Duluth

So Mom and Cathy wanted to go up to Duluth and see the Great Lakes while they were in town.  So we planned a quick up and back.  We were on a tight schedule...head up Friday after I got home from work, check into hotel, grab dessert, sleep, hit the pool in the morning, do Spirit Mountain, make our 12:30 train reservations on the Zephyr for our 1 1/2 hour tour up and back down the shore of Lake Superior, hit Jay Cooke State Park on our way home and sleep in our own beds (at least the MN ones of us) Saturday night.  We got a later start than planned because I had to take a work call and do a quick spreadsheet (I know, right???) but we managed to pull out by 7:30 pm on Friday night.  We were back in Lakeville on Saturday evening after a very, very full night and day by 6:00 Saturday night.  Quite the not-quite-24-hour adventure we had!!

Since we pretty much planned this at the last minute the hotel was a bit of an issue but I ended up trying the place Macey and I stayed two years ago for a soccer tournament and they had one room still available.  After first going to the wrong hotel...I had the right one in my head, but kept saying the wrong name, so of course they (everyone else in the car) made me go into the wrong one first to see if it was the right one...I KNEW it wasn't but nonetheless I made them happy (and laugh) by going in and being rejected by the night clerk.  There was much fun to be made of Cindy for that, and much MORE fun to be made of our actual hotel since from the approach and the outside its not exactly the Ritz.  Everyone (except me and Macey, having stayed there before) was a little apprehensive but it worked out just fine.

We finally found our hotel and made our way to our room which was your typical two double beds room...which meant Mom got a bed, Cathy and I got a bed, and the five kids were spread out on the floor in sleeping bags that we snuck up the back stairs.  It was wall to wall Jefferson descendants!  It was amazingly calm and quiet for having 8 people crammed in there including five kids ages 14, 12, 9, 8 and 6... and Josh and Billy enjoyed using towels as pillows.  We took advantage of the buffet breakfast and then enjoyed the pool for a little while.

Ever the task master, I kept everyone on schedule by making sure we were out of the pool by 9:30 and in the car on the way to Spirit Mountain by 9:45.  Chop, chop everyone!