Memorial Day Weekend 2021

 

Memorial Day Weekend 2021

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for May 31, 2021

Shortly after he graduated college, Luke went camping for a couple of nights near Grand Marais, Minnesota which is pretty close to the Canadian border.  One of his buddies snapped this photo of him on the trip and I felt it was cool enough to share.

We were on one of our walks this week when we encountered this guy trying to cross the street.  I get a little nervous trying to pick up snapping turtles since I don't have a lot of fingers to spare, so Miss Sheri gave me a stick to help me get him out of the middle of the road so he didn't get squished.  I think he appreciated the help and he didn't try to bite me at all while I scooted him out of the road.

On Tuesday night, we had the pleasure of hosting Karl & Tina Zitzewitz for a leisurely boat ride.  Next time we're going to do the opposite of that kind of ride, but I'm not quite sure how to describe it.  I looked up "What is the Opposite of the word leisurely?" and came up with the following:  Bolting, breakneck, careening, rocketing, warp-speed and whizzing.  So the next time the Zitzewitzes come over, we are for sure going Whizzing together!

We took them to bird island where we saw this mama duck teaching her babies how to Eat the Muck.  Doesn't seem very healthy to me, but I'm sure mama knows what she's doing.  

On Wednesday night, we drove down to St. Peter, Minnesota to join up with Luke's college room-mates to play Frisbee Golf.  It's a sport I've always wanted to try, so when I heard this was a regular activity of theirs I asked if I could join them sometime.

As is is with most sports, I always think I'll be way better at it than I actually am.  This course was pretty challenging.  We played 18 holes through the deep woods and along the Minnesota River.  I bought a new set of discs for the event complete with three "Drivers" and two "Putters".  We were ready to start getting some Holes-In-Ones!

Turns out, it's a lot harder than it looks to get these discs to go exactly where you want.  And deep woods in late May also have deep weeds where the discs like to hide.  We ended up spending a lot of time searching out missing discs.  That wasn't a part of the game I was imagining when I pictured myself sailing through the course and hitting par after par.  

There's a lot of doglegs left and right in the course, but eventually you find the "hole" and have to land your disc in the metal chains hanging around it.  Even up close, I found it to be quite a bit harder than it looks.  Story of my life!

Avery spotted a deer deep in the woods far from where we were standing.  He told Miss Sheri there was no way she could capture a photo of it, but as is usual she proved him wrong.

 Regardless of how poorly I performed, we still had an awesome time and I enjoyed this cool frisbee golf course.  I would recommend playing in early spring or late fall to avoid deep weeds that eat frisbees and nasty bugs that eat Swanks and their friends.

After the game, we had a nice time at 3rd Street Tavern in St. Peter.  Good game, fellas!

On Saturday, we drove down to Waverly, Iowa to see our old buddies Ron "Sugarman" Myers, "Krazy" Kory Madson, and Joel Anderson.  I really gotta come up with a nickname for Joel.

We came down to see Ron's new house and especially his new massage chair.  This thing was a little bit scary after I got locked into it and it's robot fingers started feeling me up in all sorts of strange places.  I really enjoyed it.

I made sure we took the obligatory family photos including Ron, Kristie, and their 4 beautiful children.

Krazy Kory and his daughter, Harli.

Joel and his daughter, Mayah.

Miss Sheri Swank with her husband and personal idol, Todd.

We spent the afternoon at the gun range to receive some lessons from Ron on firearms safety and do some target practice.

 We have a pretty good time with this group.

We had dinner at El Sol which was delightful.  If you ever find yourself there, I strongly recommend ordering the chicken and rice.  It's delicious!

We spent a couple hours at a dance recital to watch Ron's daughter perform along with several dozen other young ladies.  This wasn't an experience I had before raising two sons, but we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit seeing all the different styles of dance.

I ended the evening giving Ron's sons a basketball lesson.  Oh who am I kidding?  Those boys dunked all over me for 10 minutes or so before I collapsed in an exhausted heap and crawled off the court weeping.  It was fun, though.