A Weekend Out of Town

Bucking the trend of staying home for vacations this summer, I spent the July 4th weekend with my parents, gf, and brother Ryan in the Wisconsin Dells. It was really great to have some time to slow down a bit, not worry about work, and hang with the family. It doesn't happen nearly enough any more. As I sat back and really thought about it, next to the campfire that was burning, I am constantly going going going going going... It's either for work or for Decoy Music related stuff (the podcast is a new, large time sink) or for ultimate or for catching up on house work or trying to do some reading or TV watching. There's rarely a moment I'm not doing something or on my way to doing something. So it was really nice to have a change to NOT do something, if even for a couple of hours.

As is usually the case with our family trips to the Dells, we spent most of the weekend mini golfing, grilling food, playing camping games (this time it was ladder golf), and reading. We also made the required trip to Rocky Roccocco pizza. Since it was the July 4th weekend, we also took in the fireworks that the city had and, frankly, we were pretty disappointed, for a couple of reasons.

First, there were two fireworks shows in the town--one by the city and one by Mount Olympus (a water park/go-kart place). The town fireworks started at about 9:15 and Mount Olympus' started at 9:30, so there were two competing displays that were on opposite ends of town so if you were seated in the middle you had to rubberneck it back and forth to try and catch what you could of both. Secondly, the fireworks just weren't nearly as impressive as back home. Last year's fireworks display in Austin, MN was phenomenal and other local MN fireworks displays, even in little towns, outperformed what was at the Dells. So I was a little disappointed, but it was still entertaining to sit out and watch them.

Lastly, we re-visited the Forevertron since Kristi had not been to it and our family found it really impressively unique. I could spend hours at the Forevertron simply looking at all of the unique creations that have been put together out of scrap metal and simple creativity. I can only imagine how enamored I would have been visiting when I was an impressionable young child.

Anyhow, it was a great trip and I was glad I was able to make it. Hopefully everyone else had wonderful weekends as well and were able to enjoy it no matter where you were.