Lake Time Up North in Minnesota

This past 4th of July weekend we spent five full days up north in Minnesota at our cabin. When we are up here we like to go to a variety of different lakes. This time we decided to try out a couple of new lakes to see what they were like. We drove up in the evening and got to our cabin quite late but that made it so we had the five full days to be out and about.

The kids decided to do swimming and snorkeling while we were at this Lake. It was quite clear so snorkeling was actually possibility.

These top two photographs are taken on Bay Lake. Don't let these pictures for you, we managed to find a quiet spot on the lake but the rest of the lake was extremely busy. We had to drive around quite a bit trying to find something that was not filled with boaters pulling tubes and water skis or a place where we would not bother fisherman.

This next picture was taken at East big rabbit Lake. We decided to get out early to go to being before a bunch of other people arrived. We just want to be safe with the kids in that have too many other boaters and other two hours to watch out for. It was a pretty perfect morning and early afternoon to go tubing.

These two fishing pictures are taken on West rabbit Lake. You access both East and West rabbit Lake from the same Public Access area but there is a channel between the two Lakes we had intended to go tubing on the 4th of July but it was cloudy and a little windy and felt a bit chilly. So we decided to go fishing instead. Obviously, both of these fish in the picture we're not Keepers but my son did catch three that were later on.

These last two pictures work taken on-loan Lake. It is a little bit of a drive Kama probably 15 to 20 minutes but is one of the closest beaches that we have to go to. Usually we like to take the kids to be not this week because the water seems a little warmer here and there seems to be a lot of families on the lake. It does not have a very big but it does have a roped-off swimming area and has a Sandy Beach for them to play at. Sometimes they just want to play in the sand.

Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley, MN

It has been about three years or so since I have been to the Minnesota Zoo. We were really hoping to do the new playground they had their but water levels were too high and it was closed. They still had fun at the water splash area and the park with the beehive.

Being that it was summer the Aveda butterfly garden was back and that is always a hit with my kids. We didn't see all of the butterflies and moths that were on the sheet butt we did see quite a few and it was fun to get up close to so many of them.

The one thing that is really awesome about the Minnesota Zoo is that the enclosures can be quite large but on the flip side for those of us visiting that means a lot of walking. I really enjoyed seeing some of the animals and creatures we have not seen in any other Zoo before period I wish I could remember the name of the street at in the picture Kama I will have to Google it, but it sounds like it is comparable to a sloth. Maybe slightly more active but not too much more. I had never seen one of them before. A lot of the animals seem to be pretty alert when we were there first thing in the morning. The zoo opens up at 9 a.m. and we were shortly there after that.

My son was quite small the last time we had been here so he doesn't really remember anything from the zoo. Although he has not been deprived of Zeus, we have gone to many and often we go to zoos when we travel. I decided that this summer we would get a Zoo membership. It will be a full year membership but I am hoping to get there once a month for the summer. We usually do memberships to zoos and museums and rotate which ones we do. It has been a long time since we have had this Zoo membership and I figured we were due.

This is a picture of the big aquarium in the tropical encounters Wing but there is a huge area of aquariums if you go to the other side of the zoo. That is also inside. I didn't take any pictures they are this time, or at least not with my phone. I am sure when we go back there sometime in the winter I will get more pictures.

This time we only went around and saw the exhibits. We didn't get to quite all of them because we had been there for quite a while already and we're getting tired and since we have a membership to the Minnesota Zoo now we can come back and see them. Also we did not see any shows this time either. I figured that would be something fun to save for other visits. This time we just wanted to get around and see all the animals and the parks. I plan to take the kids again in July and hopefully that new Nature park within the zoo will be open. It says it is seasonal so they would like to experience it before it's season is over. And we will try to see a show or two.

Minnesota Bucket List Postcard

I received these Postcards From the Owatonna Chamber of Commerce. I really like the top one titled marvels of Minnesota. I thought it would be a neat sort of bucket list as we make our way around to different parts of Minnesota. The Louis Sullivan Bank is in Owatonna and featured on here. On the way to our cabin we passed by the big walleye in Garrison.

We have seen the some Broda Covered Bridge, the spoon and Cherry in Minneapolis comma and I have seen the Jolly Green Giant before it was moved but the kids have not seen it. I have been to the Spam Museum in Austin but it just reopened in a new and much larger location so I will have to take the family to see that sometime soon to. There are a lot of things on here we have not seen. Most of them are just oversized statues.

Why does my phone turn the picture when I had it right side up. Ugh.

She Is......Women in the Outdoors Weekend at Eagle Bluff

Let me tell you a little bit about She Is. It is a nonprofit organization that plans outings for women to do as a group. This is my third year going to the she is spring women's weekend. They do have one coming up in the fall but it will be hard for me to know whether or not I can attend that one because of when my kids might have swim meets.

The spring weekend is held at Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center in Lanesboro Minnesota. When you register for this weekend you will pick out classes in your order of preference. Each person will get for classes but you rank 10 of them in your preference order. I think there was about 25 classes to choose from so there is a wide variety of things to do outside and inside. I tend to gravitate towards the ones where I can be most active.

The above picture is me on the ropes course and the zip line. I have done this class each of the three years I have gone. I find it to be such a thrill.

 This is just a picture of one of the meals they served us. Sometimes we get to have things that we might normally not have at home. This is just a taco so nothing different here but we did have Watercress shelter at one meal and rabbits to add another. Both do things to me. Eagle Bluff tries to use local and sustainable ingredients when they are making their meals as much as possible. But as a mom I just enjoy that someone else is doing the cooking and cleaning for an entire weekend.

 The indoor crafty class I chose to take this year was to make a hammock cocoon swing. I did finish it but I still need to buy cushions to put inside and figure out where to hang it from. It might go up to our cabin.

 This is me with my friend Lori. She drove about 4 hours to come spend the weekend with me and three other of my friends. I had not seen her in a couple of years so I was thrilled to be able to have this time with her. We did go canoeing together as one of our classes and did the hammock swing class together as well. I didn't bring along my phone when we went canoeing so no pictures from that.

 It is morel season time in Minnesota when we were there and I found for that were all about this big.

 One of the classes I took was survival 101 where we were taught about different types of shelters you can build and how 2 make your own fire. We were split into groups of three women and had to work together to use the resources we have available to us and see you what we could do in regards to making fire hand making a shelter. We also made raspberry tea using raspberry plants that were near us. I was very pleased that our group was able to make a fire using flint and steel. When everyone had made their shelters we did a Parade of Homes of sort to go around and look at how each group decided to make theirs. No group was the same.

Each of the two evenings there was an optional group class for the entire group. The first night the group class was on how to grow shiitake mushrooms which is something they do at Eagle Bluff. These are the places they buy their inoculated plugs from. I was thinking this might be something I might like to try up at our cabin. The other evening class was the star lab demonstration to learn about constellations up in the sky currently. I did the class last year so I opted to just hang out this year. But two of the ladies in our group were new to this program so they went to check it out and enjoyed it.

We also had an optional Saturday morning yoga class for the group that I did with my friends. It was before breakfast so not everyone is interested in getting up early to workout. But I was and am glad I did. Next year you should join me at the spring She Is weekend!

Great River Road Wine Trail, plus a Brewery

I had previously told you about the little mini-vacation my husband and I took going trout-fishing into the National Eagle Center and this was also part of that mini vacation to celebrate his birthday. We visited 4 places that made wine, cider, or beer. The above collages of some of the things we tried at each of the four places.

 This is Villa Bellezza. It is in Pepin Wisconsin. We had no idea what to expect from this place when we drove to it because the ad was very basic in the Guidebook and did not have pictures of the facility. But when we got there we were surprised to see that it was just gorgeous and looked like a mini Napa right in Wisconsin. Who knew? I will have more pictures of the grounds of this place in a wordless Wednesday post on Save Green Being Green in July. There was a wedding going on in the reception hall but we could walk around the grounds and see what they had their including a fountain and big Plaza area separate buildings for wine making and a lot of vines as well as a tasting room and they were in the process of construction of a restaurant on site. It is a pretty neat place. We did the wine sampling for $5 that includes your choice of three wines. And you also get to sample the wine of the month for free.

Next we drove about a half hour to go to Maiden Rock Winery & Cidery. One of the owners who was on site distributing free samples. They sell their own cider and wine as well as wines from other Midwest wineries. They also have a little gift shop there as well. The wine and cider tasting they offer for free includes five different samples. Since we were there we only wanted to try the things they made because we could try wines from other wineries at their location if we wanted to. We ended up buying a few bottles at this place.

This is just a picture of where they do the brewing at Maiden Rock. It is right off of The Tasting Room.

Next up was the Red Wing Brewery. We needed to get some food in our stomachs and the Red Wing Brewery is also a restaurant as well as growing their own beer and root beer. My husband tried a couple of the beers and I had the root beer. They were okay not spectacular, but what we really enjoyed was there homemade pizza that they use brewer's yeast in the crust. This is definitely something to check out if you are in Red Wing Minnesota.

Lastly as we were making our lop and starting to head back for home we went to Cannon River Winery. This place actually stays open quite late compared to all of the rest so we were able to go here and buy a sweet red as an after-dinner drink. Here we bought a bottle and had it while we were there. We have been to Cannon River Winery a couple times before and have done the same thing so we didn't feel the need to do it again. It was quite busy when we were there with a wedding upstairs and lots of groups of people enjoying wine on the main level. This is in Cannon Falls Minnesota

Rice Lake State Park in Owatonna, Minnesota

A couple weeks we decided to spend the afternoon out at Rice Lake State Park, which is just outside Owatonna, Minnesota. It is not a huge state park, but has manageable trails for hiking with kids and ample opportunities to observe a variety of different kinds of water fowl. They do have a couple of displays up that tell what typical water fowl visit Rice Lake and how to tell the difference between males and females. I am not really a bird person, maybe when I get older, but I can see why people find bird fascinating.

There were plenty of spring wild flowers in bloom. We were hoping to spot some morels while we were here, but were not lucky.

They do have an old school playground here that the kids like. So many playgrounds are big colorful plastic things, that these old ones are a bit more interesting.

They do have camping here - some campsites even overlook the lake, but we only came for the day. We have a State Park sticker on our vehicle (actually, we bought 2 so we have them on a vehicle at home and at the cabin) so we can just drive in for no additional fee, but otherwise it's only $5 for a vehicle admission.

They have quite a few canoes to rent here and 2 kayaks. We have been canoeing here a couple times and it is best to go in the spring or early summer, but late summer and into fall the reeds are too thick that it is hard to get out there.

This is not a deep lake, I think they say it is 3 feet deep across the whole thing. So there is no swimming here. But there is only one property on the lake besides state park, so it is very quiet and you will enjoy the serenity. In the winter they have groomed cross country skiing trails here and year round there are hiking club trails here.

The National Eagle Center and Trout Fishing

My husband recently had a milestone birthday and to celebrate the kids went to the In-laws and we had a weekend to ourselves. Today I am going to share with you a couple of things we did on the east side of Minnesota. Next week I will share with you the three wineries and one brewery that we went to on the east side of Minnesota and west side of Wisconsin. We also did those that same weekend.

The first thing we did was actually go trout fishing for a while at a designated trout stream just outside of Zumbro Falls. This was actually the first time we have ever gone stream trout fishing. Just so you know, you do need a trout stamp on your fishing license in the state of Minnesota, which we have. The stream was incredibly clear and we could see a lot of these tiny baby trout swimming around down the stream. However, I didn't catch anything. Maybe next time. It was a beautiful stream to fish in and see the beginning of Spring.

We also went to the National Eagle Center in Wabasha Minnesota. It is wonderfully affordable attraction that is a nonprofit organization. If you do go to this, make sure you plan enough time so you can watch the show, that is really the highlight of the center. We went there in the spring obviously but they said if we were to come back in the winter there are as many as ten times as many Eagles that call this stretch of the Mississippi River their winter home that fly self to Minnesota from Alaska and Canada. We want to take the kids back there sometime in the winter so we can see all of the Eagles there. It was still pretty amazing to see the half-dozen we did flying overhead as we were crossing the bridge from Minnesota to Wisconsin.

They do have their own resident eagles that no longer able to be in the wild because they no longer can fly because of injuries. They have them in a room and you can see them and only be about six feet away from them. It is pretty neat to be up that close to them. We have also seen and Eagle at the Zollman Zoo in Byron. At the National Eagle Center they had two bald eagles and one golden eagle that were for viewing. They brought in another bald eagle for the class presentation. Plus they mentioned a few other eagles that they must have housed somewhere else in the facility. The building is beautiful and they have a fountain that wasn't on but I can only imagine looks gorgeous once it is running. The national Eagle Center overlooks the Mississippi River which is an awesome site.