Vacation

After years of traveling to visit family on every bit of time off we had we finally took our first ever full family vacation last weekend. We headed up to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area on Thursday and drove back on Monday. Amy had taken on travel agent duties and managed to pick a weekend where the weather was perfect, chose activities that elicited no complaining and managed to keep us from blowing the budget.

Thursday's drive was fairly uneventful, but somewhat nostalgic for me. I hadn't been to the Twin Cities since 1994 when Amy was doing shows at Valley Fair and some of the roads we were on were familiar friends from countless trips to the North Shore and Grandpa and Grandma's cabin in Canada. I kept thinking about those trips as much as I was thinking about the one we were on.

We arrived late in the afternoon and had time to get settled in at the hotel and have some supper before a swim at the pool. When we hit the pool, we discovered that we would be sharing the weekend with at least two, maybe three pre-pubescent girls softball teams who were in town for a tournament. Needless to say, the pool was not a quiet place of recreation nor was the hot tub a place of quiet retreat. The sheer numbers of kids in the pool at times was well beyond the printed capacity on the pool rules sign and the volume produced nearly required the use of hearing protection. Of course, pre-teen girls are known to scream at the slightest opportunity and can raise their normal speaking voices a full octave and about 40 decibels when trying to speak to one another in a hot tub in an already sonically cluttered space. This was to be our swimming experience our first three nights at the hotel.

Their last night was Saturday and it was the worst of the bunch. All of the coaches and parents that were in town for the tournament were at the hotel as well as the kids. All of the kids were in the pool. All of the adults were on the deck, bottled beverage of choice in hand. I looked around at one point and estimated that there were sixty kids in the pool area and Amy and I were the only adults. Absolutely ridiculous.

After being in the pool for an hour or so on Thursday we headed back to the room to recover our hearing and slow down a bit. Shrek the Third was on pay-per-view so we went ahead and ordered it and hung out in the room for the rest of the night.

Friday, we slept in, hit the pool for awhile (with less kids) and then headed out for the day's activities at the Mall of America. Our primary objective for the MOA was the Lego Activity Center since that is Mecca to a certain seven year old boy that resides with us. Xander was in heaven as he looked at all of the cool displays and saw everything that was for sale there. We had budgeted for some personal spending, so we gave him his spending limit and the freedom to decide what he wanted to get. He made out like a bandit and was chomping at the bit by the end of the day to get back to the hotel so he could start building.

We hit a few more stores and looked for lunch before hitting the rest of the mall. Amy picked up a dress and Maia picked up a couple of princess dolls at the Disney Store (which she held onto for the remainder of the day) before we hit Underwater Adventures aquarium. My Dad had told me we had to check it out and it was very cool. It's an underground aquarium with freshwater and saltwater portions where you are walking through a tunnel with aquatic life swimming next to and over you.

One final stop at the bookstore for me and we were on our way back to the hotel. I picked up and devoured Michael Berry's Inside the Postal Bus which is a book about the 2004 season of the US Postal Cycling Team's season from the perspective of one of the riders. It was a fun read and I finished it before we got home.

Saturday's itinerary was to sleep in late, eat breakfast, hit the pool and then head to the Minnesota Children's Museum in St. Paul. They had a lot of great exhibits for the kiddos which made for a pretty full day. Xander's favorites were a block assembly, conveyor belt set up in the Curious George exhibit and some of the waterworks displays. I'm not sure of Maia's favorites, but the one she spent the most time engaged with was a painting on rocks exhibit on the roof of the building where a small stream flowed and the kids could wet their brushes and "paint" designs on the rocks with water. They would evaporate shortly, leaving a clean canvas for more creativity.

The one downside of the museum was that they didn't really have anything to eat there, so we had to venture out for lunch midway through the day. We hit a restaurant with some outdoor seating and people watched in this little town squaresque setting. We started the meal with a good amount of shade from buildings and trees, but the longer our food took to arrive, the more sun we were taking on. By the time the food arrived, we were completely in the sun and melting. Thankfully, we were able to secure an umbrella from the table and finished things out fairly comfortably. Then it was back to the museum followed by a trip back to the hotel for food and swimming.

Sunday varied a little from the other days in the morning routine as we slept in late, ate breakfast and then skipped the pool routine to head to church. We went to Spirit Garage which is an emergent, highly aesthetic, artist friendly church that meets in The Music Box Theater in downtown Minneapolis. The environment was pretty cool, the people were friendly and I can now say that I've been to church where dog owners are free to bring their pets as we saw two dogs in the service who were purely ornamental and served no discernible service such as being a guide dog (although there was one blind guy there as well).

After church, we grabbed some lunch at Pottbelly's before heading for our afternoon destination at Cascade Bay waterpark. Cascade Bay is in Eagan and is essentially an overblown municipal pool with several water slides, a lazy river, mini golf and other features. It was the one day of our trip that was over 90 degrees and the water felt great. We hung out for four hours or so taking everything in. Amy and I enjoyed the slides and took turns watching the kids so that we could ride them. We spent some time on the lazy river where Xander made laps as fast as he could while the rest of us enjoyed the lazy aspect of the river. The only way we knew what time it was is that they clear the pool for five minutes every hour for a "safety break". It got to the point where I was pretty dialed in on when these were going to happen and we managed to spend two of the breaks on the lazy river which they keep operating at all times. It was a good place to hang out for the day and meant we did not have to spend the evening in the hotel pool.

Monday morning we slept in late, ate breakfast (seeing a trend yet?) and then went down for a final swim in the pool. The hot tub was closed for treatment, but the water temp in the pool was very warm, so we didn't mind. We had the place to ourselves for the better part of an hour since all the softballers had gone home and enjoyed the much more relaxing atmosphere. We wound up hanging in the pool until 10:30 or so and then headed up to the room to clean, pack and check out.

The drive home was leisurely. We ate at Emma Krumbee's Restaurant in Belle Plaine which I remember from so many drives through the area and managed to make it home around 5:00. We had a chance to unpack and reacclimate before turning in for the night.

All told, I think our travel agent deserves big kudos for planning a good mix of activity and downtime that we could all enjoy, choosing a time when the weather was neither too hot or stormy and preparing and keeping us on budget. Hopefully it will be the first of many family vacations to come.

For photos & Amy's take on vacation, click here.