I discovered Minnesota!

This weekend had a trip to Minnesota in store for me. Elizabeth and I drove up on Thursday and found a nice route on county roads to avoid the closed I-94. The drive up was nice and we decided to go all out and get a hotel. We stayed in the Crown Plaza in St. Paul. Beautiful hotel, beautiful view, and wonderful service.

Thursday night we grabbed a bite with good friends Melissa and Adam, who are expecting in October. We had a wonderful dinner with them and then went back to their place for a marvelous summery dessert, some great conversations, and some fun with the wii. It was great to meet some of their friends from up there.

Friday was a walking day. First, we went to Al's in Dinkytown for breakfast. If you haven't gone, GO! I love this place. You have 14 stools to choose from to be seated except you often do not get a choice. We spent about 15 minutes waiting for a seat though it is always worth the wait. When we were the last ones in line, I kept laughing, to myself, that people would walk in and then right back out, unwilling to do the wait. "Fools, " I thought to myself. "How can you ever pass up Al's?"

Anyway, we ate and then bummed around campus for a while. It brought back tons of memories of all the trouble I used to get into at the U, some of it, with the aforementioned Adam. As we passed places I commented to Elizabeth, that is one of the places we smoked our cigars on my last night in town.

We saw the new stadium, which is a mammoth project and will surely be a tremendous addition to the school. We stopped in the Union, which was open for a brief period before and a brief period after construction while I was in school. We had to go to the bookstore to look at all the goodies that we would love to buy but didn't.

We stopped at a running store to pick up a pair of shoes for me and it was great. They checked my stride and fitted me for a new pair of shoes for the Lakefront marathon.
Then we were off to the sculpture gardens... I loved the exhibition that they had outside of the Walker called "Design for the other 90%." Make time to go check it out along with the sculpture gardens. They are both free!

Dinner at one of our favorite spots, Cafe Latte, was nice as we got to catch up with one of Elizabeth's good friends, Hillari. Dude!

Saturday was a Kayak day! We spent two hours on the Cannon River kayaking. Beautiful day. Beautiful area. What a day.

If you get a chance, discover Minnesota and keep on
living the dream!