ok, double blog night it is.

this past weekend i had a great experience.  my friend phil and his parents decided to host 14 of phil’s closest friends at a cabin in lutsen, minnesota.  for those of you who don’t know, that’s way the crap up north, less than an hour away from canada.  it was a lot of really ridiculous fun.

i drove to eau claire, wisconsin from where i live because i wanted to ride with the people who were going and not have to drive myself.  so i drive there, spend the night on thursday, and friday we head out bright and early.  the drive was pretty much all forestry the whole way there, and the sky was all crazy lookin.

we drive through a few small towns, one town called superior, and come into duluth.  first off we decide to stop and grab a few bites to eat at a local place that’s pretty well known, which is grandma’s.  if you’re ever in duluth check it out, it’s really really good eats.

post-grandma’s we decide to take a walk around the beauty that is duluth/canal park.  there is an amazing lift bridge that has had about two bajillion photographs taken of it, and it was hard to not, the thing is freakin’ sweet.

we hung out by it for awhile until it decided to rise because some boats had to pass on through.  it was pretty amazing seeing how something that large could be motorized and moving.

anyway my friends decided to stand under it while it was coming back down to get freaked out.  i opted out.

after this we just walked around and took some pictures by the light house, i got ran into some mad man (a.k.a 10 year old kid) who was a little too excited to see a big boat come through the harbor.  we’re talkin full speed here guys.  i got a picture of him right before he about knocked me down, but that’s on film that i have yet to process.  here are some more of us just all hangin out.

this was definitely one of the funniest parts of the trip, our friend dan posing on the rocks, and all the girls shouting different poses for him to do.  what a silly guy dan is

and here’s a photograph of john and his now fiancee tani, who became engaged the night before we left to the trip.  so crazy and equally awesome.

what a bunch of cuties

after duluth we decided to stop in at a place known as gooseberry falls, which is basically the most awesomest waterfall in minnesota.  i’ve only been there a few times, but it is truly an amazing sight to see, regardless of season (it is pretty amazing seeing everything frozen though.)  we walked around for a little while and did some joking around.

here’s part of our group from across the falls

after gooseberry we have only about 60 miles left until we reach our destination.  we walk in to see that our cabin is absolutely amazing.  not at all what i expected!  two large living rooms,  three bedrooms, a loft, a real nice kitchen and two bathrooms. more than enough room for the 18 people there.  we hung out, and got to know each other a little better.

that’s phil’s dad, his little brother, him, and alana.

cooley and dan get comfy

after some more joking around we call it a night. i slept in a walk in closet which was far from as comfortable as i expected it to be, oh well.

the following day we decided to trek to a town known as grand marais.  this place is the ultimate small town!  home to the famous sven and ole’s pizza and the fudge from beth’s.  first we had to stop at ben franklin to look at the ridiculous variety of things they had!  after that we stopped in some trading post place and i bought my mom some salt water taffy as part of her mother’s day gift, good stuff.

outside of there we stopped because there was a giant log that everyone wanted a picture on.  a few attempts and a score!

this was inside the trading post.  cell phone service was very difficult to find, let alone a chair where there is service.

i am a pretty tech-y kinda guy.  i’m on my macbook pro a lot. ay lot. also my blackberry is pretty essential too, but on a more social realm of text messages, whereas the macbook pro operates primarily for my photographs and will be working on design stuff in the near future.  it was actually a very nice release of not being able to check my email and having no cell phone service.  i am someone who has my phone on me constantly, but i found myself not having my phone in my pocket and not really caring where it was.  a cool feeling.

one of the first things that happened in grand marais was there was a conversation going on at a stop sign between a pedestrian and someone in a vehicle.  somewhere during their conversation cars began to build up behind them and they didn’t even realize it until someone honked, at which point the driver seemed offended someone was interrupting their conversation.  pretty funny stuff, makes for some good inside jokes about the lifestyles in grand marais.  also makes me think the town didn’t mind housing us so much.

we found ourselves being college students and in need of caffeine, so we found the nearest coffee shop we could, known as java moose.  thanks to them for putting up with 15 19-23 year old jokesters.  it just so happened they had a side room that fit us all!

after this we went to sven and ole’s where john got some of their world famous pizza and we all just hung out and discussed movies and how much we love/hate oprah.  after that i knew i wanted to head over to beth’s because my mom really likes their fudge, and i just had to grab some for her because i go to grand marais roughly once every three years.  we all did that and had a great time.

after that we played some games, played guitar, and rented some movies.  one of the movies we rented was ‘sasquatch’, which ended up being extremely ridiculous.  we all were joking about it the entire time and it made my face hurt i was laughing so much.  can’t really complain about that can you?

anyway the next day we woke up and headed back home pretty early, which was nice so i could say hey to my mom and hang out with the family on mother’s day.

this was a great weekend.  these people are all going to school/have gone to school in eau claire and are a very tight nit group of people which i am extremely grateful to be accepted into.  even though we were celebrating phil’s 21st birthday not a single drop of alcohol was consumed all weekend by any of the 18 people in that cabin.  that makes me a very happy camper.  this group of people makes me extremely happy and im very glad each and every one of them is a part of my life, and a facebook friend.