First Boat Ride on the St. Croix River for 2019

First Boat Ride on the St. Croix River for 2019

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for June 23, 2019

On Monday, we were treated to a visit from my old pal, Ron "Sugarman" Myers and his son, Lance.  Naturally we had to celebrate the occasion with some succulent chicken wings.

Lance is a huge fan of the Boston Red Sox.  They were in town to play our smoking hot Minnesota Twins and help douse out some of their flames.  They ended up taking 2 games in the 3 game series including the one we were were attending by a score of 2-0.   Lance continued his perfect streak of getting a ball for the 3rd time in 3 MLB league games he's attended which was fun to watch.  Even if we did have to see the Twins lose to watch it.

David Ortiz was honored before the game which I thought was a pretty classy thing to do.  He had recently been shot in the Dominican Republic and was still in intensive care while we were at the game.  Ortiz spent the first 6 years of his career with the Twins before spending the next 14 with the Red Sox and winning 3 world championships with that team.  Hopefully he completely recovers and gets out of the hospital soon.

It was Unique Turtle week for the Swank Family as we encountered many interesting turtles throughout the week.  This guy isn't exactly rare, but we don't see his kind around our house very often so we  get excited when we do.  I believe he is called a soft-shell and is a very popular menu item at Taco Bell.

I believe this guy is also a soft-shell, but not sure what the heck that huge lump on his back is from.  Maybe he was sneaking another turtle around with him?

On Saturday, we drove to the St. Croix River for our first boat ride of 2019.

We were joining our good friends, the Zitzewitz Family, for one of their first big rides of the season.  The river has been so high all Spring that it had no wake restrictions which makes it difficult to go very far so we were glad to be able to join them when they could really open up the engines.

The ladies had fun riding on the front of the boat while the fellows and I kept Captain Karl company up top.

Avery talked me into jumping in the water and going for a kayak ride even though it was kind of chilly.  He made it up to me by  carrying my weight for the most part on the kayak.  I'm not a real strong rower.

We ended our evening at Mallards in Bayport which was very pleasant.  We always have a good time with those Zitzewitzes!

On our way back to the boat, we saw our third unique turtle of the week.  This little guy was only 2-3 inches long and sat on a log while we watched him.  We figured he couldn't have been more than a few days old.  He was adorable.  We contemplated adopting him as a new pet until Karl pointed out to us that they live to be thirty five years old which is a bit more of a commitment than we were ready to make on a Saturday night.