Along The St Croix

Prime seating

 I spent all day Sunday along the St Croix River with my Dad, Super"Y", and Big "D", doing various activities.  Lynn was gone on the "Bike Queen" challenge (look for a guest post soon), and "G" man didn't want to go with either of us and decided to hang out with his friend all day.

goofball

 Our first stop was for a train ride in Osceola, WI, on a route that headed south along the St Croix River. T-Roy (from work, and also of the Super Dads weekend), and his family invited us to go with them. As a rule, I don't really like hanging with people from work, either because I don't like work and they remind me of it, or they just don't do anything I think is cool. T-Roy on the other hand is cool and "lives life", his older daughter is also fun to have with on a camping trip. The rest of his family, whom I've not met until our ride were nice as well. Thanks for the invite G-Boo,   Sincerely:  Skip

 The train ride was a lot of fun, and more than what I expected. We got to hang out in a car with open doors guarded by four foot high prison bars, as shown above. It was apparent this was one of the best spots on the train, within seconds of leaving your spot near an open doorway someone would squeeze in to fill the void. We set up a bench in front of one of these spots and took turns guarding it. It was a perfect fall day with the changing leaves in "full bloom", warm temps, and low humidity.

Old building that housed bottling equipment 

 The ride itself was just right, not too long, not too short. It also helped that I loaded the boys up with pop, candy, and chips, before we left. It's amazing what a some hard candy can do to keep them occupied. I can also use the candy "G" Man missed out on as a little bit of leverage the next time he throws a fit and doesn't want to come along on one of our adventures. Good parenting right?

Keep hands and arms inside the train !

 After the train ride we decided to go check out whatever was on our way home. We ended up in Marine on St Croix for some rock skipping on the river and later at the worlds longest, highest, coolest, Stand by Me est, underage drinking by the campfire est, do bad stuff under the bridge est, train bridge over the St Croix River.

there is always time to skip rocks

 If you've ever seen the movie "Stand by Me" this is the bridge that's in it. It's a good movie but there is no way in hell I would go across it ( yeah right), getting arrested would suck too.

what are these guys up to ?

This is where I get all "Artsy Fartsy" so I can win some special award for my artistic vision

 After the bridge we headed over to Arcola Mills, its a mansion and old town site that was owned by two different rich families for over a hundred years. One a timber barron, the other, a family of doctors. On one of the plaques inside of the building was a description of the original owner. The first few words went something like, Mr so and so was a shrewd businessman,  that's when I stopped reading, in other words he was a rich prick :-), that most likely oppressed anyone who worked for him with low wages, long hours, poor and hazardous working conditions, and swift kick in the ass when their performance was not up to par or they got sick or injured on the job. The last survivor was a woman who died in 91' and gave it to the Minnesota Historical Society, in a dilapidated, ramshackle, decaying state. Since then it was fixed up and is as snooty looking as ever. It was pretty cool but looked like the inside of an Abercrombie and Fitch store, minus the underage models taking off their clothes with names like Chet, Zha Zha, Blair, Dirk, or Delphine.

Rich folk used to live here

Now it's used to house small tables for bird nests

When the kids dissapeared for a while, and gave my dad and I a heart attack, we found them here watching a movie

 It was a great day spent with the boys and my Dad, I did however miss the company of my #1 and my "Main Squeeze", Lynn. Next time we are all going adventuring together.          D. Rider, out

All we need are more rocks to bring home