Road trip part 1: Grandma's Marathon

We started out on our first true family vacation on my birthday. I started the morning by running a 5K on our treadmill. Completely unrelated to our trip except I had set the goal back in November to run the 5K up in Duluth in conjunction with Grandma’s Marathon. When I went to sign up in December though, all 2,000 spots were sold out. I still wanted to meet my goal though so I trained and ran it in the morning before we left. It felt so good to meet my goal!

On our drive up to Duluth we took a detour to Anoka to visit Pat’s parents. Since we were going to miss Father’s Day, we wanted to give him his gift early. It was a book of all the pictures he took while in Vietnam. It was about 150 photographs total. He loved it, which made me so happy because it was really a labor of love to create.

We got into Duluth and stayed with Katelyn and Donovan. We pitched a tent, inflated the mattress and just hung out while we waited for the rest of the crew to get there. Then Donovan treated us to grilled kabobs and Katelyn had yummy lava cake for dessert. They even sang “Happy Birthday” to me.

The kids slept in Brooke and Ryan’s fish house, so Pat and I had the tent to ourselves, our first time in a tent together. It was fun listening to nature around us. Several ducks were in the pond, and white-tailed deer made a few appearances. Nature was a little (lot) loud at night, but a soft rainfall made it feel peaceful. I’ll admit to not getting much sleep due to all the sounds, but it was still a beautiful night and very peaceful.

I was up and at’em early due to Brooke and a friend of theirs, Alexa, leaving early for running Grandma’s Marathon. We made breakfast for the crew and headed out to catch them at the ½ way mark. They both were looking good and strong. We drove closer to Canal Park and caught them again at the 23-mile point. Alexa was finishing strong, but Brooke had been battling a knee injury from right around when we last saw her. She was working hard to fight through the pain. We made one more run for it to make it to the finish line. We were able to make it in time to see her cross the finish line! 

We grabbed some pizza lunch in Canal Park and headed back to Katelyn and Donovan’s to pack up and head out on our road trip.

It was about a 6-hour drive to Jamestown, ND where to checked into our hotel for the night. Along the way we saw deer on multiple occasions and a Bald Eagle. The kids did OUTSTANDING! Not asking once for a snack, or if we were there yet. Between Henry taking a 3-hour nap, Olivia coloring and reading, a Scooby Doo movie, and listening to the book The Wizard of Oz (which is VERY different from the movie by the way), it was a very peaceful ride!

Henry's signature move when wanting to take a nap is putting his blanket over his head. Works like a charm!

We got to the hotel at about 10:15 and hadn’t even had dinner yet because of our late lunch and wanting to power through the drive. We had lunch items I packed for the week and slept hard.