Duluth

After looking at all of Matt's days off between now and when the baby is due to arrive-- yesterday was the only day we had with no plans/ appointments, etc.... We haven't been to Duluth since before Levi was born and I thought we should go up there. We finally decided we'd just run up for the day-- see some boats coming and going and spend the day carefree and have some fun.

We left our house about 9 am-- I was very crabby and didn't feel very good-- I'm on Terbutline (sp?) to keep me from going into labor right now, but it makes me really shaky and feeling kinda gross. So, I was just trying to get out the door, etc... We began driving, things were going fine. Matt commented that when we got to Grantsburg we'd put gas in the van. I thought that was fine-- I didn't have a map to look at so I was just waiting till we got to a gas station to get a map. After we went through Danbury we realized that Grantsburg is on a different road and so we wouldn't be getting to Grantsburg. By this time we were down to less than 50 miles left on our tank of gas, and knew we had more than 50 miles till the next town. So we were holding our breath-- finally with 20 miles left on our tank we see a little station. Whew!

We continue down the road about 10 miles to arrive at Pattison State Park. We paid our entrance fee and went to park to look at the waterfall. Matt flipped on the blinker and I noticed something sounded wierd. By the time we were in the lot I noticed that the clock was off, the computer module was off, the spedometer was off, the fan blowers were off, etc.... So I told Matt that it looked like our alternator had gone out on the van-- UGH!!!! He shut it off, and yep, it wouldn't start again. We got someone to jump us, and started driving up 35 toward Superior-- the van was chugging away and right then there was a service place-- WHEW!

We pulled in, the owner came out and he had us pull up to the garage and had a guy come pull the alternator out. It's about noon by now, so Levi is CRABBY (naptime) and we hadn't eaten lunch yet. They got us squared away in under an hour so we were happy about that. Unfortunately, when we left for the day I had looked at our checkbook and told Matt we had $305 for the next two weeks.................. he went in to pay for the service and it came t $340. Eek. So he had paid for it out of our checking account and so we left feeling a little sick.

We finally arrive in Superior and then into Duluth-- and Duluth was a disaster. There were people everywhere-- it was unbelievable how it could be that busy on a Tuesday afternoon!! Levi fell asleep in Superior-- so I told Matt to get to a beach and he and Addison could go swim and Levi could stay asleep for awhile. Of course by the time we got to a beach and got ready-- Levi was awake. We let the kids play in Lake Superior for awhile, but they were too crazy, we thought we'd try to park in Canal Park once more. It was too crazy there, so we gave up and left Duluth. Went bckto Pattison, let the kids swim and play there and then looked at the waterfall.

By the time we got home last night I think we were a little less crabby-- but it was a maddening day to go for a FUN day-- to come home BROKE for the next 2 weeks and really didn't get to do anything we had wanted to do. Grr.