Sailing north

Our journey to Minnesota this year is a bit different than previous years. My parents need help driving and pulling their boat up to the lake, so we offered our assistance. But since Tom is waiting at home for Leah to get off work on Saturday, the job of driving and pulling the boat has fallen to me. I'm not exactly experienced in pulling a boat, so we'll see how it goes!

Chloe and I arrived in DeMotte on Thursday evening, and helped Mom and Dad get their clothes and belongings packed for their two week vacation. After a good night's rest, the four of us were ready to take off by 8:45 a.m. on Friday. We stopped for brunch at the Belvidere Oasis around 11:30. I was surprised to find that driving a pickup truck and pulling a boat wasn't really that difficult, although I let Dad help me whenever we needed to park or back it up. Dad bought caramel corn at doc popcorn for the road.

We ran into traffic around Menomonie, Wisconsin, so we exited to get around it. We ended up in the cute little town of Menomonie where we found a Culver's for supper (and Chloe and I had fun singing the Muppet song). We arrived at our hotel in Bloomington (across from the Mall of America) at around 8:00 p.m. After checking in, Chloe and I ran over to the mall to get started on our shopping goals. We ran into my sister Barb and her husband Fred within the first 5 minutes, which was quite a coincidence, considering the size of the mall! After finding some good deals at Old Navy, we walked back to our hotel for the night.