We finally decided on our summer vacation this year, and I'm excited!
We're planning to be gone a week just a few hours north of here to beautiful Alexandria, Minnesota! And let me just say that with our last vacation having been over a YEAR ago, I'm excited to get started planning!
We've decided to rent a cabin on Lake Andrew for a week, which gives us lakefront property (including a dock for our jet ski!), a nice yard, and a nice cabin (with bedrooms for the kids and a master for us) to spread out in for the week. We're still in the process of getting that reserved, but we're excited and REALLY hoping that it's still available like it says on vrbo.com :)
This will be the first time for us in Alexandria, and I've heard it's just beautiful! (Judging by the picture below, I'd have to say, I agree!)
I'm looking forward to a lot of rest and relaxation, enjoying a beautiful view of Lake Andrew, exploring with our boys and taking lots of nice, long walks together :) I mostly am looking forward to having NO agenda while we're there. Oh, and the following nearby treats that we seldom get to enjoy while living in Windom: Papa John's, Caribou and Target lol
Destinations
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Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Close to Home in 2014
I haven't exactly been updating my blog too much recently, but I assure you it's for a good reason:
We haven't really gone anywhere.
Okay, maybe that's actually more of a bad reason haha But in reality, it's really a good one, because the reason we haven't been traveling much is because we added another little boy to our family at the end of August.
Our big trip of 2013 was to Hawaii in late March, and after that trip, we just realized that it doesn't really make sense to go through all the hassle of traveling for a few days of bliss. We figure one day, when we don't have to lug carseats and strollers and food and diapers everywhere, we'll get back on track and begin traveling again. But for now, if we decide to go anywhere further than a few hours' drive, we'll be doing it without the kids. And for now? We just like spending time with the kids.
SO...what's on our docket for travel in 2014? Anything close to home! Here's what we're thinking:
This is a little late for starting out 2014, but I'm including what we have already done and looking into the future :)
That's just about it for this year! We'll be staying put most of the rest of the summer, and planning a birthday bash for Kendrick's first birthday at the end of August.
As usual, fall brings harvest, and then we're jumping right into Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then before we know it, it will be a new year.
I'm beginning to plant a bug in Mark's ear for a trip to Portland in early spring (i.e. when it's still snowing here but not there) 2015, but he is leaning more towards visiting his brother in northern California (LeMoore). With little ones underfoot, I tend to lean towards places where we can just go and stay that doesn't require much travel once we get there. We will see what the year brings!
We haven't really gone anywhere.
Okay, maybe that's actually more of a bad reason haha But in reality, it's really a good one, because the reason we haven't been traveling much is because we added another little boy to our family at the end of August.
SO...what's on our docket for travel in 2014? Anything close to home! Here's what we're thinking:
This is a little late for starting out 2014, but I'm including what we have already done and looking into the future :)
January
We spent a fun weekend together in Minneapolis at the end of the month to celebrate Cashel's 2nd birthday together as a family. We hit up the Como Zoo, enjoyed the hotel pool and visited to the Mall of America :) Cashel had a blast, and aside from a rough night of sleep for Mama and Daddy in a king bed with two kiddos, we did too :)
Recap HERE.
Recap HERE.
February
Mark and I enjoyed an overnight in Sioux Falls by ourselves to just kinda regroup (and hopefully do a fair amount of catching up on being lazy and sleeping. We were, unfortunately, sick the entire trip with some nasty colds, but we still enjoyed the time to rest.
Recap HERE.
My Mom's birthday was on the 23rd, so we went down to Iowa for a day trip to celebrate with her.
Recap HERE.
Recap HERE.
My Mom's birthday was on the 23rd, so we went down to Iowa for a day trip to celebrate with her.
Recap HERE.
March
We made our way back down to Humboldt at the end of the month to help celebrate birthdays with our niece and nephew, who had a joint party.
Recap HERE.
Recap HERE.
May
Mark's cousin is getting married at the beginning of May in Mankato, but it will just be a day trip. We're only planning to attend the ceremony, as the reception starts at almost bedtime for the boys, and it's about 2 hours between the ceremony and reception. We plan to make a short stop at Menards to pick up a few things and will probably eat at BWW before heading home.
We also are planning to leave at the end of the month for a week-long trip up (which will go into early June to Brainerd to a cabin as a family, and we can't wait!!
We also are planning to leave at the end of the month for a week-long trip up (which will go into early June to Brainerd to a cabin as a family, and we can't wait!!
September
We'll be celebrating 8 years of wedded bliss on the 23rd, and will likely do a long weekend away up to Duluth again. I still haven't mentioned it to Mark yet, so we'll see how that goes haha :)
That's just about it for this year! We'll be staying put most of the rest of the summer, and planning a birthday bash for Kendrick's first birthday at the end of August.
As usual, fall brings harvest, and then we're jumping right into Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then before we know it, it will be a new year.
I'm beginning to plant a bug in Mark's ear for a trip to Portland in early spring (i.e. when it's still snowing here but not there) 2015, but he is leaning more towards visiting his brother in northern California (LeMoore). With little ones underfoot, I tend to lean towards places where we can just go and stay that doesn't require much travel once we get there. We will see what the year brings!
Top Travel Memories: Mount Marathon Hike
Before we had kids, we were a little more gutsy than we are now. I'd like to say that it's because we became boring, but the truth is we became TIRED. And quite frankly, you can't do stuff like what I'm about to describe to you when you're getting broken, light sleep all the time. Or rather, you can, but who the heck would want to?
If you recall, in September 2011, we took our "babymoon" to Alaska when I was 17 weeks pregnant. There were some pretty hard-to-top memories from this trip. (In fact, FOUR of my Top Travel Memories are from this trip alone!)
While there, we did a LOT of hiking, and to be honest, this particular day started out pretty bland. Alaska was strange like that: You expect it to be all wilderness and what not, but when you're in the city, it's pretty regular, excepting that you're on the ocean and in the mountains at the same time.
We had a boring morning, rested a bit, and then around 2pm, we decided that we had enough energy to check out Mount Marathon.
We TOTALLY underestimated this hike. See, every year, there is a big race up and down the mountain, so we told ourselves, "Shoot - if people RUN up this hill, it can't be THAT big a deal to hike, right?" Oh.My.Goodness.
What we didn't realize was that the "race" up the hill looks a little more like this, than a full out sprint:
Yeah, totally ridiculously fit people about ready to pass out, and climbing slowly up the inclines. It's ridiculous. But, of course, I never researched that. And ya know, who really cared anyways, since we weren't racing, right? I mean, they have an entire safety course that people are encouraged to attend before taking on this race. And they encourage you to be well-schooled on how to get yourself down the mountain if injured because there is no medical staff along the way. It's a pretty hard core race! But I digress.
The mountain trail really starts RIGHT in town. We were expecting some winding road to take us a little ways out of town and then have a trail head and stuff, but literally we drove down this road, parked on one side of the street, and directly on the other side of the street was the trail head.
It was insane! We took the Switchback trail, and even that (avoiding the dangerous, slippery inclines) was pretty intense. I don't even know what the incline was on those first couple stretches (probably something like 40%), but it felt like we were walking up a wall, and my calves were killing me. I was a sweaty beast by the time we reached the second stretch.
I'm sitting here puzzled when looking at this picture, trying to figure out why on earth Mark was wearing his dressier shoes for this hike. Weirdo! ;) After coming to the end of the Switchback trail, we heard rushing water and figured we must be coming upon a waterfall, so we followed the sound, and we found a little babbling brook coming down the mountain.
Our one regret about this day climbing Mount Marathon was that we didn't start sooner and bring a sack lunch with us. It would have been nice to not be in a hurry to get back down the mountain before it got dark, and maybe we would have actually made it all the way up.
We found some wetter parts of the trail (I was GIDDY when we came across these incredible flat stretches, even if they were muddy at times).
It was just incredibly beautiful here! It felt mystical wandering through the jungle-like trails: So peaceful, so serene.
We would occasionally come to a clearing, which would allow us little peaks at the views to come!
I know you're totally curious as to how we took that picture of the two of us with nowhere to set our camera in the wilderness, no? Yeah, we totally dangled the DSLR from this sign and hoped that it would take a decent shot without blowing in the {non-existent} wind.
At this point, we were about 2/3 of the way up the mountain, but seriously - we just couldn't make it further. We wandered for a little while, but we were wiped, moving way slower than we should have been, and it was getting later in the day. We were terrified of getting stuck here in the dark, so we stopped and started back down shortly after.
Not to mention, we started coming across moose tracks...fresh ones...in hoardes. And moose poop.
But we did go slightly further, then trekked back into the brush a little bit, behind some trees, until we saw this:
Here's the place where we saw the imprint of where a moose had layed!! Crazy!!
We made it all the way to here...and there was the top of Mount Marathon, but after we talked a bit with a guy who regularly hikes the trail, he said even an experienced hiker would take at least another hour of hiking to get to the top there, so we decided to call it quits.
The hike back down the mountain proved almost as difficult as it was getting up! Our knees were killing us by the time we made it down!
It was an incredible hike, and one of those memories I'll never forget! I would highly recommend it to anyone physically fit enough to not pass out with those insane inclines!
If you recall, in September 2011, we took our "babymoon" to Alaska when I was 17 weeks pregnant. There were some pretty hard-to-top memories from this trip. (In fact, FOUR of my Top Travel Memories are from this trip alone!)
While there, we did a LOT of hiking, and to be honest, this particular day started out pretty bland. Alaska was strange like that: You expect it to be all wilderness and what not, but when you're in the city, it's pretty regular, excepting that you're on the ocean and in the mountains at the same time.
We had a boring morning, rested a bit, and then around 2pm, we decided that we had enough energy to check out Mount Marathon.
We TOTALLY underestimated this hike. See, every year, there is a big race up and down the mountain, so we told ourselves, "Shoot - if people RUN up this hill, it can't be THAT big a deal to hike, right?" Oh.My.Goodness.
What we didn't realize was that the "race" up the hill looks a little more like this, than a full out sprint:
Yeah, totally ridiculously fit people about ready to pass out, and climbing slowly up the inclines. It's ridiculous. But, of course, I never researched that. And ya know, who really cared anyways, since we weren't racing, right? I mean, they have an entire safety course that people are encouraged to attend before taking on this race. And they encourage you to be well-schooled on how to get yourself down the mountain if injured because there is no medical staff along the way. It's a pretty hard core race! But I digress.
The mountain trail really starts RIGHT in town. We were expecting some winding road to take us a little ways out of town and then have a trail head and stuff, but literally we drove down this road, parked on one side of the street, and directly on the other side of the street was the trail head.
I'm sitting here puzzled when looking at this picture, trying to figure out why on earth Mark was wearing his dressier shoes for this hike. Weirdo! ;) After coming to the end of the Switchback trail, we heard rushing water and figured we must be coming upon a waterfall, so we followed the sound, and we found a little babbling brook coming down the mountain.
We found some wetter parts of the trail (I was GIDDY when we came across these incredible flat stretches, even if they were muddy at times).
It was just incredibly beautiful here! It felt mystical wandering through the jungle-like trails: So peaceful, so serene.
We would occasionally come to a clearing, which would allow us little peaks at the views to come!
I know you're totally curious as to how we took that picture of the two of us with nowhere to set our camera in the wilderness, no? Yeah, we totally dangled the DSLR from this sign and hoped that it would take a decent shot without blowing in the {non-existent} wind.
At this point, we were about 2/3 of the way up the mountain, but seriously - we just couldn't make it further. We wandered for a little while, but we were wiped, moving way slower than we should have been, and it was getting later in the day. We were terrified of getting stuck here in the dark, so we stopped and started back down shortly after.
Not to mention, we started coming across moose tracks...fresh ones...in hoardes. And moose poop.
But we did go slightly further, then trekked back into the brush a little bit, behind some trees, until we saw this:
Here's the place where we saw the imprint of where a moose had layed!! Crazy!!
We made it all the way to here...and there was the top of Mount Marathon, but after we talked a bit with a guy who regularly hikes the trail, he said even an experienced hiker would take at least another hour of hiking to get to the top there, so we decided to call it quits.
The hike back down the mountain proved almost as difficult as it was getting up! Our knees were killing us by the time we made it down!
Ugly Travel Moments: Helicopter Tour of Kaua'i, Hawaii (2010)
We had QUITE the adventure on our first trip to Hawaii. I know I've probably mentioned in every recap of Hawaii (both verbally and on the blog) how our first trip to Hawaii was seriously jaded by the fact that three days before we left for our trip, my husband tore his achilles tendon playing basketball.
We would have been out thousands of dollars, so the doctor gave him an orthopedic boot and pain killers and sent us on our way. There are SO many stories about this trip (none of which I believe I've ever disclosed on this blog), but the best (by FAR) was the helicopter tour of Kaua'i.
The hubby and I aren't light people, but Blue Hawaii's website stated that anyone weighing over 250lbs would have to pay an additional $100 due to having to give up a seat for balancing purposes. Well, the hubs was right around 248 before we left a week prior, so he was freaking out that he would be over the weight limit and have to pay more (especially since we had just spent 3 days gorging ourselves on Oahu), so he skipped breakfast that day. Did I mention he was on some serious pain killers (that say they are to be eaten WITH food) and had a torn Achilles tendon? Well, what I hadn't mentioned was that the doctor had recommended stool softeners, since the intense pain killers had been known to stop a person up, if you know what I mean.
Everything seemed to be going well. The pain killers had kicked in, we weighed in easy peasy (him at 235 - nothing to worry about at all!), and we sat down to watch the pre-flight video. Mark scarfed down a few granola bars, since he was in the clear weight-wise, but was pretty darn hungry still.
We finally boarded the helicopter (and those things seem WAY too tiny, btw), and got our headsets on and were ready to go. Our pilot, Kevin, introduced himself and explained how the headsets worked, and before we knew it, we were off!
We took in some INCREDIBLE views (seriously - nothing will likely top the views here!):
We also discovered that Mark gets sick in helicopters. Oh my goodness was it the worst experience ever. He was drenched in sweat from head to toe, his stomach was turning knots, and he felt nauseous the entire time.
The poor guy was elated when we finally landed!
We spent another couple hours back at the hotel after that so his stomach could get back to normal before we went on with our day.
That is one experience we will NEVER forget!
The hubby and I aren't light people, but Blue Hawaii's website stated that anyone weighing over 250lbs would have to pay an additional $100 due to having to give up a seat for balancing purposes. Well, the hubs was right around 248 before we left a week prior, so he was freaking out that he would be over the weight limit and have to pay more (especially since we had just spent 3 days gorging ourselves on Oahu), so he skipped breakfast that day. Did I mention he was on some serious pain killers (that say they are to be eaten WITH food) and had a torn Achilles tendon? Well, what I hadn't mentioned was that the doctor had recommended stool softeners, since the intense pain killers had been known to stop a person up, if you know what I mean.
Everything seemed to be going well. The pain killers had kicked in, we weighed in easy peasy (him at 235 - nothing to worry about at all!), and we sat down to watch the pre-flight video. Mark scarfed down a few granola bars, since he was in the clear weight-wise, but was pretty darn hungry still.
We finally boarded the helicopter (and those things seem WAY too tiny, btw), and got our headsets on and were ready to go. Our pilot, Kevin, introduced himself and explained how the headsets worked, and before we knew it, we were off!
The poor guy was elated when we finally landed!
That is one experience we will NEVER forget!
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