Trip to Minnesota

Day 1 8.28.10

Day 2  8.29.10

Day 3  8.30.10

Day 4  8.31.10

My trip to Minnesota was a blast! I absolutely loved it there! It was one of those great trips that didn't fly by too fast. I really hate that when you're on vacation and it goes by so fast you're like, 'Wait! It's over already?!' I think the fact that there was no monotony with this trip and there was always so much going on every day that it made the days feel that much longer.

To summarize, I went to visit my friend Sam, whom I met while living in Santa Monica. His younger brother got married and he invited me to be his date for the wedding. I'd been wanting to visit him ever since I lost my job so it was good to see him again (he moved from LA back to Minnesota last Sep. so it had been a while!).

There was the wedding, two after-parties (or three, depending on how you look at it), the Mall of America, dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant, a nighttime tour through both twin cities, drive to Sam's family's cabin (at Clearwater Lake) and a stop at Lake Mille Lacs on the way (one of the largest lakes in Minnesota. It was so big it looked like the ocean!), a day and a half at the cabin: lots of beer, the pontoon, tour of the lake, grilling (well, Sam did all the grilling) and breakfast at a little diner in the nearby town of Crosby. We drove back to catch my flight the next day (my 5th day there).

It was weird flying back. I wanted to come home (I missed my bed lol), but at the same time I could have stayed another week. It's so gorgeous there! Green everywhere! You just don't see that in Califormia, especially by the beach. The air is so great I never had any problems breathing (and I do have that problem here). I loved the fact that I could be outside at night and not need a jacket, so to come home to fog so thick I couldn't even see the city below me was rather disheartening, to say the least. I'll definitely be going back. And it makes me want to travel that much more because it really made me evaluate what it is I actually like about where I live. It certainly isn't the air quality, I'll tell you that much.

And I certainly did learn how adaptable I actually am to my environment; I must have experienced a good two weeks worth of events in four days and it was so much fun! (not to say that I wasn't pooped out by day four, because I was!) Culture shock?! Ha! I'd have to travel to Japan for that, I think.