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May 26, 2008
Summer is Here
Today's Memorial Day holiday marks the beginning of the summer which, for me, is what I like to call "blogging season". This portion of manyhighways is usually dormant throughout the fall, winter and spring months and this year has been no exception as I've been particularly busy finishing up my first year at a new job. But now that the summer is here and I have exciting travel adventures on the horizon, it's time to start writing again.
Like last year, I spent a few days of this long weekend with my sister-in-law's family camping down near Rochester, MN. My family never did any camping when my brother and I were kids so most of my experience comes from camping with my friend Dan. Those trips involved tents, fishing and campfires on private land owned by his family. My sister-in-law's family does things a bit differently and brings their nice camper to an actual campground with water and electric hookups. It's not quite roughing it but for someone like me, who is basically a city dweller, it's a nice mix of the comforts of home and the things that make camping enjoyable. It's also a very community-oriented type of camping. Most of my sister-in-law's family's friends spend their holiday weekend at the same campground which means that there are a lot of communal games, good conversations around the campfire and, of course, the Saturday evening pot luck where everyone brings some sort of tasty dish to share. The foods at this thing always contain either meat or potatoes (and often both) with hardly a fruit or vegetable to be seen and there are often just as many deserts to choose from as main dishes. It's a veritable feast of Midwestern cooking.
While much of our time was spent relaxing with cold beverages, I also got to spend some quality time with my brother. We both brought our baseball gloves and it was nice to throw the ball around for a bit. We also teamed up for the annual blindfolded golf cart race. In this campwide event, the driver of the golf cart wears a blindfold and attempts to drive through a course while being told where to go by the passenger. Much hilarity ensues in this event and my brother and I certainly added to it by nearly crashing into another golf cart after crossing the finish line. But, to our credit, we did manage to avoid the forest. I can't say the same for my brother's wife who somehow managed to navigate her blindfolded sister into the trees, eliciting a roar of laughter from the spectators.
Soon after the golf cart fiasco I took off the blindfold for the drive back home. Just as I neared the southern city limits of St. Paul I watched closely as the odometer on my car hit 100,000 miles, an event which I captured in photographs as I was cruising north at 65 mph. Minnesota has a new law which prohibits texting while driving but luckily it doesn't say anything about taking pictures while driving. My car has served me well for tens of thousands of miles and hitting 100,000 was pretty neat.
I'm going to wrap things up here for now but I'll be revealing my summer plans within the next few days. Stay tuned (RSS)!
Posted on May 26, 2008 at 11:19 AM
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