Kim and I are back from our 10 day vacation to Edisto Beach, SC (along with Charleston, Savannah, and Hilton Head Island) and I’ll have some photos of the trip posted sometime this week… In the mean time, check out the mobile pictures here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
We had a great week of relaxation and family. Good times. More to come soon :)
Kim and I spent the weekend and the holiday down in Cincinnati, OH visiting her parents and touring the town including stops at The Book Rack, King’s Island, Skyline Chili, and Montgomery Inn on the river.
We left on Saturday fairly early and arrived before 11 AM in Dayton, OH. Kim’s parents met us and we drove back to Cincinnati stopping at a car show and Graeter’s Ice Cream for some of their excellent ice cream.
On Sunday we headed up to Kim’s sister’s new house near Cleveland for a house-warming party. It was a 4.5+ hour drive and on the trip home we were delayed an additional 45 mins during a randomly full-stopped traffic jam.
On Monday we went to The Book Rack (which Kim had packed an entire suit case full of books to return there) to sell/buy books at a much better price than is offered at Half Price Books. Kim ended up with $45 of store credit and purchased a ton of new books (including a few for me) and afterwards we headed over to Skyline Chili for lunch — mmmm. We made it back to Kim’s parents’ house and hung out reading before going out to dinner at Montgomery Inn at the Boathouse. The ribs were FANTASTIC as always. Kim’s parents’ bought us two bottles of their sauce (we get a couple of bottles a year) and we packed that away for the trip home.
On Tuesday, Kim and I spent the entire day (10:30 AM until 10:30 PM) at King’s Island amusement park. I had been there with Kim before back in 2005 and enjoyed riding the coasters. We don’t get to ride anything exciting here at Valleyfair but OH has two EXCELLENT coaster parks (King’s Island and Cedar Point). We had a blast in the nearly empty park riding almost every coaster and several numerous times. The fireworks at the end of the night were great but the time it took us to get out of the parking lot was not so much ;) On the way home we stopped at White Castle for some sliders — mmmm :)
On Wednesday I headed out and hit a couple of caches in the morning and then we spent the rest of the day at a couple of parks and had a picnic in the afternoon. Everyone in OH is into bean bags and we saw a TON of boards setup in the parks. After the picnic we headed back to the house to pack and head up to Dayton for our flight home. We were back at MSP by 10:30 PM and home by 11:30 PM with Buddy happily wagging his tail for us.
It was a long trip and a lot was done but we had a great time.
See all the pictures (mostly from King’s Island) here (camera).
This weekend Kim, Josh and I spent our time out in the swelter heat of central Iowa (about 30 miles outside of Des Moines) at the US Army Corps of Engineers Lake Red Rock’s North Overlook campground.
I had visited this site back in March and have mentioned it twice since. I was VERY excited last week about getting down there again and checking out everything they had to offer. I also had plans to get into Pella, IA and enjoy some of the “Dutch influence” that the town has with Kimmy.
We arrived at the campsite later than I had hoped due to pokey behavior on everyone’s part and the 4.5 hour drive. We had camp setup in less than 30 minutes and I got to work cooking dinner. I had planned on roasted corn, baked potatoes, and chicken along with our other sides of homemade shrimp and pea salad, potato salad, and chips, etc but ended up cutting it to salads, corn, and the chicken instead. I just didn’t have the 35 minutes to bake the potatoes on the fire.
The next morning I got up and did the cooking/cleaning thing and spent the day playing bean bags with Josh and Kim. We had lunch and suffered through the breeze-less 90+ degree day watching the dogs swim and then Buddy be swarmed by gnats loving his now stinky coat. I made brats and baked potatoes for dinner along with some pasta salad. Damn good stuff IMHO. I was so beat from the day’s activities that I passed out for 30 minutes or so in the tent and then re-emerged for fire pies and then another hour long nap in the camp chair before bed.
I was the first one up on Sunday and had quite a bit of the camp packed up by the time I woke Kim up at 8 AM. We got everything settled into the car and took off on a tour of the other campgrounds finding North Overlook to be, by far, the best available. We also noted some campsites inside North Overlook that we would choose on our next visit if possible. After that, we returned back and made lunch before cleaning the last vestiges of camp and heading out at 1 PM for home.
A very nice camping trip without rain. I did come back with a nice sunburn and the need for some serious sleep.
Take a peek at the pictures from the trip here, here, here (mobile), and here (camera).
Where the fuck have all the posts gone? Well, to answer that you would have to know that I’ve been breaking a lot of my own rules.
1. I have been working entirely too much. I’ve been busy as hell and stressed as fuck about work — especially this week.
2. I actually did some nerdy work at home the last two nights. This is strictly verboten by me but I was actually enjoying some of the shit I was doing. For once it didn’t have anything to do w/GIS, KML/KMZ, and Shape files for work.
3. I took three days to travel with a buddy through MN, SD, and NW IA hitting 140 caches in the process. I did take a couple of photos of the trip but I just haven’t had the time to upload them. In the mean time you can check out the very few photos I took on the hiptop here.
4. I visited my parents in Pennsylvania over the Memorial Day weekend. We spent a lot of time visiting, seeing some family, checking out the progress on their new house, and eating foods partial to my East Coast heart (like real pizza cut the proper way!). I have some pictures on the camera still from that trip that I have yet to upload but you can look at a couple on the hiptop from the trip here, here, here, and here.
5. Upcoming adventures include a trip out to Redwood Falls this weekend with Aaron and Kim for the MnGCA Ramsey Rally 2007 (aka MnGCA Spring Event) which I haven’t missed one (or the Fall event) since 2003.
6. Next weekend we’re heading down to Knoxville/Pella, IA to camp with my college roommate Josh at Lake Red Rock Recreation Area. Josh visited Ohio while we were in PA and his parents brought him up a case of my favorite PA beer (which has made it up and down the East Coast but not yet to Minnesota where no one would drink it over shitty Michelob Golden Light anyway) Yuengling.
7. At the end of the month we’re going to another Twins game and then flying out to Ohio to visit with Kim’s parents for the Fourth of July where we will likely see several of her siblings and eat some Montgomery Inn ribs and visit King’s Island.
8. Then in July I’m heading up to a buddy’s cabin for the weekend, we’re heading to Edisto Beach, SC for vacation, and then we’re into August where we are almost already booked every weekend from then through October.
Too much shit to do this summer — it seriously almost feels like it’s over and it just started. I hope to have pictures from the Minnesota Zoo up, the PA trip, and my caching trip to SD this week. We’ll see.
In the mean time, make sure you read up on Two Guys from Italy and the freshly opened Kami Japanese Steakhouse in Apple Valley.
I fucking deleted the overall “Mobile Pictures” section of the gallery because something was fucked up to do a botched upload. The individual galleries are all still there, I just have to figure out how to get them all back under “Mobile Pictures”. Until then, they are fucked.
I just got back from Ely and have a bunch of uncaptioned pics up. Gorgeous. I’ll write more tomorrow.
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