Welcome, BlogTrotters, to Minnesota

Land of 10,000 Lakes

The North Star State

The Gopher State

Land of Sky-Blue Waters

The Bread and Butter State

Whatever you call it, I call it HOME.

I was absolutely delighted to receive a comment on my blog last week from Carabee over at BlogTrotting inviting me to give a little tour of my neck of the woods. BlogTrotting is a fun blog where you can visit other exciting places around the world.

I am genuinely thrilled to share with you a few of my favorite things about Minnesota.

I'm a Minnesotan, born and raised.

I grew up in Alexandria, MN. Hop over here for a brief tour of the main street of Alexandria, as I remember it from my teenage years.

Alexandra is the heart of the Central Lakes area, where are plenty of lakes for swimming and fishing.

I've since moved from Alexandria (more than 15 years ago) and now reside in St Paul, our state capital.

But what I really love about living in St Paul is living across the street from the University of St Thomas. Both my husband and I are students at UST, and we love our beautiful campus. We love to walk the grounds and will generally take any visitors we have on a quick tour.

 

The St Thomas Arches are an important part of UST culture. Incoming freshmen walk through the arches to the applause of current students and faculty, welcoming them to their new home. Neither of us started as freshmen, so we didn't get to experience this, but we are looking forward to Commencement when graduating seniors walk back out through the arches and head out into the world. I'm not sure if this will be a part of my graduate commencement ceremony, but it will definitely be a part of Jeff's. We have two more years of school before we head back out into the real world.

I've actually only lived in St Paul for a year and a half. Before that, I always considered myself more of a Minneapolis girl. While St Paul is growing on me, I definitely prefer the downtown of Minneapolis.

The Minneapolis skyline is beautiful!

The skyway system is wonderful!

You can easily stay dry and warm in the rain or snow.

Another thing I love about living in the Twin Cities is all the fun running paths!

I love to run with my little girl, Sallie...

And take walks with my husband.

We've moved a lot around the twin cities.

We've lived in Minneapolis near the Minnehaha Falls

and in St Paul near Crosby Lake .

I can't forget to mention Como Park Zoo. This is a fun, free zoo. They do accept a suggested donation of $2 for adults and $1 for children. We've gone to this zoo a couple of times .

I could go on and on about this great state! There are so many things I didn't mention like:

and SO. MUCH. MORE!

IMINNESOTA!

No matter where I live, I will always consider MN my home.

Feel free to browse through my blog to discover other random things about me (and occassionally MN, too). If you've visited any of the links in this post, you might have noticed many were from my *other* blog, Dodson Journal. Go ahead and pop over there for even more exciting advertures! I love MN, but I also love to travel and see new things. Mostly these adventures are with my husband, so naturally, they get posted on our family blog.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed my little tour of Minnesota.

Walking Log: Day 3

WOW! My walk today did not turn out to be what I'd intended.

I wanted to walk somewhere different than yesterday. We live close to Lake Crosby, and Jeff and I walked to the lake and around the park a little back in April. That walk had ended with us scaling a wall. This time I wanted to walk from one end of the park to the other.

Here is a map of the park. I entered at the end opposite of where the marker is, and I wanted to come out where the A was.

View Larger Map

It seemed to be taking a LONG time, and I was getting a little frustrated. I hadn't intended on walking nearly 5 miles today! BUT, if you're lost in a park, you have no option but to keep on trekking.

When I finally got to what I thought was the end, I asked someone if I was at Shepherd Rd. He confirmed it, but as we talked, I was informed, that I was back at the point where I'd entered the park.

Somehow going straight (or what I'd supposed was straight) had brought me full circle!

I have now found a map online that shows the trails in this park. I'll need to study it before I attempt tackling this park again!

Today's Stats:
Run Time: 1:15:09
Run Dist: 4.88mi
Avg Pace: 15:24/mi
Best Pace: 8:51/mi
Calories: 428

I was surprised at how many wild rhubarb plants I saw in the park. It's out of season now, but do you think they'd mind if I helped myself next year? :-)

Part of the trail was in a marsh, so it wasn't paved but a boardwalk had been constructed. There were snakes everywhere! I tried to find out what kind they were, but it was too creepy for me to look through photos online to find one that looked that the ones in the park. Also, whenever I caught a glimpse of one, I usually averted my eyes as quickly as possible. I never really knew how icky I thought snakes were. At least I was relatively calm and didn't shriek or anything!