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naomikritzerFor Father's Day, we took my father out for dim sum. The dim sum place we go to is Jun Bo, which is in Richfield, right off of 494. (For the locals: enormous ugly yellow building right by the Menard's. All-day dim sum at an enormous restaurant that probably doesn't even fill during Chinese New Year.) Since it was a gorgeous day, and we were already going to be in the south suburbs, we headed south and west for some afternoon hiking.
We went to Carver Park Reserve, which is part of the Three Rivers Park District. We took the girls hiking. They really are rather more receptive to hikes when we call them adventures, although they were less fooled today than they were at Minnehaha Falls last week: they kept asking when it would be time to go to the plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaygroooooooooooooooound that we'd acknowledged might be around this park somewhere. Also, the mosquitoes on some of the trails were extremely thick, and I'd neglected to pack repellent. (Which is less stupid than it probably seems because Minneapolis does an extremely good job at mosquito control. The mosquitoes created an additional problem: part of what makes a hike fun for the girls is our willingness to let them stop: to play in the lean-to someone built in the woods, or smell flowers, or flip logs over to check out the bugs, or watch birds, or whatever. But when a swarm of mosquitoes descends on you every time you slow down, we're a lot more reluctant.
Anyway, we did manage to see a toad, the lean-tos mentioned above, a bird that might have been a bald eagle (Kiera spotted it and called it a bald eagle, not that I'd necessarily rely on her for bird identification, but from the glimpse I had, it might have been), and a chipmunk.
The playground by Lowry Nature Center is designed to mimic various animal habitats, like a beaver lodge. We let the girls run around there until a little before 5, when we went in to the nature center. They had a book where you could write in the interesting things you saw: Kiera had me write that she saw butterflies and a chipmunk, and that there were a lot of mosquitoes.
It was late enough that driving all the way back to Minneapolis and then cooking was not appealing, so we drove up to Excelsior. This is a small, upscale suburb that bumps right up against the edge of Lake Minnetonka. We found a restaurant with outdoor tables in the cute little downtown, and had dinner there, then walked down to the edge of Lake Minnetonka. There's no beach at this spot -- they've lined the edge of the water with large rocks you can scramble over if you want, but it's a rocky bottom, not the sort of thing that's easy on bare feet. Molly initially asked if she could touch the water, then scrambled onto the rocks to get a better angle, and then, after we went for a walk through a little wooded bit, she scrambled out to a rock where she was guaranteed to get completely soaked once a boat went by fast enough to create a good wake. Since she's never minded having to walk around wringing wet until either she dried out naturally or got home to change, and since the water was all pretty shallow, I shrugged and let her soak herself. She wound up drenched to the skin. It was very clearly her favorite part of the entire expedition.
We went to Carver Park Reserve, which is part of the Three Rivers Park District. We took the girls hiking. They really are rather more receptive to hikes when we call them adventures, although they were less fooled today than they were at Minnehaha Falls last week: they kept asking when it would be time to go to the plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaygroooooooooooooooound that we'd acknowledged might be around this park somewhere. Also, the mosquitoes on some of the trails were extremely thick, and I'd neglected to pack repellent. (Which is less stupid than it probably seems because Minneapolis does an extremely good job at mosquito control. The mosquitoes created an additional problem: part of what makes a hike fun for the girls is our willingness to let them stop: to play in the lean-to someone built in the woods, or smell flowers, or flip logs over to check out the bugs, or watch birds, or whatever. But when a swarm of mosquitoes descends on you every time you slow down, we're a lot more reluctant.
Anyway, we did manage to see a toad, the lean-tos mentioned above, a bird that might have been a bald eagle (Kiera spotted it and called it a bald eagle, not that I'd necessarily rely on her for bird identification, but from the glimpse I had, it might have been), and a chipmunk.
The playground by Lowry Nature Center is designed to mimic various animal habitats, like a beaver lodge. We let the girls run around there until a little before 5, when we went in to the nature center. They had a book where you could write in the interesting things you saw: Kiera had me write that she saw butterflies and a chipmunk, and that there were a lot of mosquitoes.
It was late enough that driving all the way back to Minneapolis and then cooking was not appealing, so we drove up to Excelsior. This is a small, upscale suburb that bumps right up against the edge of Lake Minnetonka. We found a restaurant with outdoor tables in the cute little downtown, and had dinner there, then walked down to the edge of Lake Minnetonka. There's no beach at this spot -- they've lined the edge of the water with large rocks you can scramble over if you want, but it's a rocky bottom, not the sort of thing that's easy on bare feet. Molly initially asked if she could touch the water, then scrambled onto the rocks to get a better angle, and then, after we went for a walk through a little wooded bit, she scrambled out to a rock where she was guaranteed to get completely soaked once a boat went by fast enough to create a good wake. Since she's never minded having to walk around wringing wet until either she dried out naturally or got home to change, and since the water was all pretty shallow, I shrugged and let her soak herself. She wound up drenched to the skin. It was very clearly her favorite part of the entire expedition.
