Touch of Class

Yes, I know it has been a while, but I’ve been busy.  Now….not so much.  They closed our gym a few weeks ago due to the virus while my daughter and her family were visiting.  We decided that we would take a walk each morning to get some exercise.  First day out, Friday the 13th, on the way back home, I tripped.  I did one of those slow motion, running fast, trying to catch up to my body, tuck and roll.  CRASH!  I fell mostly on my left shoulder blade and side.  As I laid there swearing in pain (I think it is the first time my daughter has heard me use the Fenhimer word) I did what every person of age and wisdom does, I laid there and figured out what I broke and tried to catch my breath.  Huh….arm moves…..legs move….head doesn’t hurt.  Hells bells, I don’t think I broke anything

I was able to get up with the help of Gary and my daughter, but as the day progressed, I am hobbling more and more.  I think I cracked a rib but no way am I going to the Doctor, ER or Urgent care because who is there?  You got it.  All the sick people are there and I definitely don’t want that.  So here I am, 11 days later, still not up to full speed but getting there, so I decided, seeing as I am confined to home, I might as well post fun pictures and facts for the rest of you stuck at home.

I hope you enjoy it.

We were all pumped for our second day.  We had tickets for a horse carriage tour around downtown Charleston.  We raced downstairs to have breakfast and get our name on the shuttle list.  Dang it!  The only place the shuttle goes to is the cruise docks.  They give people who are going on a cruise a discount on the hotel room and a shuttle ride to the boat if they spend their 1st night in their hotel.  Good for them, bad for us.

Well we checked the weather again.  Another hot and humid day.  I guess we’ll take the car into town and then do some sightseeing in the air conditioned comfort of the car.  Good plan.

So we checked out the parking to find a cheaper spot and we headed out.  The horse carriage place we went to was Palmetto Carriage Tours.  They told us all the horses were brought back to a place where they got plenty of water and big fans blew on them.  I hope they weren’t lying.

So we were loaded into our carriage with another family.  Of our two fillies, one was relatively new to the game and the other had been doing her job for a few years.  The girl told us about the term “slacker” and told us the new filly was a “slacker” because she let the other horse do most of the pulling so her leads were slack.  She required a little more “giddy ups” the the other horse 😊 .

Each carriage has to stop at a little building where they are given a number to put on their carriage and they draw a route to take.  This way not everyone is on the same route clogging up the streets.  Remember when I said the streets were narrow?  They were barely big enough for the carriage and a car to pass at the same time.

So here is a carriage

Pretty

Not ours, but you get the drift.  The girl we had was real and good and very informative.  Did you know what the reason was for the side porches or piazzas, on the houses?

Another house

House with side porch

Not only did the porch allow them to catch a cool breeze when it was hot but if the door was open, it meant, come on in for a visit.  If it was closed, the ladies of the house were probably out there in their unmentionables.

We also drove by the old jail

Old Jail

The girl was telling us about how the jail had no running water or electric.  They closed the jail because they thought it was too inhumane for the prisoners.  Later, much later, they put a day care in there!  I certainly hope they put in electric and running water for the kids.  Today it is kind of a white elephant and is only used for haunted tours.

She told us about many interesting facts as we drove around.  I’ll give her and her horses credit for handling the traffic and loud noises.  One road we went down, we had to pull over to the side because a garbage truck came down the road at the same time.  While we were pulled over, the garbage truck stopped and took out the trash.  Those poor horses were scared by the loud noise but the girl talked to them and kept them some what calm.

When we were done with the carriage ride, we hopped in the car and I drove where ever Gary told me to go.  I adjusted my side mirrors so I could see how close I was to objects that we passed.  We decided to head down by the ocean to a park that was there

Park down by the water

From there we could see the cruise ship dock

Cruise ship

And I saw this weird tree there

Weird tree

I wonder what those nubs are for?  When is Google going to come out with an app where you can take a picture of something and Google will tell me what it is.  That would be soooo helpful.

What is that?

We saw a pilot boat

Pilot boat like the one from our Alaskan cruise

and we found a beach

Sun bathers

I don’t know, sitting out in the sun is not my idea of a good time.  And look at sign we saw there

Sign at beach

So there are only deadly rip currents to the left?  And who came up with that fine?  $1040.00?  That’s a weird amount.  Plus you have a bunch of other rules you have to obey

More signs at beach

Geez!  You just can’t have any fun anymore ☹.

After we drove around a bunch more, we headed back to the hotel.   As I was sitting in a chair in the room, I happened to glance up

What????C

“Contact with sprinkler will cause flooding”  Haha!  Holy hoot!  Who hangs up their clothes on a fire sprinkler?  Geez people, where is your common sense?  I’m always amazed at how stupid people can be.

Well, back to reality tomorrow.

Visiting the city of Charleston, SC, is another bucket list item that we got to cross off our list.

We found a LaQuinta (that didn’t charge for pets) and Smokie settled right in

Make your self at home Smokie

Not only did this place not charge for the cat but there was a marina right across the road!

A marina across from the hotel

Plus they had a shuttle van to downtown Charleston.  Score!  And there was a fantastic restaurant right down the road called California Dreamin.  Yummy, Yummy!  So many good things all in one spot, how did we luck out?

The restaurant that was within walking distance of the hotel, we ate there every night.  It had a superb view of the harbor.  We ate in the elevated bar as those seats were first come first serve, and we got the best seats in the house.  One of the things they had there was a house salad.  Now I am not much of a salad eater, after all, lettuce is for rabbits, but the salad they had there and their house dressing was to die for!  I had it every night.  As Gary really liked it to, I told him I could Google it and get the recipe so I could make it at home.   Guess what it has in it?  BACON GREASE!  Bacon Grease! Ah shoot, that will teach me to find out the ingredients of something I like.  I am so disappointed and slightly grossed out.  I’m not a big fan of grease and things with thick white fat in it

Anyway, before we left Minnesota, I had done some research about what to see and what to do.  I checked out and bought some tourist attraction events for Charleston.  One was a harbor cruise and the other was a horse drawn carriage ride thru the old part of the town.  Hopefully we will have better results from the pre-purchasing of tickets than we did in Minnesota 😉.

The first day of our visit we decided to go on the harbor cruise.  We had some time to kill after breakfast so we decided to check out the marina across the street.  It was small, based on what we were used to, but it had some very high dry stack, 5 high.

Wow!

Just think of the size of that fork lift.  Geeez!   We decided that the most popular motor was

Yamaha’s

That says something when most of these boats have a Yamaha on them.  Or maybe that’s all they sell here 😉.

After we spooked around a little, we went back to the hotel to jump on the FREE shuttle.  Again, a big fat FAIL on pre-purchasing tickets.  Guess what?  It’s really HOT in Charleston in the summer.  I should have checked out the “feels like” temperature and not just the temperature.   It was in the 90’s with high humidity so the feels like temperature was in the 100’s.  I could have gone to Florida for these temperatures, oh yah, I’m going there next.  I’m melting, melting…..but dang it, we’re here and the room is already paid for, so lets get to it!

The shuttle van dropped us off at the

US Custom House.

This is a historical building that began being built in 1853.  In 1860, construction stopped as it is too costly to finish it.  The building was partially damaged during the civil war.  In 1870 they began construction on the building and finally finished it in 1879.  That’s a long time, I bet that contractor didn’t get a bonus!

We only saw 2 people go in the building.  I guess it doesn’t draw much traffic, after all, there is nothing to eat, drink or buy in that building.  Unlike the City Market, but more on that later.

First things first.  When the guy dropped us off, my first thought is lets remember what streets we are on so we can find our way back to the shuttle at the end of the day.  As we were being driven into town, I noticed the streets are super narrow

Very Narrow Streets

The driver told us on certain days, the meters are turns off and the whole street becomes a parking lot.  I was very glad I wasn’t driving, I was cringing and moving away from the side of the van as we narrowly missed cars and trucks.

Once we were dropped off, we had about a 5 block walk to get to the harbor where our tour boat was supposed to be.  It was a hot fast walk and Gary was hot and sweaty by the time we arrived.

Gary waiting for boat loading

I already had the tickets (see above) for the ride so I bought both of us nice cold bottles of water to help cool us down.  They had no place to sit in the shade and we had to wait 20 minutes before they would let us on the boat.  I found a little shade and breeze in the shade of a pillar and Gary finally found some shade and a bench about a block away.  We waited until almost everyone had boarded the boat, I called Gary, and he hustled back so we could get on the boat.  Here is the boat we got on

Carolina Belle

Naturally we beat feet to the air conditioned bottom section.  The air conditioning was super nice, the smell…not so much.  By the looks of this carpeting and the smell inside,

Smoke dingy carpet

I am pretty sure they used to allow smoking in here.

So this boat has big windows around the whole lower lever with chairs directly in front of the windows so you can sit and look out the windows.  Little did we know, the boat was going to travel in a counter clock wise path so the only good view would be out the windows on the port side.  I was able to grab a table in the middle, underneath an air conditioner vent (Gary says he keeps me around cause I’m smart😉 .  Some of the things we saw were

Fort Sumter

Cannon at Fort Sumter

Ft Sumter flag

Ft Sumter

How would you like to be those people on that black thing in 90 degree heat?  No…thank….you!

Some important person’s house

The Captain, who was a woman I might add, was giving the tour as she drove.  Pretty impressed she could do both things at once.  LOL, just kidding ladies 😉.  This was a famous someone’s house, don’t remember who but it had been remodeled several times and it was on the point so it had a fantastic view.

I took a zoom up of this boat coming into the harbor

Pushing a big wave

Look at that wave he is pushin.

They had a air craft carrier, USS Yorktown, you could go on, but again, black deck, super hot, I think I’ll pass.  The Captain of our boat was talking about how the city had gotten funding to spruce up the air craft carrier but not the submarine they had on display

Submarine

You can see, it needs a little work.

We had a good cool ride and the Captain of the boat was very informative, so all in all, a good buy.

After we got off the boat we noticed these boats on the next dock.  Look at how far out of the water they are on their lifts

Low tide

Quite a tidal swing huh?  It would be a bummer to drop anything off the boat while it was on this lift ☹.

By the time we made the walk back into town, it was really steaming hot.  We had like 4 hours to kill before the shuttle came to pick us up.  Hmmm, I guess it is time to have some lunch.  We stopped at one of the first restaurants we came to called Hooked Seafood.

Lunch time

We both wanted a large glass of water and someplace cool to sit.  They brought us a large bottle of ice cold water and brought us another one before we were all done.  No air conditioning at this place but they did sit us under a ceiling fan so we could get a breeze and we were in the shade.  I don’t remember what we had so I guess it wasn’t that memorable but it cost us $35 for our pleasure.  We did see the Oscar Mayer Hot Dog Mobile!

Oscar Mayer Mobile, here it comes

Hot Dog Mobile, there it goes

I don’t think in all our travels I have seen one this close.  Another bucket list item to cross off 😉.

We still had 3 hours to kill so we decided to hit the City Market.

City Market

This was the beginning of it and it went on and on for blocks.

Inside City Market

No air but at least it was in the shade.  Almost every booth sold these baskets

Baskets from City Market

Each booth had some old woman weaving a basket.  I guess they want you think she weaved all the baskets and they didn’t really buy them from China or India.  Apparently these baskets were used to winnow rice.  Winnow rice?  Yah, I didn’t know what that meant either.  Here is what Google says “Threshing, which is the loosening of grain or seeds from the husks and straw, comes before winnowing. In its simplest form it involves throwing the mixture into the air so that the wind blows away the lighter chaff. The heavier grains fall back down for recovery. ”   This blog is so educational 😉.

I can only stand so much shopping and we were still very hot, so we ducked in a IHOP (who’d a thunk there would be an IHOP in historic downtown Charleston?).  There were a few other people in there with the same idea as us.  We ordered a couple of milk shakes and sucked on them for over an hour.  They weren’t that busy so our waiter didn’t seem to mind we were just hanging out there.  Finally we were ready to head back to the shuttle and our nice cool hotel room.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a little cooler.

We always like to go to my brothers store and help them out over the 4th.  We make sure they are well fed and let the dogs out while they are busy working.  I love helping put away the groceries, so much fun 😉.  Their employees, who are 16, think I’m kinda crazy.   Oh well, I have fun.  And Gary gets a chance to ride our son’s FatBoy on the trip up.

Bike ride

My sister-in-law was able to sneak a nap in only   during the summer it’s only a one dog nap

One dog night

No matter how busy you are, there is always time for a nap…..or two 😉.

One of the times I was walking the dogs, I noticed a mail box

Mail Call!

It must belong to me squirrel LOL.  He really should take better care of his mail box.  Doesn’t he know the mail won’t be delivered to a damaged box?

While we were there this cool boat came into the parking lot

Old boat

Nice!  Gary said it looked like the one his parents had when he was a kid.

When we visited my brother on the second time, we were able to take a trip in their GMC motor home.

a Ride on a GMC

We took a drive to Duluth.  Man!  Has that place changed.  I hadn’t been there in years.  There were just so many people there, and things had changed so much, I was amazed.  The harbor park was packed.  You should of seen the looks we got from people as we drove around in this 70’s vintage GMC.  What a blast!  We were trying to find a spot to park this beast when we spotted a big line of empty parking meters.  How did we luck out?  Quick, pull over!  Oh crap, they are handicapped meters.  Sometimes we are mentally handicapped, does that count?  Dang, so we drove around some more until we found a parking lot that had quite a few empty spots.  We scoped it out by driving around the perimeter to make sure we could get in AND get out.  Everything looked good, so we pulled in and parked.   We had to pay for 2 spots but that’s OK, I was just glad we found a spot.  We were real close to the harbor entrance so we took off to check it out.

We had to take a selfie, first with the lighthouse in the back ground

Duluth light house

Then with the lift bridge in the back ground

Duluth lift bridge

I gotta learn how to smile better, I look like a dope! LOL.  But you can tell who my brother is haha!

We went to the Maritime museum there.  My sis-in-law had never been in it before.  Then  we went to lunch at Grandma’s, kind of a requirement isn’t it?  By the time we got home we had a lovely sunset

Beautiful sunset

We made it back to our daughter’s home and next thing you know, it was getting close for us to leave, I think the dog sensed something

Aaaah, we’ll be back

Even though we were leaving, we did plan a stop over in Charleston SC.  Oh boy!

We had most of Sunday to keep them busy before we took them to the secret place for dinner.  I found a place I was sure they would love that we were going to take them to.  We had some time to kill before we left so they had a little quite time with their tablets

Quiet tablet time

And here I thought only cats liked empty boxes

I made them clean up the livingroom, pick up their dirty clothes and put away their toys.  What the heck, when you have cheap labor, you  gotta take advantage of it LOL.

We took the kids to the grocery store to restock the homestead and to kill some time before the we took them to the big secret place for dinner.  I pushed one cart to put the food in and Gary pushed the other cart to keep the kids corralled in

Fun times in the grocery cart

You gotta get them the free cookie at the grocery store, that goes without saying.  They were pretty good.  There wasn’t any “I want that” “Can we get this”.  It had been a long, long, long time since I took kids to the grocery store, especially when they fit a cart.  There was one little boy (luckily not one of ours), that was having a meltdown in one of the isles.  He wanted something and mom said no.  Such a fuss!  Then later, that same mom and her two kids were a few rows down from our check out cashier.  Again, he wanted something and mom said no.  A bigger melt down, screaming….yelling.  Both the mom and the cashier were trying all sorts of things to get him to chill out.  Holy Hoot!  I think he needs a good swat on that butt, but I am old school and I’d probably get arrested if I did that in public now a days, especially to a kid that wasn’t mine .   I looked at my two charges and they were a little angels compared to that kid.  Good job Mom and Dad!

The time finally came when we could take them to the secret place for dinner.  I told my daughter that we were going to take the kids to Chuck E Cheese on Sunday.  She said the oldest one would be so excited because he had asked several times if they could go there.  We took our kids to one a few times back in the day.  We even got a free pizza once when Gary sat in a chair and the leg broke.  If we were smart, we could of sued them and be living in Naples now LOL.

Anyway, we took the kids there.  As we drove up the older one said.  “Are we going here?”  I said “Yes!  Are you excited?”, he said “We can’t go here.”  “Why?” I asked, he said “Cause mom said we can’t come here till we are 10!”  Ah ha!  Caught you mom LOL.   He was very glad to know he didn’t have to wait till he was 10 in order to go in.

They do have a nice system there where they stamp your left had with an invisible number.  Each family member has the same number and then when you leave, they run a flashlight over your hand and make sure all the numbers matched.  That made me feel better to leave the older one run around on his own so I could walk around with the little guy.   Gary got off easy, he turned down his hearing aids and sat and held the table.

The Chuck E Cheese of today is far different from the Chuck E Cheese of our kids day.  Many more electronic games.  They still had the stage for the show but it was way in the back of the place and we couldn’t see it at all.  The way the games work is you buy a card that they load time on to, kind of like a credit card.  There is a machine where you can pause the time, check the time and add more time to the card.  With the card, you get unlimited access to ALL the games for the amount of time you have on the card.  You could tell the kids who had been there before.  They knew which machines gave out the most tickets and how to work them.   The ones that gave out tickets, some were based on skill and others were based on persistence.  This one kid I saw, I knew he was going to be a slot machine gambler when he grew up.  He had a huge pile of tickets at his feet, they were coming out of the machine and neatly folding themselves.  He had one hand on his card as he held it up against the area where you wave it to get your “free” game, and his other hand was pushing the button to make the game go.  It was one of those games where coins fell and were eventually pushed off a ledge and you’d get tickets for the amount of money that fell off the ledge.  He was going a good job.

Then there were the parents that figured out how to get the most bang for their buck and really use the cards.  Instead of buying a card for each kid, like we did, they bought one card, had their 5 kids stay in close proximity to him, and he wanded the card over whatever game the 5 kids were playing.  Man!  He knew how to work the system.

Finally we had pizza and chicken nuggets for dinner

Yummy Pizza

The chicken nuggets seemed like a rip to me but I guess they tasted good cause the big one gobbled them up without a complaint.  I must say the pizza was surprisingly taste.  Seeing as I was a responsible adult, I made the boys eat some dinner before they could go back and play.  Score another point for Mema.

The big one went around and played a bunch of games and collected his tickets

Skeet ball

I walked around with the little one and helped him play games.  We played wack-a-mole and he hurt his hand and started to cry.  I gave him the old kiss on the boo boo and he was fine, then I finished his game for him 😊.

They had a couple of rides that were like the pony rides that used to cost a quarter or maybe a nickel depending upon how old you were, that sat outside of the 5¢ and 10¢ store.  You remember those don’t ya?  Well the little one went on a car ride and a took a ride on Noah’s Ark.  Both times this cute little blond climbed up in the seat with him and got a free ride.  Of course the little one was more interested in the blonde then the ride.  I think he is going to be T-R-O-U-B-L-E when he gets older LOL 😉.

Toward the end of the day they both found these snowmobile rides.

Watch me go!

They were able to pick their guy, their snowmobile, the special effects of the snowmobile…..all this was accomplished by the continual hitting of buttons until the ride started.  The little one held on and went at full throttle throughout the entire game.  He took 1^st and 2^nd place a few times.  The older one drove carefully and slowly thru the course, till I told him to HIT IT!  Then he jumped, slammed, and flew over the course, he took 7^th place a few times.

7th Place winner!

Now for two kids that were just screwing around, they did dang good against more experienced and older riders who were able to put their names in the game.  Good job boys!

So at the end of the day we gathered up the tickets and took them to the ticket counting machine.  You insert your tickets and a piece of paper spits out telling you how many tickets they got.  683.  We went to the place where you can cash in your tickets for prizes.  What did they get? 3 tootsie rolls, 3 very small suckers and a couple of tattoos.  Oh well, they sure had fun.

Now we know the tricks of the trade so when the kids are 10 and we bring them back, we’ll know just what to do.

Our last night of watching the kids went well.  By the time we got home they were warn out and almost ready for bed.  I brushed their teeth again and even gave them a shower.  We said our prayers, I tucked them in and got that stupid night light with stars to go on.  Gary and I put our feet up and patted ourselves on the back for not losing anyone nor making a trip to the ER.  We decided we are glad we didn’t have any little ones anymore, they are just too exhausting LOL.

One week end, my daughter and her husband wanted to go away for a weekend to celebrate their wedding anniversary.  And they wanted Gary and I to watch their kids for 3 days and nights!  Great Caesars Ghost!  I hope we don’t kill or maim any of them.  It has been a long time since we had to wipe butts and make sure no one got hurt or killed, so we made a plan.  Wear them out during the day so they would fall asleep at night with no complaints.

The first night I fed them what every kid likes

Is it soup yet?

Whoops, a little burnt

Looks yummy huh?  One likes soup, one likes the grilled cheese, Grandpa and Grandma like both.  A win win situation and easy to make.  First night done without a hitch.  I even brushed their teeth!  Good job Mema!

Second day we were going to take them to the Minnesota Zoo.  Big place, lots of walking, the kids will fall asleep by 6.  I figured we could save some time and avoid the long check-in lines so I bought the tickets on line in advance.  I checked the weather and it looked pretty good.  We make plans, and God laughs.  It ended up raining the day we went ☹, at least the part of the day we were there.

We figured we’d start out early so we could get there before it got too crowded.  As we are traveling on 494 I saw an overhead sign that said the road is closed at Hardman Ave.  What?  They aren’t going to close down the whole 494!  Hardman Ave exit must be closed.  As we got closer we came to a screeching halt.  Nope, they closed down the whole 494 and had everyone exit at Hardman, all 5 lanes of us.  So we begin inching along the highway.  The kids were really good.  You just had to point out all the interesting things you see as you creep along.  Look!  That lady is putting on her make-up!  Look at that cooler along the side of the road!  Look at that cool truck!  That person looks like they are grooving to the music!  So many things to see as you putt along.

We figured it wouldn’t be too much of  detour once we got off 494, we’d just snake around and get back on 494 on Concord.  ARG! Concord was closed for construction!  Welcome to Minnesota’s other season (I like it almost as much as I like winter).  So there were a zillion cars, all floundering around South St. Paul, smelling all the wonderful smells of South St. Paul, trying to figure out how to get back on 494.    Luckily, we had a former Truck driver at the wheel and Gary got us to Hwy 52 and back on to 494.

After our long detour, we finally made it to the zoo.

Minnesota Zoo

I am so glad I bought those tickets ahead of time to avoid the lines.  That did me no good at all, I still had to stand in line to show them the ticket I printed out.  And the $7.00 I paid for parking.  Skip that one next time, we’ll just say someone dropped us off.  There is no one to check to see if you parked your car or not.  Okay, okay, enough complaining, what did you see?

The first thing we saw was a small gift shop right as you walk in, of course the kids wanted to buy something right away.  “When we leave, if you are good, we’ll get you something”….always good to have a little bribery  to help keep the kids in line 😉.  And those sneaky Zoo people putting that gift shop right as you walk in knowing those doting Grandparents are going to buy their little kiddos something.

There was a fish feeding exhibit in the aquatic area that started soon and I wanted to go there first. We had to run past a bunch of exhibits to get to the fish tank on time

Aquarium

You can see the person’s long yellow hose that she is breathing out of.  She was talking to us and telling us all about the fish in the tank and what they liked to eat.  Well that was interesting…….for about 5 minutes and then they wanted to move on to see the other animals 😊.  I didn’t even get to see the whole show ☹.

So instead we saw a

Kimono Dragon

Can you see him?  He is lying on that log.  We walked by him several times and he never moved.  Maybe he’s stuffed LOL.

Then we saw some

Flamingos

When you’re the shortest guy in the group, a little help from Papa helps

Thanks for the boost Papa

Then we saw some rams

Hold your nose

At least I think they were rams.  What ever they were they looked like they were molting and they stunk a little too.  Let’s move on….

We saw lots of moneys

No! I am not a racoon!

Such a long pretty tail

And a few penguins

Penguins (no, that is not the ocean behind them)

Why can’t I climb up as high as those kids?

Most of the time the boys were more interested in what they could climb on or crawl into, must be a boy thing.

Then everyone was hungry and we had to stop for lunch

When will the buzzer go off?

Yum!  Hot Dogs, French Fries, and milk.  Grandparents get to feed them anything Hee hee hee 😉.

Unfortunately, the rain didn’t let up while we were there.

Whoa is me, where is my burlap sack?

Poor monkey, sittin in the rain all by himself.  The other monkeys seemed to ignore the poor little monkey by the pond.

I wish it would quit raining

Luckily, there were several trails inside that we could follow and explore.  There were several spots along the way that had places for the boys to climb on and tunnels to crawl into, like this one

Tunnel fun

That was great fun.  They’d go in and stay in there for hours!  Gary and I would head to the bar and have a few brews and come back to get them.  NOT!  What kind of Grandparents do you think we are?  We watched them like hawks to make sure no one grabbed them.  Gary would be at one end of the tunnel and I would be at the other, that way they couldn’t escape.   It would not be good if someone got snatched.  Oh sorry, we lost your kids at the zoo ☹.

After we saw everything we could and because the oldest grandson kept asking, we let them stop at that little shop and pick out a toy.  Luckily I avoided the very large gift shop with sooooo many choices, otherwise we’d still be there.

We arrived home with no traffic jams and no detours.  That night we served them Culvers, easy pezy.  Kids meals all around, which include a free scoop of ice cream.  Perfect ending to an almost perfect day.  And I remembered to brush their teeth again.  Hey!  I’m getting the hang of this LOL.

One of our main purposes of heading to Minnesota is to visit the little ones

All Three of them

Aren’t they cute?  Of course they are, what kind of Grandmother would I be if I didn’t think my grand-kids are the best ones in the world?  Even the grand-dog

So, what did we do with the kids?  We went to swimming lessons

Older grandson

Here he is swimming

This is the older one’s 6th session of lessons.  He’s like a fish in the water.  So much better than his other class mates.  As a Grandma I have bragging rights.  I assume having Grandparents in Minnesota with a pool helps with the being a fish too 😉

Ours is the one with no shirt

Fun splashing on the side

The little one is just learning.  He is pretty brave though.  I hated my swimming lessons when I was little.  The best thing about them was we stopped at Dairy Queen on the way home LOL.

Dairy Queen on Lexington and Larpentuer

Ok, siblings….who remembers stopping at Dairy Queen for a push-up?

When we weren’t going to swimming lessons, we were going to the first stage of baseball, T-ball.  Always entertaining, sometimes surprising.  I’ve always enjoyed watching kids baseball.  (adult baseball can be too boring at times and too much spitting and butt scratching 😉)  We were only able to see one game and one tournament.  At the game, our grandson did pretty good

Batter, batter….swing!

then once he was on base

Watching the coach for his signal

At this stage of the game, everyone gets to bat and they don’t keep score so after they went thru the roster

Standing at the ready

He seemed to play infield during this game.  Others on his team were less impressive

What not to do when in the out field

The agony of defeat or just boredom?

I must say though, some of the kids really could hit and catch, I was impressed.

We did other fun things with the kids but our biggest challenge yet….a weekend with the grandkids…..all ALONE!

Dendrology…do you think that’s a word I use in my vocabulary?  Heck no!  I am so glad Google is so knowable 😉.

One thing I really notice when coming back to visit in Minnesota, especially during the summer time, is Minnesota is so much more greener, and bushier than Florida.   Minnesota has more pine trees.

Beautiful pine tree

While Florida has a Norfolk pine.

Norfolk pine

Sure, Minnesota has those too.  We had one in our dining room at our house in Minnesota.  But the ones in Florida grow 80 feet tall!

In Minnesota your trees are so full and bushy and have big green leaves.

Minnesota Oak Tree

Here is a Florida Oak tree

Florida Live Oak Tree

Isn’t that funny that those are both oak trees.  How different can a species be.

Florida has tall skinny palm trees,

Tall and graceful Palm Trees

and Minnesota really doesn’t have anything to compare to the palm trees.

We did see this nicely shaped tree on the way to the cemetery that looks like an open umbrella

That is the first one like that I’ve seen in all the years I lived in Minnesota.  I guess I should have gotten out more.  The only places I’ve seen trees like these are in the more affluent parts of Florida.

Plus Florida has these cool Banyan trees.

Banyan Tree

Of course the biggest difference between Minnesota and Florida dendrology is in the winter

Florida Winter Tree

And Minnesota’s trees.

Minnesota Winter Tree

And the winter trees are why I live in Florida 😉.

First of all we took a trip to Minneapolis

Trip into the big city

I know….big deal!  Well unfortunately for us country mouses, it is a big deal to visit the BIG CITY LOL.  We had to go visiting someone we knew in downtown Minneapolis.

Guy we went to visit

Here he is….ok, not really.  The guy we went to visit was kind enough to give us explicit instructions on how to find him and how to get home.  Us little country bumpkins don’t like to travel in the big city anymore, never did even when we lived here.  Our seasonal rush hour in the Cape is about all we can handle now and even with that, Gary teaches me new swear words all the time 😉.

At one time we went to a Caribou for coffee.  As I was waiting for our drinks, I went to grab a straw for my drink.  You should have seen the size of the straws that had there.

My Gosh! That is like a siphoning hose!

I confirmed with one of the workers that those straws were really for the customers.  Gadzooks!  A couple of sucks and you have your whole drink gone.  The Environmentalist in Florida would be having a coronary if they saw the size of those plastic straws!

Another day we went to the cemetery, cause what vacation wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the cemetery?  Someone has to clean up those head stones.  Our first stop was at Calvary with Gary’s grandparents headstones

Pretty ugly head stone

Only took us 6 swipes of a foot to find the correct head stone.

The last time we were here was right before we left on the Navigator, so about 5 years ago.  The only thing Gary could find to use was use was a 4 inch putty knife to chop the grass off the head stone.  Kids, what did you do with that nice flat spade shovel we gave you?   Beggars can’t be choosers.  He chopped away at the overgrown grass and as he was pulling off the grass, I was hiding it under a nearby tree.  The grass was non existent under there, so I was doing them a service 😉.  Look,  you can see how the roots had planted themselves into the letters on the tombstone

Roots into the head stone

Pretty cool huh?  Anyway, he did a real good good job

All pretty now

Too bad his hand was all blistered up and he ran out of steam for my family’s head stones.  Good thing my sister had already been there and cleaned them up.  Next year we’ll make sure we have the proper tools and try it again.  Best side trip yet LOL.

We made a trip up north again….into the tundra.  Of course, it was hotter than Hades here so, I’ll take a little tundra time 😉.

We make an offer to a few of our friends to be a UPS delivery van for them.  We offered to take a few things from Florida to Minnesota so they don’t have to ship them.  With the van that wasn’t a problem.  But this year we traded in the van and bought a Subaru Ascent.

2019 Subaru Ascent

Nice car with lots of safety features but not quite as big as the van.  So, a few days before we left, Gary got the car all ready for traveling.

Car all ready for packing

Everything in front of that load bar will be for our stuff.  Really?  Our stuff?  Who am I kidding, most of the stuff in front of the load bar is Smokey’s.  With a litter box, his food dish, his cage and his bed, he takes up almost the whole second row seating section…but he is sooooo cute 😉

Smokey’s all set to go

Anyway, after Gary got the car ready for travel, we stopped over at the first house that had things for us to bring back up north.  Not bad, a couple of small boxes.  Plenty of room for them.  We stopped over at the second house and found

A wall of boxes!

Holy Hoot!  That is a lot of stuff!  Luckily Gary is the BEST packer of anyone I know

Just like a jigsaw puzzle, everything in its place

And whala!  He got everything in but the shelves (He even had room for a few of our things ).  Good job Captain!

After everything was securely packed, we were off.  We had good traveling weather and the cars adaptive cruise control made the trip pretty nice.  We made a stop in Paduka Kentucky on the way up.  We wanted to  check out their new dock and to see how high the water was

Brand new municipal dock

See the barge going by

Lots to do within walking distance

Nice dock and the water didn’t seem that high to us.  We had always wanted to stop to see this new dock, now we have.  It would have been nice to have this when we drove by with the Navigator.  Oh well, we decided to continue on with our journey.

We arrived in Minnesota on our planned day and made our first delivery.  My gosh!  The car is almost empty LOL.  Afterwards we stopped in at Woodies in Bayport for a congratulatory beer

We made it!

Cheers!

After we were all settled in at our daughters house, our first adventure in Minnesota was to get a group tattoo.  So Gary, our daughter and I went to Anchors End in Hudson and got tattoos.

New and old Tattoos

Our daughter’s tattoo looks the best, young skin and all LOL.  Gary has to go back when we come back in the winter time to get his finished.  This is what Gary’s is supposed to look like

Gary’s finished Tattoo

That is a leg in case you were wondering.

He needs a little more shading done.  Even so, he has gotten quite a few complements on it.  Who knows what we’ll get in 2024 😊.  Assuming we are still alive and kickin 😊