Forestville, flight confirmations and fallen co workers and family members.

You'll have to excuse the grammar on this post folks, because it will be a quick one.

This was the first whole weekend where nothing was planned out already and Neither of us were scheduled to work for quite some time. I threw a cooler and various camping supplies in the car and spent Saturday and Sunday on the other side of Rochester from Minneapolis with my ladyfriend. We checked out the little settlement of Lanesboro, MN and camped at Forestville State Park on the Root River.

Lanesboro is pretty standard small town Minnesota but it has the Root River going through it so there were a bunch of tourists and the occasional Amish woman selling honey and quilts. We ate at a little bicycle themed cafe called Peddlepushers Cafe that had a decent reuben. That almost made up for the ass backward service. We had thought about sleeping at the municiple campground but i remembered good old Forestville Mystery Cave State Park was just a few miles and a few wrong turns down the road. The park had plenty of campsites left since the fall leaves had mostly fallen a week of three ago so we picked one close to the river and grabbed a bundle of firewood. Jen and I went for a little hike to check out the digs and saw a couple of large deer type creatures bouncing around in the woods. We had a nice little fire that warmed some apple cider I spiked with Johnny Walker Red. Ahhhhhhhhh! (Pat Carr style).

Our site was nice, not many people around and close to water and the trail. We set up a little tent and my hammock. I don't think I'll ever go on another camping trip without the little ENO hammock, which makes the ultimate gear list by the way. I'll get into the ultimate gear list in a later post.

Nothing too exciting happened on our little hike that night apart from running into this couple that gave me a future project idea. They had homebuilt from plan sets, this little teardrop camper trailer with a queen mattress and built in chuck wagon style kitchen in the rear. I should have taken a picture although you can get the idea if you do a web search for teardrop trailers.

Sunday we tooled around historic Forestville which in the summer has reenactment actors that stay in character in this left in time little ghost town that was found preserved in the country having been abandoned when the railroad didn't come through and after crops began to fail. Interesting stuff. We also went on a tour of Mystery Cave, this cavern that houses bats and guides named Dunker. Very cool cave. Two bats viewed.

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Oh, I almost forgot. small update on plans for the big trip with Jen. Flying to Los Angeles on January 4th then LAX to Bangkok January 5th. Thailand until March 2nd with a side trip into peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. March 2nd flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh Cambodia. No further information on the trip at this time.

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I'd like to say Rest In Peace to two people. Brian Habedank my co-worker. Too bad we never got to go scuba diving together, I hope you take it easy.

And to my uncle Tom who died this past week. He always liked to hear about my travels and I his.