Not bad for coming up with the idea for the trip no more than a month ago, and planning the bulk of it within a couple hours …
It sort of went like this: Kates and I were watching a Minnesota Twins game and I began thinking out loud how I’d always wanted to see a Twins game in the Metrodome, and how it was a shame that Minneapolis is within a decent driving distance, but we’d never ventured up there …
To which Kates replied, “So let’s go to Minnesota.”
Within minutes we were pulling out a calendar, looking at the Twins schedule and picking a weekend. Then, when the plight of paying for accommodations came up, Kates suggested we camp. So, we started searching for state parks in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area … We found a few that looked promising along the St. Croix River and eventually booked a reservation at William O’Brien State Park, in addition to ordering a pair of tickets to the Sunday Twins game against the Texas Rangers, and our free Twin Cities Visitor's Guide …
... I think for a brief time as Kates and I were leaving Friday we thought, what are we getting ourselves into?! But everything worked almost better than we'd planned ... Phoebe handled everything beautifully, and appeared to be having a great time herself. She was constantly giggling with us and all of a sudden this weekend, it was as if she decided she was going to start talking ...
Check out this video ...
* * *
… So the day we’d been waiting for arrived Friday – Happy Birthday to Kates! … We got a later start than we would’ve liked, but managed to get the car loaded -- thank goodness for the Forrester. But seriously, we were packed in like sardines. I said if we do this again with another kid, we're going to need a trailer -- and we were heading out of town by 1 in the afternoon ...
According to Mapquest, we had a six-hour and 15-minute drive ahead of us, though we knew it would be longer with our stops ... We made our first Phoebe-feeding-pit-stop around 2:30, conveniently located at Grandma & Grandpa Horns' house. And then hit another roadside oasis around 5 (with a warm greeting, see photo), the great city of Eau Claire and a Taco Bell dinner around 7, and then one last stop around 9 in a Menards parking lot near the border so I could get some light bulbs for our rechargeable lantern -- which didn't work anyway because the lantern apparently has more complicated problems ...Finally at about 9:20, we were driving over the St. Croix River into Minnesota. The scene couldn't have been better. There was a picture-perfect vanilla sky and the small towns with their old wood frame buildings spread along the river were buzzing with activity ... There was a lot of excitement and cheering in our car during those moments ... And the coolest thing -- since we were heading west, it was lighter much later than it would have been at the same time back home ...
We arrived at the campground and checked in with minutes to spare before it shut down for the night and we risked losing our site ... Then I strapped on my headlamp and went to work setting up our tent in the dark, while Kates tended to Phoebe ... It was then that Kates also realized Phoebe had loaded her diaper, and it had leaked into her car seat. Not pretty ...
For Phoebe's bed, we set her up on a couple pillows and layered them with blankets. She had her own little cozy corner of the tent, and she loved it ...
The forecast Friday night had called for rain, but we lucked out. The temperature was comfortably cool, the stars were shining against a clear sky, and the moon was bright and full ...* * *
Right on time, Phoebe woke us up around 7 Saturday morning ... which was OK because it made us get up and start the day, and I like that ...
I got out and set up the rest of our camp. Started getting ready for breakfast ... and then realized I forgot the starter for our grill. Doh! It had the potential to be disastrous for our weekend's cooking menu ... but ok, we can deal with this, I thought. Quickly, I began gathering twigs and brush around our camp site, and I had a fire going in no time ... Then, once the coals were good and hot, we put on the sausages and eggs -- and wa-lah, we had a scrumptious breakfast ...
Afterward we explored some more of the campground ... It was dark enough when we arrived Friday night that Kates and I had major trouble finding the toilets and shower house. Both of us ended up hiking quite a distance to find a pit toilet before going to bed Friday night ... only to discover in Saturday's daylight the shower house stood just a few yards from our campsite ...
For the afternoon, we drove into Stillwater, one of those picturesque towns we discovered as we drove in Friday night ... The old downtown is loaded with charming little shops and some very good-looking restaurants. It reminded us a lot of Galena ...
But after awhile, the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up. Luckily we were nearly finished with our tour and heading in the direction of our car when the skies let loose ... And luckily there was a wide store awning for us to stand under while we waited out the storm ...
... Once there was a break, we headed for the car. In the rain, we got Phoebe into her car seat and re-packed the car ... just as the tornado sirens started blaring! WON-derful ... No tornadoes ever appeared, but it poured all the way back to our camp. And when we pulled back into our site, we sat in the car and waited for the storm to dissipate ... All of us fell asleep, and the next thing we knew, the storm was over and the sun was shining ...I started up another fire and we grilled chicken burgers, before celebrating the night with a game of Phase 10, which Kates narrowly won ...
* * *
On Sunday, we were all about hitting the city ...
With our Twin Cities Visitor's Guide in hand, made the easy 40-minute drive into Minneapolis and set out first to find Loring Park and the Walker Art Center. Kates had been to the iconic sculpture garden during college and wanted to show it off to me. Talk about ripe for photos; it's almost like Minneapolis' version of Chicago's Bean ...
From there it was off to, as they call it in Minneapolis, "Twins Territory." The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome ... We found the underground parking garage -- $10 for the day -- and hiked to the ground level outside the stadium where part of the promotion for the day was a huge fanfest sort of celebration, complete with games, inflatables, pony rides and a whole lot for the kids ...Inside the stadium, the atmosphere was about as family-friendly as I think I've ever experienced at a baseball game. And it seemed as though everybody was dressed in a Twins t-shirt or jersey ...
And, oh, the field. That old Metrodome is quite the venue (There's some interesting history here.) ... The description that kept rolling over and over in my head as we sat there Sunday afternoon was that it's like being in a gymnasium with green carpet ... Watching games on television, it always looked so spacious to me -- but being inside it offers a whole different perspective ...I hadn't realized how much the football field configuration impacts the field dimensions ... Still, it was very cool finally being able to see a game there and marvel at the Metrodome's features, but I also understand now why the Twins wanted a new stadium ...
I also hadn't realized that we had pretty good seats -- second row on the third base side, next to the left field bullpen. On the downside, it was quite a hike from the concourse level and down the stairs to our seats, and our view of home plate was skewed ... But the upside was we were in the thick of the action, especially in left field, and we had a front row seat to the bull pen ...
And for her very first baseball game, Phoebe handled all of it, including the loud crowd, beautifully ... Perhaps one of the cutest moments of the entire weekend happened as the game was getting underway and the starting lineups were being introduced. Phoebs had been dozing off on Kates's shoulder, and when the crowd erupted in some cheers, her eyes exploded wide open like a bomb had been dropped directly in front of her. But she never cried, and instead began looking around and taking in whatever was in front of her. She even sat contently on my lap for a couple innings, before Kates had to take her for another feeding ... Oh, and where did the ushers allow her to go -- the Twins executive offices. Pretty cool ...The game was pretty darn good, too ... In the week prior, Kates and I were looking forward to seeing the Home Run Derby stars Justin Morneau for the Twins and Josh Hamilton for the Rangers, but Morneau didn't do anything overly noteworthy and Hamilton didn't play. Instead, the stars of the game turned out to be the starting pitchers ... For the Rangers, Vincente Padilla went for seven shutout innings and gave up three hits, while the Twins' starter Scott Baker took a perfect game into the sixth inning. He got the first two outs in the sixth, but he'd also begun falling behind batters. Then, on a 3-2 count, Taylor Teagarden -- of all people -- popped a home run that just barely cleared the center field wall and broke up the perfect game, the no-hitter and the shutout all on one pitch. And I didn't realize this until later, but it was also the kid's first major league hit ...
And that was that ... We got to see the Twins star closer Joe Nathan (that's him warming up in front of us, at left) pitch in the ninth inning, and despite a little excitement in the bottom of the inning -- Joe Mauer got a two-out walk and then took second and third base on a passed ball before Morneau grounded out -- the game ended in a 1-0 Twins loss ...We took our time leaving the game, taking in more of the stadium and taking pleasure in watching the throngs of kids stream on to the field to run the bases ... All the while, Phoebe was out cold in the Baby Bjorn, her little legs and arms just flopping along with the pattern of our walking ...
Because it was such a fast game, we had a lot of time to burn in the city afterward ... We drove through the University of Minnesota campus and saw the Weisman Art Museum...
We got to see the Stone Arch Bridge and the I-35 bridge in reconstruction after last summer's tragic collapse. And we even made it over to St. Paul, where we spent some time walking around the capitol building and gazing at the Cathedral of Saint Paul. The capitol grounds also served as another feeding area for Phoebe; by now Kates's is contemplating a Top 10 list of the most interesting places she's catered to Phoebs ...
Back at the camp, the weekend crowds had vanished -- oh, were there a lot of loud, obnoxious kids tearing around on bikes -- and we virtually had the entire camp to ourselves. We put Phoebe down and heated up some leftover brats and burgers over a campfire. And as the night wore on we began packing up some of our gear, hoping to get a head start on our trip home the next day ...* * *
And that brings us to Monday: Our day to head home ...
Kates took Phoebe for a walk while I finished packing our gear and somehow found a way to stuff all of it back into our car ... Then I picked them up and we checked out ...
Before getting too far out, we stopped in Marine on St. Croix, another one of the riverfronts neat, little villages, for a lunch picnic ...
We were truly on the road for home by about 1 p.m. ... and, after three stops along the way including a bank parking lot for another feeding, we turned the car off in our garage just before 10 p.m. ...We unloaded only the essentials and hit our mattress as soon as we could ...
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