All Pints North 2015

This past weekend we went up to Duluth, MN for the All Pints North beer festival.  This has become my favorite of all the MN Beer festivals.  I'm not sure if it's the fact that we're getting away for a weekend or the summer vibe or the fact that it's in one of my favorite cities in the state or what it is, but it is just my favorite of all the beer festivals.

We drove up on Saturday and just spent one night, next year I might be tempted to have us go up on Friday so we can have a little extra time in Duluth, but it worked well for this year to just go one night again.  We dropped off Ollie in the morning with Nate's parents and made it to Duluth by around 2:00.  The festival started at 3:00, so we had just enough time to drop off our things at the hotel and then walk over to the park.

The gates opened and the bagpipers lead us inside the park.  I seriously love that every beer festival starts with bagpipes!  We stopped at the Surly Brewing Company tent first, we knew from past experience that their lines would get long and they would likely run out of some of the special kegs they brought, so early would be better than later.  We tried their Nein, which is their ninth anniversary beer.

Happy to be out and about together 

We hit up a few other places, ran into a few people we knew from the Cities and then decided we needed a little food to go with our brews, so we grabbed a hotdog from my favorite food truck of all time, Natedogs.  We also grabbed some water (it was pretty warm, even for Duluth and our rule was one bottle of water per hour so we wouldn't get heatsick) and parked on a hill in the shade for a bit.

Best hotdog ever!

It's so fun to people watch at these events!  It was such a beautiful day.  It was pretty warm, but the breeze off Lake Superior really helped a lot.  The backdrop of the iconic Lift Bridge in the background was pretty neat too!

Crowd shot - Lift Bridge in the background, you have to love it!

Of course I made Nate take a bunch of selfies with me.  He's a good sport.  

Outside of the Bent Paddle tent (they are local to Duluth) they had cute whiskey barrel tables and stools to sit on so we stopped there for a bit.  I thought this was so cute - barley in a beer can.  I might have to duplicate that for our Oktoberfest party this year!

Another selfie while Nate was in line getting something.  I wanted to show off my hat.  I remembered it was very sunny with not much for shade last year so I decided a hat was very necessary!

Bent Paddle also had a giant Jenga game, so we decided to play for a bit.  Nate was the victor, but it was a very close game.  We had the tower almost taller than both of us for a time!  

Festival outfit! 

Shirt and top - Stitch Fix, Hat - Target

Bag - Thirty One, Sunglasses - Fun Sisters

Shoes - Thrifted

He is pretty much my most favorite of all time ever.  

Pretty soon it was 7:00 and the party was over!  It goes by so fast.  We made sure we paced ourselves well, we shared everything and as I mentioned, we made sure to drink plenty of water too.  We stopped by the merchandise tent to pick up a shirt I liked, we each grabbed one final beer taste and then we started our walk back to the hotel.  

We had to take pictures by the Lift Bridge on our way back to the hotel of course!

Our hotel was right next to Canal Park Brewing Company so we stopped over for an after festival snack and a final beer and sat outside and enjoyed the view of Lake Superior and watched people walking the boardwalk.

Lift Bridge at night

We grabbed breakfast on Sunday morning at a restaurant not too far from the hotel, then drove about twenty minutes north of Duluth real quick to stop at a smokehouse we love to get some smoked fish to bring home with us.  Then we drove back home to the Cities and were reunited with our boy.  We really had a great time though.  I absolutely love this festival and plan to return again and and again. I'm already excited for next year!

The news from here

It's funny.  I took Ollie to a friend of mine's house for a playdate over the weekend and we hadn't seen each other for awhile, so naturally she asked what was new and what we'd been up to.  And I said "man, I feel like we have been really busy this summer, but I can't figure out with what!" When I list off the things we've been up to, it really doesn't sound like we've been doing much, yet, we've been filling our days pretty well.  Anyway, I thought I'd just share a little of what's new here to kind of check in.  It's hard to believe we're kind of at the midway point of summer!
-We've been playing lots of disc golf.  We have made a rule for ourselves that every couple of weeks we have to try a new to us course.  So far we've tried one new one, ha.  There's a course at a park about five minutes from our house so a lot of times we pick that one out of ease!
-Ollie is starting swimming lessons this week which is both exciting and anxiety inducing for mama.  It's not that I'm afraid he won't love it or will have a problem - the boy is a fish, that will be no worry at all.  It's the whole timing thing, gotta get dinner on the table, get packed up and head out by a certain time.  It'll be a good exercise in being organized and prepared!  
-On Friday I enjoyed a nice day off.  I finally had a chance to attend a Social Media Breakfast event, it's a great event sponsored by some marketing firms in Minneapolis, it's all about networking and learning to make social media work better for you while enjoying a little bit of breakfast!  I really enjoyed learning more about social media and marketing (and drinking a mimosa!) After that event I enjoyed a pedicure with a good blogger friend of mine, Jen from Wonderfully Unkempt.  Then I picked up my boy and had a nice afternoon with him!
-CSA season is in full swing at our house and we're loving it.  The addition of a cheese share this year has been the best thing ever.  We're just loving having fresh veggies and eggs.  I'll be sharing some of our latest eats later this week.  
-I attended a fun event yesterday at a new to me brewery.  Laura from One Girl, Two Cities hosted a "Tweet Up" for some of us active Minneapolis Twitter folks at Insight Brewing.  It's a great space and the beer was delicious.  I'll be making a return trip soon with Nate because I know he'll love it too and bonus, it really isn't far from our house!
-Speaking of beer, Nate's been brewing a bit to try to get ready for our annual Oktoberfest.  He has a schedule for what he's brewing and when for the rest of the summer.  It'll be a little intense, but I'm so excited for what he's rolling out this year!  
-You might remember my post about the hypothetical bridge I wanted to cross.  Sadly that bridge was closed to me, but I decided what was on the other side maybe wasn't for the best.  I am still searching for other bridges to cross though.  I'll find the right one.
-The bridge I want to cross in terms of blog changes is getting closer though!  I'd say I'm about halfway across the bridge.  I want to do this right so I'm not rushing to get to the other side quite yet. We're very close, Nate's been helping me a ton.  I've set a "go live" date of August 1st, so we're just about two weeks from the big reveal.  If I feel things are ready sooner we'll roll it out sooner, but that's our goal right now.  I promise I won't just sit here and talk non-stop about it, but who are we kidding, I'm kind of antsy pants about it, I just can't wait to share!
So that's kind of the news from here!  Like I said, we're busy, but I feel like it isn't HUGE things keeping us busy.  It's just kind of life.  We take it as it comes and it certainly hasn't been boring.  It's been a pretty decent summer so far.  What's new with you?

Surly Open

A month or maybe even two at this point ago, Nate told me about a disc golf tournament sponsored put on by Surly Brewing (best MN beer to those of you not from here) and it wasn't too expensive to sign up.  So we decided to be bold and take a chance on it.  And then we promptly forgot we had signed up until a week ago when I remembered and was like "hey, when is that disc golf tournament again?"  It was a good thing I asked, we looked it up and found it was scheduled for this past Saturday, so we remembered just in time!

It ended up being a ton of fun.  The weather appeared that it was going to maybe be uncooperative, but by the time we dropped Oliver off at Nate's parents and drove the almost half hour north of the cities to the disc golf course, the rain had pretty much ended and the sun was even coming out.

It was a shotgun start, so basically everyone signed up at a hole to start and at 10:00 you went to your hole and started launching your discs.  Being that this event was put on by Surly, the Surly Beer Truck was open for business so we grabbed a glass to take with us, because when else can you drink beer at 10:00 in the morning?  Each group could have up to five people, but no one signed up with Nate and I - or maybe they never found us - so we just went with the two of us, but that was ok with me, much less pressure!

The name of this disc golf course is The Pines - and you can tell why.  Pine trees are EVERYWHERE.  It is absolutely gorgeous though.  The holes are paved out between the trees and some of them are very unique!  The trees provided some awesome shade as the sun came out too.

The course has 27 holes (!!!) but we only had to play 19 of them.  My only one complaint was that Surly had it's own scorecard for the event that marked the holes we were supposed to play, but due to an Ultimate Frisbee event also going on fields we had to throw across it got confusing in some places.

19 holes of disc golf doesn't take nearly as long as actual golf but let me tell you, by the end you'll find yourself quite exhausted.  Most of the time when we play on the weekends it's at a course with nine or twelve holes, so this was a lot more than we're used to.  But as I said, the course was so unique and beautiful.  I'd really like to go back there sometime!

I had to take a picture of this tree carving.  Rocky the Flying Squirrel with a tennis racket?  Not sure what that has to do with disc golf, but hey, why not right?

And naturally I had to get a selfie with my hubby in the woods.  We really had fun even if we didn't score super well.  That part wasn't actually that important.  At the end of the event Surly did a drawing for every participant to chose a raffle gift and I ended up with a $25 gift card to the Surly Merchandise store and Nate got an awesome ultimate frisbee.  So hey, the points don't matter and everyone wins!

We also each received a free disc golf disc and free lunch.  And of course there was beer.  It's a Surly event, there is always beer!  I would definitely play this event again, it sounds like next year will be their 10th Anniversary too, so you know they're going to do it up big!  And I have a whole year to improve my game, ha!

Itasca Recap Part Two

I still have so many pictures to share, I don't know that I can share them all!  But here is part two of our Itasca Recap.
So as I said, Thursday was kind of a bust of a day overall.  But Friday dawned bright and beautiful, so we woke up and headed back into Park Rapids for some more disc golf and picked up some food for another picnic outside.  We decided after Ollie's nap that we'd rent bikes again and ride them up to the Headwaters (start of the Mississippi River).  It almost was going to be another disaster of a day, thanks to the arrival of some noisy neighbors and a very LOUD lawnmower, Ollie's nap was almost non-existent, but we went with it anyway.
The Headwaters trip turned out to be a ton of fun!  The water was freezing, but that didn't stop Ollie from jumping in and giving it a try!  It was actually technically his second time stepping in the Mississippi, the first time I was about 20 weeks pregnant with him and days away from finding out that he was a boy!

After we'd had our fill at the Headwaters we packed up and headed down to a little tourist site called Summerhill Farms, located between Itasca and Park Rapids.  On Fridays in the summer they host a barbeque - we're talking meats smoked in a meat smoker and all the sides you could possibly want. Again, this could have been a disaster - thanks to his lack of nap, Ollie fell asleep in the car on the way there and was a little grumpy when we woke him up, but he perked up when we sat down at a lovely table on a patio and when he got some the yummy food - we had ribs, pulled pork, cornbread, coleslaw and beans and it was all SO good.  We're going to remember that they do this in the summers for the next time we go up!

Saturday they were threatening rain, but when we got up we found out it wasn't slated to start until pretty close to when Ollie would be needing his afternoon nap, so after a nice big breakfast at the Lodge, we jumped in the car and did the 10 mile Wilderness Drive through the park.  We stopped and got out at places like Itasca's Largest White Pine and the Ranger Tower - Nate and Ollie even climbed all the way to the top.  Mom stayed on the ground, I just can't do heights the way I could when I was little!  One of the best parts of the Wilderness Drive was all the Yellow Lady Slippers we saw - so pretty!

We finished the drive just in time for the rain to start.  Ollie took a nap, but when he woke up was quite unhappy for some reason.  We had talked about going into downtown Bemidji again so we could visit Bemidji Brewing's taproom, so we decided to take a chance and go.  It worked out so well, they were family friendly and Ollie did just fine once we got in the car and drove out there.  Nate and I split a flight and Ollie enjoyed some water and crackers.

While we could have ordered food in at the taproom, we decided we wanted to go somewhere for dinner, so we asked one of the bartenders what he'd recommend.  He gave us a few bar/grill suggestions and then told us about an Italian place that we'd actually seen a few times but had never been to because it looked kind of fancy.  He said not to worry about that, you could walk in as you were and that it would be a fine place to bring a child.  So we headed to Tutto Bene for dinner and well, I think they were a little off-put by how we were dressed, but we got seated in the bar area near some very nice old grandmotherly ladies who were smitten with Ollie, so it worked out just fine. And it was some of the BEST Italian food I have ever had - everything is made fresh there, including the pasta.  It was definitely a splurge, but so very worth it.  We ended up getting back to the cabin a little on the late side, but Ollie crashed right away and so did we, I think that night I slept the hardest!
Sunday was our last full day and we made the most of it.  It was another sunny one, so we chose to go on one last bike ride and picnic.  

We had dinner at a place called Foxy's Bar and Grill that really had great hamburgers, but pretty terrible service unfortunately.  We didn't let it sour the day, but I was mildly disappointed in the experience.  The day was over all too fast and we found ourselves back to Monday and packing up to go home!  
Overall it was really a great week, I would do it again in a heartbeat, I am pretty sure we'll be up there every couple of years as Ollie grows up, so while I know he won't truly remember this week, I know he'll make memories there in the years to come too!
Now onward to the rest of summer!!

Itasca Recap Part One

So as to not to have the world's longest and annoying blog post ever, I decided to split the trip recap into a couple of posts.  This is part one of our trip recap.  Tomorrow I'll be posting Thrift Style Thursday so the second trip recap will go up on Friday.  And then next week I'll be into a whole host of new topics and thoughts to share as I've just got so much up in my brain right now!
We took off for Itasca on a Monday.  I liked doing this, it gave me an entire weekend to pack and gather everything together we'd need and in the end it led to far less stress overall.  We had a loose goal of being out of the house by 9:30am and we were pretty darn close to that, so I'm proud of us! The drive is about three and a half hours long, so we wanted to make sure we had lots of time for any stopping.  Oliver did great on the drive though.  He started to get a little cranky for lunch a little sooner than we anticipated so we stopped a little earlier than planned for that, but then he took a nice nap after that! He pretty much woke up right when we hit the park entrance.

Yes, we turned his car seat.  Yes I know he is not two yet.   He's a good sized boy and it's a choice we made, please do not judge me.
Ollie was pretty happy to be out of the car when we finally let him get out.  He ran around the parking lot and just wanted to check out all the cars and trucks (latest obsession.)

Below here is our little home for the week - cabin 72 on the left.  It's such a cute little spot, there's a screened in porch where we ate all of our meals and played cards and such.  Inside has a kitchen, living area and bathroom and then a nice sized bedroom with two beds and a little alcove that fit Ollie's pack and play perfectly.

After we settled in we did some exploring and took Ollie down by the lake.  It's pretty much a tradition for us to walk down by the lake almost right as soon as we get to the park!  We took a family selfie to mark the occasion.

The rest of Monday was pretty boring, it involved a quick run back to the nearest town for groceries and dinner at one of our favorite places up there called the West Forty.  I was worried about how Ollie would go down for bed, but he did great pretty much right away!
Tuesday we got up and decided to explore a bit more, found a nice little playground for Ollie behind the Lodge.  We waited for the Gift Shop to open up and spent a little time in there.  Then we headed back to the room for some breakfast cooked by chef Nate.  After we played some more with Ollie he took a nap, then we got him up and spent some time at the Visitor Center, they have some exhibits that explain more about the park.  It was cool and a little drizzly, so this was a good way to spend the day.

Then we headed to town again to have dinner at one of my favorite pizza places of all time - Rocky's Pizza Place.  It's nothing special and I'm sure it's something about the fact that you're having it on vacation, but I have always loved this pizza and I was so excited for Ollie to try it.

And judging by the picture below, I don't think he liked it all.  Nope.  Not a little bit.  I kid of course.

We stopped back by the playground again on our way back to the cabin and then Ollie went to bed. We were pretty lucky in that he went down pretty nicely for us each night and Nate and I had a good couple of hours to play cards and chat.  We also kept up a silly tradition from past visits, since we don't have a fire ring at this particular cabin and can't build a bonfire, we make Sterno Can S'mores instead!

Wednesday was a beautiful morning.  We headed into town and found a disc golf course that Nate had looked up information on before we left home.  It was a fantastic course!  It was only nine holes which was perfect and it had one of the best playgrounds I've ever seen - lots of equipment for all ages of children and a really great toddler play area.  Of course, Ollie was pretty much just obsessed with the "swings."  

When we finished our disc golf, we stopped by the grocery store and got ourselves fried chicken, potato salad and rolls and then went back up to Itasca for a picnic.  We were able to attach Ollie's booster chair right to the picnic table and it worked great!

After Ollie's nap on Wednesday, we decided to rent bikes and go on a little ride.  Nate hasn't done much bike riding in quite some time, but found he really enjoyed it.  Ollie loved riding along in this little trailer called a Burley.  We'll be looking into seeing if we can get a used one now that we're home, I'd love to be able to ride around town with him in it!  We loved biking so much we did it two more times throughout the week too!
Thursday it was cloudy and threatening rain, so we decided to go north into Bemidji for a bit.  We decided to stop at an animal park that advertised itself well, but let me tell you, I never want to speak of that place again.  I felt dirty for being there and like I sold my soul to the devil just a little.  But Ollie had a good time feeding some deer, so we'll just choose to remember that part of it!

After that the day looked like it was going to be a bust, we drove into downtown Bemidji where there is a famous statue of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.  We wanted to take some pictures and let Ollie run around the park there - but they had it all torn up and were doing a ton of work.  We were bummed, so decided to just walk around town instead.  Ollie more or less led us right into this place called the Headwaters Science Center - kind of a low key version of the Science Museum and since we have membership at the one in St. Paul, we got in for free!  We managed to kill a good 45 minutes there which was great!  After that we ate at a little pub in town we like called Keg and Cork.  Took Ollie back to the cabin for his nap and then headed on disaster number two of the day - a boat trip. Ollie pretty much hated his life jacket and wanted to get "out" the whole time.  

His few calm moments on the boat.  Hoping a different life vest will help next time!
After the boat trip I may have nursed my wounds by stopping by the gift shop and picking up this cute bag for myself.  Remember, shopping ban hadn't started yet on vacation!  And even if it had, vacation is one of the exceptions I'd make for myself!

So, Thursday wasn't exactly my favorite day, but it could have been worse!  The next couple of days more than made up for it, but I'm going to stop my recap here and we'll talk about the other days in my next post!  Stay tuned for more!