Camping in Mille Lacs

The day after the fair we headed off for our first family camping trip to Kathio state park next to Mille Lacs lake about 2 hours drive north of our house. This was also our first chance to try out our new tent, our previous one was quite old and quite small, the new one is much nicer and larger as you can see from the photo.

The campsites are great and really well laid out, as you can see everyone gets their own private little clearing and the actual pitch for the tent is on a raised sandy pitch so its really flat and level.


It also has a fire pit/BBQ that is perfect for roasting marshmallows on sticks and for small children to fall into. Fortunately we only did the former although preventing the latter was something of a full time accupation in the evenings.




The mornings were really cold, partly because the tree covering was so dense and we hadn't really come prepared for it given that it had been between 26-35C for the last couple of months. The picture below has been doctored as Nady would never actually wear socks and sandals.

The view of the stars in the evenings was spectacular, away from all of the light pollution it made us appreciate the beauty of the night sky in a way that I certainly haven't for many, many years.

The park had a tall observation tower which we climbed to see above the trees, this was somewhat scary and not necessarily helped by all of the encouraging Bible verses graffiti 'd into the steps. Here is the family on their way up.
The view of Mille Lacs lake from the top. Mille Lacs is the second largest lake in Minnesota and while nowhere near the size of any of the great lakes it still looks a bit like the sea from the shoreline.
Of course the way down was worse than the way up, unless you're two years old of course.The park also had a tiny pond for swimming in.

Or for playing chess with stones as demonstrated by Dan and Andy.



We also went swimming in Mille Lacs which was pretty chilly.

As we were close to Brainerd we had to go to Paul Bunyanland. Paul Bunyan is the mythical lumberjack who did all sorts of legendary feats accompanied by Babe his blue ox.
Paul Bunyanland is not really a grade A funfair. For those familar with Father Ted it was a half way between a school fete and the craggy island funfair. However the kids had a great time apart from the Ghost Mine which Dan declared as 'that was the worst ride ever', which may well have been true as you simply got ina life that wobbled about a bit with a couple of drums rotating outside of two 'windows' to give the impression of downwards movement and a second set of doors which opened to a couple of bright blue skeletons digging. Really sad.





The best bit was the Paul Bunyan figure himself, when you go into the park you write down the names of your children then Paul (or at least a man who peeps through a spyhole pretending to be Paul) strikes up a conversation with them - it was actually really witty and we enjoyed it more than the kids did.

The State Fair - A Minnesota Institution

The Minnesotans are proud of their state fair in the same way that you might be proud of an eccentric relative who has no taste but is kind of fun to be around. Its so unhip that's it has gone right round again and become quite cool. As Michele and Dave were flying out that evening we thought it would be good to give them a slice of a real Minnesota institution before they left.

Everybody in Minnesota seems to go over the course of the 2 weeks the fair is on and recently there has been an arms race in terms of what you can get on a stick. See below for some examples

and here is Toby with Bacon on a stick. Apparently one of the new things this year which we didn't see was 'Chocolate covered Bacon on a stick'.One of the highlights (for milk lovers like me) is that you can get a cup of milk with as many free refills as your stomach can take for a dollar, and that can be either white or brown milk. You may have thought that milk was milk, but no, at the state fair its either white (normal) or brown (chocolate). It is of course easy to overdo the rather delicious brown milk as Toby found out, but he made a quick recovery. One of the other food institutions is the bucket of fresh cookies, as sported by Dave below, very delicious.
The only other picture I have from the fair is this one of one of the fairground rides where the heaviest rider is always supposed to sit on the outside of the ride - this person clearly had not done this before.

One year in Minnesota

As of last weekend we marked our one year Minnestoaversay - it was August 2nd 2007 that we arrived with all our wordly possessions packed into a few suitcases, and an entire cargo container. Its been a really busy year, we've missed old friends and made some new ones - mostly out of lego. We've been colder than we could ever have imagined and also baked in the sun for the last few weeks. We've changed a lot of the house and I think we're almost done on that front now. In fact that is the reason we didn't get to blog for a while is that we've been too busy enjoying the fruit of someone else's labour. The cinema is now done, I found some special paint for cinema screens so you can paint the wall and I have to say it looks fantastic, so far too many of our evenings have been stuck in a dark room.
Probably not the best shot of the room but you get the idea, 8ft wide screen 112" diagonal - Epson HD projector onto a wall painted with Screen Goo - mmm.

The kitchen is now also done, pretty much the last piece was the staircase which is now all there apart from one bannister which got broken during installation.

Andy's old work colleague Michele and her family Dave, Toby (Dan's adopted big brother) and Georgie (Becky's adopted older sister) were here for a few days and will be back again in a week's time. Had a really good time with them, which has a lot to do with the fact that the kids seem to adore eachother. No pictures I'm afraid as I can't find the camera we used, but I'll slot them in when I get a chance.

This weekend we got a real treat as one of my work colleagues, Debbie, and her husband Rob took us out on their boat for some fishing on Lake Minnetonka. This is one of the larger lakes in the state (although minuscule compared to the great lakes) and because it is close to Minneapolis it is where a lot of the wealthiest people live as you can see from the sort of house that are on the lakefront.We were out on the lake for about 4 hours , not fishing all the time, sometimes just cruising around. Dan loved fishing and caught 7 fish, mostly Sunfish which we threw back, Becky managed 3 and Andy and I got 1 each and a lot of pond weed - really good day though.













Work has been a little crazy of late, really too dull to speak of but it has meant that I've had to make the most of the weekends as I'm not seeing much of the outside during the week. The overall Carphone/Best Buy joint venture is going very well and last weekend we finished putting a Best Buy Mobile into all 950 Best Buys across the states which was good for morale in the team. We also opened a store in the Mall of America for the first time.