Day Trip


   One of the benefits of being a part time worker is that I'm not at work 40-60 hours a week. It means that I have more time to spend caring for my house and cat, doing volunteer work and spending time with people who matter to me. This was part of the reason I wanted to work part time. I was earning a good salary working full time, but I was missing out on life. I was either too tired or scheduled to work which meant I missed a lot of important things. Once C and I realized that as long as we are careful we can live quite comfortably on a part time wage, the desire to work full time on a regular basis left me. (Of course I can and do work 40 hour weeks to cover vacations and other emergencies.)

    Another benefit is that means my "weekends" are whenever I want them. I'm not just stuck with Saturday and Sunday. That's really nice especially this time of year when the weather is too nice to stay indoors. This means that whenever the weather is nice enough and I don't have other chores that must get done, we can take bike rides, walks and day trips.

   The ability to take day trips is very nice. Since we have to be careful with our money, taking long weekends to Chicago and Milwaukee are not in our budget. We can, however, take a day trips to various places. There's a lot of places that are an hour or less away from our home that we can explore.

   Lately we have been exploring the area around Pepin, Stockholm and Maiden Rock. It's a lovely area with tree covered bluffs and cute little shops. There are also marinas with all kinds of watercraft from sailboats to small yachts. (At least I think they are yachts. I'm really not sure what constitutes a yacht.) 

   Today we decided to explore two more cities. We drove to Lake City and then to Wabasha. Both of the towns are really beautiful. There are older buildings are lots of really nice shoreline. The area around Wabasha is known for eagle sightings. There is even an eagle center. It was closed today otherwise we would have visited it. No problem. It just gives us a reason to return. 

   There is a small restaurant in Pepin where we like to have lunch. On the way to Pepin we had to drive through a wildlife and fish preserve. The preserve looks like swampland with a road running through it.  As we were driving by I saw an eagle. He was sitting on the high branch of a tree looking over the road. I'm not very good at spotting things like that so I was very proud of my self. He looked exactly like pictures of eagles I've seen. C saw another one flying as we drove along. 

   We had lunch in Pepin. We were going to have a piece of pie in Stockholm, but the power was out and the pie shop couldn't serve anything. There is another pie shop in Red Wing and we went there to have our pie. (The shop in Stockholm is better.)

   We drove through the picturesque country arriving home to an anxious Scamp. It was one hour past his dinnertime and he was hungry. Once he was fed, he settled down. C and I were pleased with our day. We definitely will go back to explore that area a few more times. We both think it will be an amazing place to explore in the fall. with all the trees turning colours.



    



   

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