2008-10 Flag Football

LeAnn joined a flag football team this fall along with her neighbors Nancy and Megan. None of them had played flag football before, but were willing to give it a try. A few practice sessions with their husbands out in the cul-de-sac gave them the confidence they needed for their first game, despite a couple sprained fingers and some bruises.

The games were played at Lake Nokomis, which has lighted fields, so games were played as late as 9:30. The highlight of the games was usually the pre- and/or post-game gatherings at the 5-8 club.

With a mix of both experienced and novice players, the team progressed through the year. Scoring became a little easier each week, and the defense tightened up.

The last game of the year was a special one game tournament for each team held at Parade Stadium in downtown Minneapolis. Parade Stadium is used for high school games during the school year and is fully lighted with and AstroTurf field. The team lost in the final game 32-25. Next year LeAnn is even thinking of letting the rest of the family come and watch (and take pictures).
I am hoping to get a team picture to add in here, so check back

2008-10 College Road Trip--Nebraska

The second part of our college visit road trip began on Friday and was spent visiting two campuses in Omaha, with the first being Creighton University. It is located near downtown. The East side of campus is all new buildings and houses the arts, administration, new apartment style housing for juniors and seniors, and some of the sports facilities such as softball, baseball and soccer. A new baseball field is being built close by to become the home of the College World Series. The screen on the admissions office wall was playing a presentation that focused on the highlights of Creighton along with welcoming the perspective students for the day, and over half were from Minnesota.

After her interview we got a tour of the campus. The tours were small group as only one other student/family was with us (and they were from Minnesota). Most of the academics and dorms were on the west side of campus. The campus is long and narrow, with a pedestrian mall running the length of campus. There were very few bikes on campus, as most people were walking. We toured 2 of the dorms and had a chance to eat at the student center (choosing that over the dorm cafeterias).

From there we went to Nebraska-Omaha. Although we had nothing scheduled her, we figured we could just walk around campus and check things out. We went into the admissions office and talked to a counselor for a few minutes. He suggested we go over the dorms and go through them. There are very few dorms on campus as this is mainly a commuter school. Some of the dorms are run by outside companies rather than the university. All are suite style with four bedrooms and 2 bathrooms dorm. This is a setup that we saw in limited amounts on other campuses, but it was the only option here. One of the dorms here had outside individual entrances to the room, and the other had a single entrance with common hallways. The campus was very quiet as it was late on a Friday afternoon preceding their fall break next Monday and Tuesday, so most people were headed home.

We headed downtown to the Old Market area. It is a restored area of shops and restaurants that are a mix of local and national. The streets are all cobblestone, and this keeps the speed of cars down, which is good since there is a lot of pedestrian traffic crossing the streets. Although it was a Friday evening, we were able to get right in to a restaurant at 5:45, but by the time we left, people were having to wait to be seated. It was nice to see a busy downtown area.

We slept in a little on Saturday morning compared to what we were doing to get everyone through a single bathroom during the rest of the week. We packed up and headed back to Minneapolis. We went through Sioux City, Iowa and then cut the corner of Iowa on Highways 75 and 60 and into St. Peter, where we made a quick visual tour through the Gustavas Adolphus campus. It was quiet on campus as the weekend was in full swing. We headed for home and pulled in about 6:00

2008-10 College Road Trip-Colorado

We headed off to Colorado and Nebraska on a college visit road trip. The kids are off school this week as the district combined MEA teacher’s conference break with school conferences.

We drove about 12 hours to Ogallala, Nebraska on Saturday. The drive was fine as Ray and LeAnn switched off driving. We did hit rain the last 2 hours and that made the last leg a little more difficult, especially when we either passed a semi or were passed by them. The trip went fast as the kids busied themselves watching movies, listening to music, playing games or even looking at scenery occasionally. We rented movies from Red Box for the trip as we found you can turn them in at any location, so we only kept them for a day then could restock with fresh movies as we made our way back and forth.

Sunday we headed into the Denver area. Our first stop would be at the University of Denver. We grabbed a bite at a nearby Chipotle. We thought it was strange because it was so different from all the ones we had been in. It was very small, had no menu board (they just gave us a paper menu), and was not laid out in the assembly line fashion. We later found out that this was the original Chipotle location!

Mariah had an admission interview set up for Sunday afternoon, along with an overnight stay over in the dorms with a student. This allowed her to get a good feel of what the actual dorm life is like in college. We met back up on Monday morning for a series of meetings with the admissions counselors, a campus tour and lunch in one of the dorm cafeterias. The campus is south of downtown (only 12 minutes by light rail as we heard many times). It is only a couple of blocks wide, but about a dozen long, with lots of open spaces. Some of the frat houses are adjacent to the main campus mall, which made them feel like the center of campus.

Tuesday we did not have any school visits scheduled, so we went down to Red Rocks amphitheatre. On the way there, we stopped at the Buffalo Herd Overlook, but today there were no buffalo on either side of the expressway. We changed our plans with no buffalo in sight and drove to the top of Genesee Park and got some wonderful views of the Rock Mountains.

The Red Rocks area was very beautiful as the large rocks jut out of the earth at about 45 degree angles. One of the lookouts we walked up to had a cross section of the geology of the area, which looked out over dinosaur ridge. We saw a couple busses over there and wanted to check it our and hopefully see some fossils, but when we drove over there, the road was closed from the direction we came, but we did see some people on the ridge working.

The Red Rocks Amphitheatre is an amazing structure built into the side of the mountain with large red outcroppings creating the side walls. There are 69 rows of seating and it has seating for about 9500 people. Even when you are at the top row, you can hear people talking or singing on the stage. There were a lot of people using the steps and bleachers for training purposes, running up and down the steps. The higher elevation makes the workout even tougher. We could even hear the sounds of the boxing gloves hitting the training mitts of the people on the stage when we were at the top. The concert season usually extends from June through September, and has been expanding each year with the number of concerts. The list of bands and acts that have played there is very impressive, from ABBA to Bruce Springsteen to the Beetles to Red Skelton. It originally opened in 1941.

Our next stop was in Golden. Our plan was to have a late lunch and then take the Coors Brewery tour. We parked and found and went to the Capital Grill for lunch and then headed to the brewery, but as we pulled into the parking lot, we discovered that they are no longer offering the tour. Now we had some additional time to kill, so we decided to drive up to Boulder to get a preview of the University of Colorado campus.

We drove around the campus and town and then parked near the Pearl Street Mall. This is an outdoor walkway mall that is about 6 blocks long. There are many performing artists along the mall. On this day, a gal was performing with her hula hoop; a guy was writing poetry on the spot for you (and typing it on a typewriter). One musician was playing a piano (it had wheels so he must have to roll it off the mall), one was playing a ukulele, and another was playing his guitar and singing loudly. There were multiple groups of kids playing hacky sack on the grass in front of the courthouse that fronts the mall. Hopefully they would clean up the area before they leave as there was a bunch of trash left in the area.

Wednesday morning we got up and headed into Boulder for our visit to the University of Colorado. The campus is about 5 times larger than Denver University, and feels a lot more crowded due to the larger number of students on campus. It lies in the shadows of the Flatiron Mountains, which give the students a lot of outdoor activities right “in their backyard”. The football stadium is right in the middle of campus, and I am sure it makes for a wonderful Saturday afternoon atmosphere. There are many dorms in the center of the campus, and they surround a large open grass field that becomes the central meeting point for kids all year long.


Later in the afternoon we headed up into the Flatirons to get an overall view of Boulder and the university. We first went to Boulder Falls, a 70 foot waterfall a short hike from the road. One boulder that had been put on display at the trailhead had a 1.5’ hole worn through the center of a 2’ thick stone.

Our next stop was the Boulder overlook, which gave some beautiful views of the valley. From there, we drove further up the mountain to the Flagstaff Summit, at an elevation of 6850 feet, about 1500’ above the University. The road was a series of switchbacks and blind curves at a steep grade. We were surprised how many bicyclists we saw going up the mountain. It would be a lot of work to ride a bike up the mountain, but it must be fun coming back down, but I’m sure a little scary.

We finished with dinner at Beau Jo’s pizza, whose specialty is Mountain Pie pizzas, which are sold by the pound and not by the diameter. They have very large crusts and they give you honey to dip the crust in when you have finished the meat and cheese portion.

Thursday morning we got up and headed up to Fort Collins for a visit to Colorado State University. This is another large school and large campus that sits at the foothills of the Rockies. Many kids ride their bikes both on campus and back and forth to school. You have to keep your eyes open. This week was focused on a food drive, so there were many canned collection points. They kicked off the drive last weekend as they attempt to line their oval drive through campus with donated food. Last year they collected over 140,000 lbs. of food.

After the tour, we headed to the Old Town area of north Fort Collins. We had lunch at the Spicy Pickle, which is a sandwich, soup and salad shop. We grabbed a couple movies for the drive to Omaha, and headed off for about 9 hours on the road. In addition, we lost an hour as we moved back into the central time zone. We stopped in North Platte and went to the Sonic Drive In. It was the kids’ first experience with drive in ordering and car hops serving the food. After sitting in the car for 4 to 5 hours to get there, it probably would have been better to eat somewhere other than the car. We arrived at our hotel in Omaha about 11:00PM.

2008-09 Rock Climbing at Taylors Falls

Ray and some of the people he works with went to Taylors Falls to due some rick climbing. Chad was our leader as he had both the equipment and the experience to set up the climbs and keep us safe. He went through a safety demonstration and showed us how to put on the harnesses and tie the knots. He also checked everything for each of us before anyone started to climb. At the top of the cliff, Chad secured a carabineer that our belay rope is fed through. The belay rope is secured to the safety harness of the climber, through the carbineer at the top and then back through the harness of one of us on the ground. This person constantly pulls out the slack out of the rope and then controls the descent of the climber as they rappel down.

Our first climb was just off the main walkway south of the parking lot on the MN side of the river. A couple of school groups were in the park, but of the most part it was very quiet this time of year. Trying to work your way up the sheer rock face was a great challenge. What look like good paths, footholds or handholds from the ground end up being totally different as you work your way up. We all ended up taking different routes up the rocks to the top, some more successfully than others. Lack of technique made the brute force method the preferred method for most of us. I would guess total height of the climb was about 50 feet, which is a long way clinging to the rocks

Our second route was further down the river to a taller rock face, probably closer to 80 feet tall. There were many more hand holds and footholds in this part of the cliff. IT was easier to utilize your legs for climbing, which is less tiring. We again all ended up taking different routes that fit our capabilities. It is amazing how just moving a little bit one direction or another will give you a whole other set of options for feet and hands. While we were in this area, the paddleboat that cruises the St Croix River went by on one of their daily tours. The cruises are popular this time of year as the leaves are starting to change.

After the two climbs, we packed everything up and headed back home, with a few more sore muscles for our efforts

2008-08 Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico

Saturday
We had a couple of early frustrations on our first trip to Mexico. We had an early 6:45AM flight and had ordered a cab for 4:45. By 5:00 we still had no cab and no luck making contact with the cab company as everything went to voicemail. We quickly hopped in the van and headed to the park and ride. Fortunately our timing was good and only had to wait a couple minutes before we were picked up and on the way to the airport.

We arrived at a bout 5:30 only to find a long line for Frontier and only 2 agents at the counter checking everyone in. We did not make it to the front of the line until about 6:20 and just as we were about to go to the counter, our agent said she had to leave and go help at the gate. We did get helped next and got checked in fairly quickly, despite the fact that Ray and the girls had been able to check in on-line, but for some reason LeAnn wasn’t. We didn’t know what to expect, but it was not a problem. The extremely slow check in was due to the fact that they had changed flight numbers back in May and most of the people had not been moved to the new flight. It had ended up that we were, so ours went fast. So it was off to the gate. We found a security checkpoint with no line so that didn’t cause any problems. We go to the gate about 10 minutes before flight time and were relieved (somewhat) to see that they had not started boarding yet. The ticketing issues had caused them to delay the flight. With only about a 40 minute connection time in Denver, this was going to make it tight. We boarded the plane with Carmon the Blue Crowned Conure (a parrot type bird) on the tail and winglets and were surprised to find an all coach layout with nice leather seats for everyone.

We pushed back about 40 minutes late, but we did make up some time in flight and arrived at the gate with 15 until our next flight left. They made an announcement that they were holding the Puerto Vallarta flight as 16 people were making the connection. They asked others on board to let us off first so we all dashed off thinking we had to go from gate 24 to gate 51 and found out we were boarding at the very next gate! Because we were late, we missed our slot and landed at gate 53. We lined up and they started to check our documents and we got on board, this time we were flying on the Holly the Heron plane. We pushed off about 10 minutes late but were on our way despite the multiple close calls and potential issues. We all dosed on and off during the flight preparing for our upcoming week in Mexico.

We landed at Puerto Vallarta airport and had to take a cab to the Mayan Palace in Nuevo Vallarta, which is north and west of the airport. On the way to the taxi stand we were pulled into the timeshare gauntlet with people pushing their resorts with various offers including free taxi to your resort, free sightseeing trips, and free tequila. When we arrived at our resort, they said they would like to have us learn about the other locations they had in Mexico and would match any offers that anyone had made to us plus throw in some other discounts for us if we could spare 90 minutes of time our first full morning here, so we decided to do it.

As we were on the way to the resort, we noticed a few things about traffic down here. They use roundabouts and U-turn slots in many cases rather than traffic lights, but where they do use traffic lights, they have the left turn lane on the far right side of the through traffic lanes. When the turn signal is green, left turning vehicles pull across the stopped lanes of traffic in the direction they are going before crossing the intersection. This does allow large trucks to make u-turns or left turns through at the lights

For dinner, we went to Taco Break, which is just outside the gates and located between 2 holes on the golf course. The food was cooked over a wood fire and was hot, fresh and good. Unfortunately while we were there, it started to rain really hard. We had to wait for a shuttle to come pick us up because it was about a 10 minute walk back to the hotel, and we would have gotten soaked. The heavy rain flooded the greens and filled up the road from gutter to gutter in many places. Since it was raining, we ended up going back up to the room and watching the Olympics—with Spanish commentary and a little more world wide coverage than we see in the US.

Sunday
Our morning started with a timeshare presentation by the resort owners. We took our goodies and didn’t invest. We spent the afternoon at the pool and walking up and down the beach. The surf was rough today and not a lot of people were in the ocean. The water was very warm and would have been comfortable. It was easy to see where the river emptied into the ocean due to the brown water and sediment coming from the river. A very distinct line was formed out into the ocean and it worked its way down the beach as the afternoon wore on. A couple of boats appeared to be fishing along the transition line. A few people were parasailing, but all in all, the beachfront was pretty quiet.

In the late afternoon we left the resort area and took a taxi to Paradise Plaza to find a place to eat and pick up some groceries. We found both and had a very good variety of Mexican foods. We were curious about the cheese and found out is called Chihuahua cheese. Mariah conversed at length with one of the waiters and is enjoying getting to use her Spanish language skills in a real world setting.

Monday
This morning we took a taxi into the small town of Bucerias, which is located about 15 minutes south of the resort. We first went through the flea market, which was set up on the streets outside the elementary school. We did not know what was inside the walled area until we had gone 3/4ths of the way around. School runs in two sessions, with one group going from 8AM to 1PM and the second group going 2PM to 7PM. We didn’t find too much at the flea market, so we walked around the town and then headed for the oceanfront to walk down the beach. All the street signs in this town have advertising on them. When we found the street signs with Corona on them, we knew it was time for lunch. There were numerous restaurants to choose from, but none of them were very busy. We chose one that we could eat out on the beach. There weren’t too many vendors out in this part of the beach, so we weren’t interrupted very much.

After returning to the resort, we spent the afternoon at the pool before going out for pizza in one of the local malls. With all the walking we did, we called it an early night.

Tuesday
We had booked a tour on Tuesday that included snorkeling, kayaking, hiking to a waterfall and time at the beach. We took our tour on a large catamaran boat that held over 100 people. As we went to pick up other passengers in Puerto Vallarta, we saw a pirate ship which also does tours of the area. They must have a show on board also because we could hear cannon shots coming from the ship. Our first stop was for water sports where we could snorkel and/or kayak. The leader found and brought up some star fish and an octopus, and we saw a lot of purple and blue trimmed fish, a couple orange trimmed fish, some needle fish and an eel or sea snake. We all went snorkeling and then Hailey and Mariah went kayaking too.

The next stop was in Yelepa, where we docked and got off the boat and headed up the hills to a waterfall. Ray and Hailey jumped in and got a waterfall shower. It felt so good to be in the cold water after hiking up in the hot weather. Our next stop was the beach, and we hiked through village and had to wade across the river to get to the beach area. At the deepest, the water was only up to just above the knees. One person was driving across the river in a 4 wheel ATV pulling a trailer, so this was a crossing that was done often. The beach had nice sand, and the water dropped off very quickly. It started to rain while we were there and had to retreat under the roof of one of the beachfront restaurants. We had been out under a large umbrella sitting on folding sling chairs enjoying the ocean and the view. While we were in this protected area, we could see a large iguana up in the rafters. Earlier, as we finished wading across the stream, there were 2 men with iguanas who would let you take their picture with the iguanas for $5, so we got to see ours up close for free. Later that afternoon back at the swimming pool, we saw two more large (>5 feet nose tip to tail) iguanas out on the edge of the pool deck before they headed down into the open water behind the pool

Wednesday
First thing in the morning, LeAnn and Ray got up and went golfing. The sun doesn’t come up here until about 7:45AM, so it is strange how dark it is early in the morning during the summer. It gets dark about 8:30, so the long evenings are nice. The course is under renovation, so only 9 holes are currently open, so we went around twice. Seeing it the second time helped a little, but not enough. The ponds have been known to have some crocodiles in them, but we didn’t see any on our round. There were plenty of birds out sunning themselves on the edges of the water hazards, so any crocs could eat very well. The course and the greens were in nice shape, as they have been getting plenty of rain at this time of year. Mariah wasn’t feeling too well today, so we just did some relaxing at the pool and in the room.

Thursday
Our plan for today was to go into downtown Puerto Vallarta. We started on the melecon or boardwalk along the beach. There were sculptures every few hundred yards and the nice thing was it was wide open between the street and the ocean, so the view was basically unencumbered. This is not much of a swimming area, and at least at this time of year the ocean is relatively brown from all the runoff coming in from the rivers. There were a couple of sand castle artists doing their work right off the boardwalk. We stopped along the way at some of the flea market stands, but it seems like most of them were just as interested in getting you to go to time share presentations as they were at selling their wares. It was also a day that one of the cruise ships was in town, so we were told that prices were higher today.

Our next stop was Senior Frogs for a quick appetizer and refreshments. It was our first visit to one and we had a lot of fun with balloon hats, funny signs and great decorations on the walls, chairs and ceilings. Some more exploring brought us to a tequila shop where we sampled a little merchandise and then to a local church which was grand in size and beauty. We took a couple of photos with a couple of travel bugs we had from our geocaching adventures to show that they had made it to Mexico. We didn’t get to do any geocaching as we just didn’t get close enough to any sites, which were few and far between down here. Our final stop after a long day of walking and sightseeing was Hard Rock Café, where we try to go anytime we are in a city that has a restaurant. We squeezed into a standard cab for our ride back to the resort with 4 in the backseat and one up front. The cab kept stalling every time we had to stop, but it would always start back up and we made it home safely. We took a quick dip in the pool to cool off once we got home. As we were leaving the pool, we saw 4 iguanas up in a tree, just relaxing on the limbs. There were 3 of the very large brown ones we had seen earlier, and one smaller green one.

Friday
On Friday morning we got up and headed off to the Sierra Madre Mountains for a new adventure. We boarded a large yellow people transport vehicle which took us out of town. It reminded us of a Jeepney in that we sat sideways in the back of the bed on benches. It was an open air vehicle, so it was loud in back. As we crossed one of the state lines, we had to stop and they sprayed the vehicle to prevent the spread of insects that are destroying the fruit crops in parts of Mexico. The bugs attach the mango fruit and have been hard on the trees in the coastal areas. We rode for about an hour and then were at our starting point for our canopy adventure. We were going to climb, zip line, and repel through the woods from tree to tree. We had to put on our gear, which included a harness, pulleys, carabineers, gloves, helmet, and repel loop. We walked up to the first platform and then the guides hooked us on the zip line and safety line and we all went one at a time. We had to keep one hand on the zip line rope, and this was used to brake as we approached the landing platforms. It was also used to keep your body from twisting. If you got your hand too close to the sliding pulley, you could start to spin. The other hand was kept on your safety tether.

There were 5 guides who did all the work and kept constantly moving ahead, leading and following everyone. We couldn’t bring any cameras with us, but they had a photographer who took pictures of us in action. He would be places where you least expected, both above and below. We zip-lined almost 2km, did a Tarzan swing from a suspended rope, and repelled down 75 feet from the last platform. We also got to cross a suspended platform. Despite some concerns before we started, and getting past our fears of heights, we all had a great time and talked about doing this again some time. They have a longer tour that also includes hiking, waterfalls, rock face repels that we would like to do if we ever get down here again.

On the way back from the pool today, we saw a total of 8 iguanas, 6 of the large ones and 2 small ones. Everyday we see more iguanas down by the pool, so I’m glad we are just about to leave, otherwise the whole pool area might be filled with iguanas. As we headed to dinner, the bellboy got us a small cab again for the 5 minute ride to the shopping center, but this cab driver did not want to take 4 in the back seat as he said he could get a $60 ticket, which was interesting because when we questioned the driver the other day on the 30 minute ride from downtown, he told us no problem.

It rained again in the late afternoon as it has done almost every day. The mornings and early afternoons have been beautiful, but the late afternoon evening rains have been anywhere from light to heavy long downpours.

Saturday
It was time to head back home today. We were sad to see it end, but are always ready for home. We grabbed a cab and made it to the airport before even the ticket counter was open for our mid-afternoon flight. We got checked in much quicker and had plenty of time to kill, and fortunately there was no one trying to sell us any more time shares. We picked up our photos from the tour operator’s store in the airport and got a chance to look at them before we boarded. Our bags were hand inspected at the gate and we were on our way. Our plane had Woody the Wood Duck on the tail this time going to Denver this time, and we got to fly on Holly the Heron again going into Minneapolis. Not having a tight connection in Denver gave us more than enough time to wander the airport and read, organize photos, or listen to music.