The weekend at Joe’s cabin was fantastic. It was kind of like camping, but not. Check out the view:
Wendy, Matt, and I stopped to eat at the Y (seriously) in Garrison, at an oldtimey bar called Wit’s End. We then headed up to the cabin, where we spent most of the night playing cards and making questionable decisions til 3am.
Matt and I slept in the gazebo! As Joe said, it was like a huge wooden tent. The downside to sleeping in a gazebo was 1) the crazy loud loons in the morning and 2) the fact that everything was totally covered in condensation in the morning. We were damp.
Saturday morning, we headed toward Brainerd and Nisswa. We made the obligatory stop at Paul Bunyan, of course…
Then we stopped at a place called Ye Old Pickle Factory for lunch. It looked decent on the outside, but we soon discovered that their menu consisted of about 12 different deep-fried appetizers, and two different brands of frozen pizza. We weren’t really too sad about that, though.
We wandered around Nisswa, then went to meet Missy, Joe, Klein, and Steph at Pirate’s Cove for a rousing game of mini-golf. Things weren’t going all that well for me and Wendy til Matt lost his ball in the water hazard. That helped a lot.
After some chilling back at the cabin, we all headed back to Nisswa for dinner at Zorbaz. We’d never been there in the evening, but it was exactly as expected: full of sunburnt families and super-trashy ladies. Also, bachelorette parties, of course. We headed back to the cabin afterwards and spent the night around the campfire. Perfect.
We managed to drive back into the city right as Target Field shot off the fireworks during the national anthem, which was awesome. I spent the rest of the day trying to stay awake, which worked for all but 45 minutes while I napped on the couch. I think I got about one night’s worth of sleep in the gazebo, so I had some catching up to do.
Last night, we went to Eagan to celebrate my mom’s birthday. She showed us photos of their trip to Quebec to see the ancestral homeland. I’ve heard Quebec City was amazing, but holy crap. I really want to go now, despite its being full of Canadians!