A Few Notes to Start this Blog. Plus our Halloween Weekend

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A few notes to start this new blog

Kris:

So to start this blog, I wanted to note that, with as much as I want to go back and recap every fun adventure we've had so far together, we decided it makes more sense to just start with the now and go forward. I put my name at the front of this entry since I'm the one doing the writing today. And we are both have a very active life in running and triathlons but have decided all of those blog entries will remain separate from this blog. To keep up on those entries, check out our individual blogs listed on the right.

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Kris:
This Halloween weekend, Mark was feeling the blah's about the holiday. It was a combination of the fact that we had nothing planned and we were supposed to be in NYC for the marathon. He was going to run it this year but it's delayed until next year. So to brighten his spirits, I bought us tickets to Trail of Terror in Shakopee. Nothing better than a little Halloween fun. It included the usual silly hayride and a walk through a haunted maze. They had this crazy spinning tunnel you had to walk through that seriously made it feel like the bridge you were on was tilting to one side. I'm not the bravest cat and spent most of my time BEHIND Mark :)

Here's a pic of him by the creature at the Entrance:

Mark: It is hard to see in this picure but they were handing out Vampire teeth to everyone at the entrance. What was funny was that all around there was disguarded vampire teeth on the ground and in the dirt. I was hoping that they didn't just pick up the discards from one night and clean them up for the next night.

Sunday we set off to grab another State Park cache. We are working to complete the Wildlife Safari Challenge. After a yummy brunch at Santorini's, we headed down to the MN Valley Recreational Area. A very small, quiet park. We stumbled upon the MINI VALLEY virtual cache and then realized that we missed the first coordinates for the Safari cache (they were .25mi back at the building where we parked!) Upon reaching the actual cache, we were so happy to have found a Wild Card! You get a special coin for finding one. Only 300 distributed amongst the 72 parks each year of the challenge (2009-2012). So we put on our nerd caps, did a little dance and happily claimed our River Otter card :)

After finding the park caches, we set out to get the word for the State Parks Hiking Club. The sun came out and it was nice enough that we ditched our jackets in the car and set out on the trail. How cool we came upon his hawk out searching for his lunch. He let us get close enough that (with a little help from 'zoom' on the camera) Mark got a few great photos of him.

Mark: It is worth noting that one week ago, when we were on Pike Island at Fort Snelling State Park, we saw an Eagle.

A little farther down the trail, we came upon the grave stone of one of the original owners of the land. Mark was excited to pose by the dead guy ;)
As we were caching our way back home we picked up a few in Jordan, MN. I laughed pretty hard at the next set of pictures. Mark was trying to take ONE photo and didn't think it was working. I told him that sometimes you have to physically back up the camera and zoom in. What we found out later is that it actually was taking the pictures. Each one a little farther away. I found the succession amuzing :)


We picked up a few more before heading home. Even got to flag down a police officer and rat out a few skater kids turning over picnic tables in the park. To quote Mark: "Finally, a cop right when you need one"