is not so much a mall as an experience. There is an aquarium, ropes course, and full on amusement park. We all just kind of stood around staring until figuring out a game plan that was each boy got to pick out one ride and one pair of shoes (as the ones I JUST purchased in Maine, those $50 sneakers each, currently all had holes in them. ARGH.). Off we went to the ropes course and a roller coaster. We explored the Lego store and headed to pick up the shoes before Chris and I got us all back out to the parking lot and high fived that we survived the experience. That night we headed out to dinner and I just picked a place that looked good. Ten minutes later we were driving by the iconic restaurant that is in The Mighty Ducks which was exciting for our little group.

Monkey on the Mississippi

Sunday we woke to a day that was ideal for lake exploration. It was hot and sunny. We headed over the Hidden Falls along the Mississippi. We didn't find them, but we did have fun on the hiking trails and letting the dogs swim in the river. From there we went to Fort Snelling State Park and relaxed around the lake's edge. It was fun to be in water that isn't ice cold from mountain run off and it was pleasant to find these state parks were not invaded by bird sized mosquitos as we had found down south.

Rest at Lake Snelling

Austin has his summer camp the next day, a wilderness camp located in the regional park that our campground was a part of. It is funny to think back on, but I was so nervous to drop him off. It is one thing to be in an area you know and drop your child off at a program that friends have gone to or will be at or that you have heard about, but another to pick one off the Internet, land in the town and just go. He was the youngest as they made an exception for him as he is about to turn 8 and as they all took their seats his were the only legs to not reach the ground  He happily swung his legs at his desk as Oliver left and tried to figure out how we would fill our day without Austin for six hours. "Mama, I wish Austin was here," Oliver declared as we had not even left the parking lot. We played Monopoly and went fishing. We went to Target and Starbucks. We checked the clock every 10 minutes. Finally we picked him up and were greeted with smiles and stories of him and his friend Jeremy learning to navigate a canoe, how to catch dragonfly and damselfly larvae, and what dew water tastes like.

Como Park Zoo

Sleeping like soldiers

Playing like it's 1822

The rest of the week had us visiting Fort Snelling and taking in the period costumes and canon ball demonstrations, going to Como Park Zoo, and exploring the Library. Our favorite activity though was when Chris took us to a bike park one evening he had tried out. We looped around for a couple of hours while the kids tried out the banked turns, going over some jumps and navigating some bricks and log bridges. We met another family there as the kids were all playing in the skills park and the mom and I decided to meet the next day to ride together. Bike parks seem to have green/blue/black runs like skiing and while Chris had kept us on the green runs, the family we went with had us going all over the blue runs and it was fun! It was fun to see that we could, it was fun to be with kids who pushed us, who could navigate the blacks, and help us figure out what to do. It was fun to spend a length of time with a family we really enjoyed. Two and a half hours later my legs were shot and we still had to pedal on home. We rode fast as we were on a big hill going down and it felt like summer. 

Fun For Kids...

...And Adults

That night we packed up. We were leaving Minneapolis, a place I had never really thought of visiting, but so happy we did.