September 21, 2014

Spending the Night at Treasure Island Marina in Red Wing, Minnesota


Spending the Night at Treasure Island Marina in Red Wing, Minnesota
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for September 21, 2014


Over the past few weeks as things have become more stressful with Luke's medical condition, we've seen a plethora of rainbows in our lives.  We're taking these as a good sign that Luke is going to get through his latest round of challenges with flying colors.  Friday night, Miss Sheri, my mother, and I snuck out t the porch to discuss Luke's upcoming procedure.  Shortly after our talk was finished, we looked up in the sky and saw this beautiful rainbow directly above our heads.  It hadn't even been raining.


On Saturday, we loaded up the van and headed for an overnight trip to Afton, Minnesota to meet our friends, the Zitzewitz Family.  Since we were about a half hour early, we thought it would be a good idea to stop at Chili's to get some lunch.  The food was good, but took a long time so we ended up a half hour late.  Bad call on my part.


The Zitzewitz clan didn't seem to mind.  They greeted us with open arms and we loaded on the boat and prepared for our cruise to the marina of Treasure Island Casino.  We almost felt like pirates heading to Treasure Island.  Almost.


I was a little nervous as Karl squeezed under the bridge.  He said not to worry about it because we had a couple of feet to spare, but I still felt the overwhelming urge to duck.


Above her left hand is the St. Croix River.  Above her right hand is the Mississippi River.  And in the middle is Tina.


The two rivers are distinctly different colors and you can see the two shades running along each other for quite awhile.  It's like chocolate meeting coffee.  Or dark brown water meeting light brown water.  Whichever analogy works better for you.


We saw a ton of bald eagles on the trip.  I always get off on seeing these because they were so endangered when we were kids.  Now they're all over the place.  


The pelicans seemed to be in a big hurry to get out of dodge.  I hope they don't know something about this being another brutal winter again.  If it is, next year I'm riding one of these things South.


We arrived at the Treasure Island Marina in late afternoon.  I was a little disappointed that there weren't any slot machines on the dock.  Only boats.  I guess the slot machines have to stay inside the casino.


We asked if we could see inside the engine room on the boat and Karl and Tina were happy to oblige.  Luke walked in the room and asked us if this was the boat's tornado shelter.  We smiled and told him Yes.


We discovered that C Dock was having a big Halloween Party, so we headed over there to go trick or treating.


Some of the boats really got into the celebration, but no matter how many puppy dog looks I gave them, none offered to share their vape sticks with me.


These boats sure were scary, but it had to be a real pain in the neck driving around the water with all of this stuff hanging outside the boat!


Suddenly a storm rolled through the area which of course brought another beautiful double rainbow into our lives.  For those of you counting at home, this was two nights in a row that we saw a very striking rainbow nearby us.


After the rain stopped, we headed up to the casino to gorge ourselves on the buffet.  It wasn't a pretty sight by the time we got through with it.


 I was dog tired after all that good food and fun.


On Sunday morning, we woke up, shook out the cobwebs, and headed back up the river without a paddle.  At least I didn't see a paddle, but it's possible Karl had one hidden under his bed.


We saw even more bald eagles on the way home, but still haven't found any with hair.

No comments:

Post a Comment