T: In the morning, I woke up. I fell asleep around 10 pm and woke up at 7:30 pm. Me and my sister played some games and then went down to snack before breakfast.
P: I had Cheerios and toast with butter. Quite good.
T: I had peanut butter toast and milk. Then we went back up to the room. My mom and Babe (aka grandmother) needed to figure out some things for today. So we got to play some more.
P: My part of the game was about a competition of which boy would get the princess and marry. And my favorite little guy won. My least favorite guy was slapped in the butt.
T: They said we’re going to Taylor’s Falls. (P.S. There is no waterfall in Taylor’s Falls.)
P: (Taylor is my sister’s name)
T: So we got in the car and started driving. We stopped for groceries at a healthy food store. We had gummy bears in our pockets, so we tried not to show those.
P: I wanted applesauce, so my mom finally gave in. (I really loved it!)
T: We got some stuff for breakfast. We had blueberries and gummy bears. (Yummy!)
P: (They were called gummy bear cubs). And we also ate crackers but we didn’t like them so we didn’t eat them.
T: We started driving to Taylor’s Falls. There we came to a drive in restaurant that had a giant root beer cup that was spinning.
P: It was spinning in circles and it didn’t fall over.
T: We stopped there and ate a good lunch. And we got free miniature golf tickets for the one next door.
P: We used them later on…
T: We were going on a paddle boat called the Taylor’s Falls Princess.
P: (I think my sister is a princess)
T: {growl}
T: We loaded on the boat. The river looked like root beer when it hit rocks.
P: I kind of wanted to drink it…. We learned that the river looks like root beer because of the roots of the Tamarack tree.
T: A guide told us stories about pictures in the rocks. My favorite was of Babe the Ox and Paul Bunyan.
P: I liked George Washington [a portrait in the rocks]
P: The paddles went round and round. I was watching them for so long that my eyes got tired and kind of blurry. The paddles were red.
T: This boat could carry about 200 people. The old boat, called the Taylor’s Falls Queen, could only carry about 104 people. It could also go very close to a cliff.
P: It could go 17 inches deep into the water with its paddle.
T: That means the boat can go in shallow areas where it is shallow. Some parts of the river can be 100 feet deep. Why it’s called Taylor’s Falls is because there was a person who came up the river and his last name was Taylor. They saw a kind of stairway that led up the river. It dropped about 100 feet in stairs. But a dam was built over it, only showing the first stair. And that dam gives power to Chicago.
P: It was very relaxing.
T: And hot.
P: We hiked up to glacial potholes. And we got to go in one, but not touch the water in it. I liked to throw rocks in them.
T: When the water was up above these rocks that we were standing on, how they make the potholes is a rock will go in a circle with the water spinning against the sides, making it round, going down deeper and deeper. And this is what makes the potholes. Some were much bigger than cars, some were much smaller. Some were as big as me.
P: We walked around and around, it felt like in circles. We climbed the rocks.
T: We went to miniature golfing from there.
P: It was the funnest thing in the world.
T: Parker chose a blue golf ball and a pink club, Mom chose a green ball and a green club, Babe had a red ball and black club. Mine was yellowish orange, and my club was blue. I shot my golf ball into the pothole [hole] in one stroke.
P: I did too!!! Yahoo!
T: It was very hot and we got bitten a lot. And mom’s golf ball flew into a river once and Parker had to grab it. And I had to hold her feet. They were smelly.
P: I had to use my club for a cane because I had a bug bite in the divot of my knee.
T: Then we headed in the car to go to our hotel. We finished our Little House in the Big Woods audiobook, and started Little House on the Prairie.
P: I love the story!
T: We met up with our Little House tour guide, Barb. She is very nice and gave us pins with our names on it.
P: I loved mine and said it was my baby.
T: We went to dinner with our group. Joy is the mother of the other family. Mike is the father. Zach is their 15 year old son.
P: I played tic-tac-toe with him.
T: …and lost. Dinner was good. And Barb gave us little bags with ponchos, pens, notebooks, and a book.
P: After dinner, we went to the shore [of Lake Hudson] and walked along the pier. And then we walked back to our car.
T: We drove into our hotel and got our bathing suits out so we went swimming. We came back and washed our hair, brushed our teeth and went to bed. Goodnight.💤
