Crow Wing State Park

In today's post I'll be sharing our afternoon trip to Crow Wing State Park by Brainerd, MN!  It was fun to cross another state park off my list.  It was a great to get out and enjoy the Spring sunshine despite it being very windy!

   

We did the Hiking Club trail whch was 2.2 miles.

The beginning of the walk went through the old town site of Crow Wing.

The Mississippi River & Crow Wing River come together here.

The old town of Crow Wing sounded like quite the wild west place.  There were 3 different missionary groups that came there - Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal.  

For the whole walk we were right along the Mississippi River.

The first part of the walk followed the old "Oxcart Trail".

Chippewa Lookout

View of the Mississippi River from Chippewa Lookout

Father Pierz Chapel

This was a neat park with lots of interesting history!  It is hard to imagine what it would have been like to live there overlooking the river so many years ago.  It's pretty amazing!

Weekend trip to the Cities!

Sometimes a weekend away is just what a person needs!  My friends Ellen & Naomi and I headed down to Minneapolis/St Paul for a Rend Collective concert and spent a couple days sight seeing and shopping.

Ellen was our fearless driver :)

We checked in to the hotel and then went over to University of Northwestern for the concert.

  

The opener was Mack Brock who used to sing for Elevation Worship.  He was super good!

 

I absolutely love the enthusiasm that Rend Collective has for the Gospel and sharing Jesus! 

It was so cool how they all changed instruments throughout the concert, and even during a song sometimes!

It was awesome being with so many people all worshiping God together. 

The next morning we went to Como Park Zoo & Conservatory and spent a couple hours there looking around. 

 

 

 

Papayas!

Pitcher Plant

Japanese Bonsai Garden

 

Next it was off to the animals!

Penguins

 

The zoo area was pretty crowded so I didn't take a whole lot of pictures as it was kind of difficult.  My favorite animal we saw though was the penguins :)

These flowers were in a neat area you walked through that was like walking through a rainforest!  

After lots of walking at the conservatory and zoo we were getting pretty hungry.  I found this restaurant on Google maps that was close to where we were.  Our waiter was named Marco and was a fun guy, he was very personable and you could tell he enjoyed his job.

It was kind of fancy so I felt a little out of place haha!  The food was really yummy though and we all enjoyed doing something different. 

 

 After we ate we went to the Roseville Shopping Center, Goodwill, Marshalls, and Trader Joes.  We found some good deals and were pretty tuckered out so we found a Caribou, got some coffee and relaxed there for awhile before heading back to the hotel.  

Sunday morning we slept in a bit and enjoyed breakfast at the hotel before getting on the road and headed to the Albertville outlet mall.  It was quite busy as it was a beautiful sunny day.  We all were happy with our purchases there.  It's always a good day when Columbia has a sale going on! 

 

Our final stop on the way home was the Clearwater Travel plaza where we grabbed a bite for lunch, and some donuts for on the way home!  

It was a lovely weekend get away with some pretty amazing gals ;)