After a long travel day on Monday, we knew the second day of our trip would look very different than the first. The whole purpose of our trip was for Chris to work, and that had to be taken care of before we could do anything else. He was scheduled to be at the facility where he would be working at 5:30am on Tuesday, and thankfully his co-worker agreed to pick him up and give him a ride. For the rest of us, this meant that while we planned to spend the day in our hotel room, we weren't trapped there.
It turned out to be a good thing that Chris had worked it out to leave us a vehicle because we ended up leaving the room for about an hour. The reason for this was because the hotel housekeeping was not permitted to enter the room if we were present (COVID restriction). We needed our trashes emptied and our towels refreshed, so I had to fully exit the room with all my children in order for them to service it. We didn't want to just stand in the hallway or sit in the lobby, so we ended up going to McDonald's down the street to get a drink. The drive-thru line took so long that McDonald's gave us our drinks for free, and truly that is just a sign of the times. It seems that most restaurants are struggling with all the changes due to the pandemic right now, and drive-thrus are rarely quick ventures. However, it all worked out fine for us as we burned enough time that housekeeping was finished servicing our room by the time we returned.
Hotel days mean slow start mornings, lots of screen time, and time to play and be together!
Chris was able to finish the work he needed to complete in time to bring us dinner for the evening. Eating in our hotel room is certainly not ideal (mostly because the smell lingers and we end up with overflowing trash cans), but it was easier than trying to find a restaurant that was open for dining in. He picked up hibachi for us, and it always goes over well with everyone. We were thankful for a good, hot meal!
After dinner, we took the kiddos swimming. They had been asking all day to go, but I didn't want to take them by myself as that ends up being stressful for me. They were exited to get to go, and we had the place to ourselves!
Brianna, Brenson, Brooke, and Brecklyn
Brecklyn, Momma, and Bren
Brianna, Daddy, and Brooke
The sunset that night was just beautiful, although we had forgotten how late the sun sets that far north during the summer. The photo below was taken at 9:00pm!
The next morning (Wednesday, July 1st), Chris had a few hours of work he had to complete before being free for the day. He got up early, took care of the work stuff, then we headed west to Walnut Grove to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum. I started reading the Little House books to the children back in March, having no idea at the time that we'd have an opportunity to visit some of the sites and museums. It worked out so perfectly!
Walnut Grove was a little over an hour from where we were staying in Mankato, but it was neat to see the plains of Minnesota as we were driving. We were pretty excited when we arrived at the museum.
Brecklyn, Brooke, Brianna, and Brenson checking out the wagon
Pa, Ma, Mary, and Laura, haha
Once we got inside the museum, the masking rules were pretty strict. We also discovered that over half of the buildings and indoor exhibits were closed due to the pandemic. That was disappointing, but we did our best to make the best of it!
This is a replica of the first church building built in Walnut Grove, at the time that the Ingalls family lived there.
These building were closed, but we enjoyed the outsides of them.
The Ingalls family lived in a dugout home when they first moved to the Walnut Grove area. We were able to go inside a replica of the dugout home, and it was shocking how small it was!
The Ingalls were a family of five when they lived in the dugout home!
Replica of the schoolhouse
There were no guided tours happening at this time, so we did a self-guided tour instead. Since we were in the process of reading the series of books, we were all extra-interested in the details offered in the pamphlet.
Brianna
Brooke
Brenson
Brecklyn
Plum Creek (the setting for one of the Little House books) is located not far from Walnut Grove. Since the museum tour had taken about half the time we thought it would, we decided to check out the creek and site of the original dugout the Ingalls family had lived in.
Standing on "The Banks of Plum Creek"
Brianna couldn't wait to wear the bonnet she purchased in the museum gift shop. Love that girl!
It was so neat to see the site of the original dugout home. This helped the books really come alive for all of us!
We had planned to spend more time than we did in Walnut Grove, so it was only 2:00pm when we finished with all the Little House site-seeing we wanted to do. We weren't ready to go back to the hotel, so we decided to do some exploring in Minneopa State Park, instead. It wasn't much out of our way back to the hotel, and I had read that it is home to a beautiful waterfall.
It was a short walk from the parking lot to the waterfall, and we definitely felt like it was worth the stop! Also, the park was not busy at all.
Minneopa Falls
We noticed there was a path to walk from the top of the falls to the bottom where it flows into a river, so of course we had to take that! It was steep and somewhat awkward, but we were glad we took the time to go down.
On our way back up, I stayed back to take a photo of everyone else on the bridge over the falls. You can juuuuuust barely see them in the photo below.
My crew is always up for a bit of adventure and exploring!
By the time we left the park and got back to our hotel, it was time for dinner. We ate out of our food bin in the hotel room, then spent the remainder of the evening relaxing in the room. We had some fun plans for the rest of the week and wanted to be sure everyone was well-rested for them!
No comments:
Post a Comment