Skip to main content

Faribault Bike Ride Makes Us Buy Meadow a New to Her Bike

Scott had some shoots south of the metro so we tagged along for the day. 

After shooting the quickest shoots I've ever done we ended up in Faribault. We got food at the lowest rated Mexican restaurant in the southern Minnesota city. My instincts say these folks don't have a taste for authentic Mexican food and I was right. Restaurante El Colibri was so good.

The trick to finding good Mexican food is avoiding the places that have the typical Mexican restaurant decor, you know the ones with the painted seats. 

We brought along our bikes so we could take the Sakatah Singing Hills  State Trail. 15 miles from Fairbault is the namesake Sakatah Lake State Park. There they have 4 bike in camp spots (they were reduced to two because of COVID). We thought about bike camping there , but sites are first come first served and we'd hate to bike there with all our stuff only to find they were full.

Always doing tricks.

Instead we just went for a nice, really flat, bike ride.



The trail was mostly right next to the highway. I'm not sure I'd call the roar of trucks soothing.

It was still a nice change of scenery. Normally we only bike in the city. 

When we got to Warsaw, Minnesota we decided to turn around and follow the roads along Cannon Lake.

There's Cannon Lake, Theo.


We had passed by Shager Park and promised the kids we'd stop at the swing set on the way back.

These kids sure do love swings.

whoa.

Other than the Trumpkins this wasn't a bad park.

While biking the trail I noticed Meadow had to keep standing up to keep up with us. We knew her bike was a little small for her and were planning to wait until next spring to get her a new one. When I looked up bike sizes for kids we realized she was riding a bike two sizes too small. 

I talked Brooke out of getting a cheapo bike and buying a nice, gender neutral, bike that Theo could use down the road. We found this lightly used REI Co-op bike with gears and about 1/4 of the price it retails for. Rich people selling their stuff on Facebook Marketplace are great (RIP Craigslist).

I'm glad we picked one that had gears and hand brakes. Already I could tell she was riding so much better.

The bike also came with stickers to customize it. She added her name and a few others. 

I liked the simplicity of the bike and didn't think it needed all the other accessories she had on her old bike. We let her keep the doll seat though. Also notice the ant stickers she chose.

That was my touch. I now always make jokes about ants crawling up her bike seat; the ant stickers are the perfect foil for dad jokes.

We raised her seat when we got back home and took a nice ride through the neighborhood. Cool, ride Meadow boo.

The dad we purchased it from said he would take his daughter to the Theo Wirth Mountain Bike Trails. I know we don't need another outdoor activity, but I'd love to find an inexpensive mountain bike for me to go with her. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Six Months, More Like Six Years

Approaching the 11th hour of this Sunday we finally rolled out of bed. Brooke and I made a night out of our six month since being married. In a way we could be celebrating six plus years together. I met the little lady above in February 2006. Now we garden together. We had a lovely night indeed: dinner at Red Stag and drinks at Aster Cafe.  I went outside to show Brooke where our new boulevard tree was going to be planted. We found a love letter in our bushes. Brooke couldn't read it, so we let it dry on one of the radiators.  The first page was mostly apologizing for not writing and then the second page turned sour with lots of swear words.  We drove downtown to eat brunch. We parked across from this rare small pre-1950s building that has somehow survived in downtown Minneapolis's ongoing urban renewal. We decided to eat at La Belle Crepe since I picked up this for our post-wedding breakfast back on that October day. This creperie is...

This Puzzle Just Never Ends (Plus More Bread!)

I got off Sunday for the second week in a row. While we both got up at about the same time, Brooke took forever to get dressed. I think she has too many outfits to choose from. Once up I fry some salami to go in this week's bread. We hadn't made ebelskivers in long time. We filled them chocolate chips and jam that we got from our friends Ben and Jordan. It feels like just yesterday that they stopped by post-Christmas with their cat Galaxy. Hopefully we can visit them in Seattle in the next year or so. No those aren't chocolate ebelskievers they weren't turning well and started burning. Since we were having problems with the 'skivers we decided to finish up with some waffles.   Scott plans out meals for our grocery list while I clean up the kitchen. It's great to see our mixer back in action. I fixed it midway through the previous week. I meant to take photos of the repair process, but forgot. Then Scott got star...

A Solo Visit to Fergus Falls' Dairlyand and Back Home with the Fam

I had to travel to St. Croix Falls over in Wisconsin and then all the way across Minnesota in Fergus Falls to shoot a couple of hotels. After my second hotel shoot I stopped by Dairyland before heading home. This was the correct choice. I even got a little tour of the place from the owner. Pretty cool to see the old radio switch board from when they were a proper drive-in.