A Summer Day Trip

We took a day trip to show historic Stillwater, Minnesota--one of our favorite towns--to our Canadian  guest and pal Sandy.

Stillwater is located on the Saint Croix river, so it is a river town, and one of the first cities in Minnesota.

The town of Stillwater sits on the Minnesota side of the river; across the river you can see Wisconsin (America's Dairyland), the state where Papa is from.

Our first stop was the Teddy Bear Park! There are lots of fun things to do, including getting our photographs taken with some BEARY large bears:

And of course we got to climb around on some of the bears...

In fact, we climbed around on quite a few things, such as this boxcar as we made our way to...

The engine!

Sandy played conductor, and Jerry and Ben played the engine crew.

After the park, we walked along the main street and looked at all the fun shops...

 including a HUGE antique shop (this photo shows only one tiny view)...

and a shop that only sells German Christmas ornaments, so cool!

We also had to stop and read about Stillwater, the birthplace of Minnesota...

and of course we walked along the St. Croix river front to see the big paddle boats that docked there.

There are several paddle boats of different sizes; this is a smaller one:

Well, after all the playing in the park, shopping, and walking, we insisted the seKretaries take us for a nice lunch, and what better way to celebrate MinneSOHtah than with a walleye sandwich:

So yummy, and what a fun day trip with our pal Sandy!