We celebrated the July/August birthdays by camping at Flandrau this past weekend. The Stayers, Allista and Bailey, DJ and Eric, Caio and I camped at the rustic sites. Anna stayed at Nancy's house. It was a very toasty day. We got to Flandrau and jumped into the nice sand bottom pool. We same for about 45 minutes until it was pool break. Danielle and company and Abbie and company showed up just as the pool break started. Unfortunately, the pump went out and they closed the pool. We have such bad luck with this pool. 

Since it was so hot, we went to the amazing splash pad and playground.

After that we went to our campsites for dinner. We had a lot of fun around the campfire.

It was a very warm night for camping. I need to go again when it is cooler

We traveled to Rapid City for Juanita and Jacob's wedding. The ceremony was at Terra Sancta, the same place that we had Eric's parent's 50th Anniversary Mass and Lunch. It is a beautiful church. After the ceremony we went out to a barn in Sturgis. It was a very warm day and the AC didn't work great so it was toasting in the barn. Also they had port-a-potties and no flush toilets. The food tasted good and the variety of cakes and bars was really good. As we were wrapping up the night a major wind storm came down the valley. It was a bit scary. 

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Minneopa State Park

 

Flood 2024

So far this summer has been very wet. A couple weeks ago Mankato got 10 inches of rain over the weekend and that caused all the rivers south of here to swell to historic levels. It got so bad that Rapidan Dam was on the verge of failure. The Blue Earth River broke free from the dam by carving its new path around the dam. It washed away a house by the Dam Store. It was a crazy couple days watching the dam. My family came up this weekend to check out the flooding. We drove down to Rapidan to see the dam and other flooding. The Minneopa Falls were really going fast!  It was very cool. 

That water eventually made it here to Shakopee. Hwy 41 bridge to Chaska is still closed , Huber Park Stage was completely under water and Lake Valleyfair (aka the Valleyfair parking lot) was also under water.  Three rides were closed because of the flood waters and for the last several days they have been shuttling people to the park. They had to create a temporary entrance. And County Road 69 was also closed for a while, it just opened up today.