Steph's Wedding Weekend - Saturday/Sunday

Lake Itasca in the early morning light

Erin and Rodney outside the logging camp

Saturday morning started early, we had told Rodney that we would meet up with him at 6:00 am to go geocaching. As we were getting ready I was sneezing and felt some seasonal allergies kicking in.  I asked Erin if we had anything and she gave me an allergy pill.  She warned me that she takes them at night because they cause drowsiness. Not being all that concerned I took the pill and we were on our way. The cache we went for was in the northern part of the park.  Well, not technically in the park, but close enough.  We were able to park about 500 feet from ground zero and take a trail right to where we needed to go.  We were near some cabins, so we quickly and quietly found the cache and were on our way. We decided that since we had found the cache quickly we'd have plenty of time to go to breakfast at the logging camp near Park Rapids. On the drive over we had time to chat with Rodney.  Years ago he spent a summer working at a nearby resort, so we got to hear some interesting stories.  We arrived at the logging camp a bit early so we wandered around a bit before heading in to eat. It had been years since I've eaten year, but I still had a sense that the place was familiar.  Breakfast was fantastic, and we all had our fill before heading back to the park. I was glad that we were able to sneak this fun excursion into our trip.

Mmmm... Pancackes...

Picture Time

The back of Luck and Rachelle with the musicians in the distance

When we arrived back at the park Erin rounded up her stuff to help Steph get ready.  Around this time is when the allergy pill started to kick in, and I went to lay down. The next thing I knew my phone was ringing and Erin was telling me I needed to get ready and go down to the dock for pictures. I got dressed and ran into Rachelle just outside the cabin. She pointed me in the right direction and I soon ran across my dad.  He didn't want to walk down to the docks and then back up in the heat, so we drove down and waited for pictures. The day was starting to heat up, and there was a fair bit of humidity. The AC in the van felt wonderful. Pictures didn't take too long and after that I drove over to where the ceremony was going to take place with dad. I spent some time chatting with Tim, the officiant, while people were arriving.  It had been a while since I'd seen him, and it was nice being able to catch up with him. When the ceremony was ready to start I found an empty seat with Rodney and Betty. Tim came over and handed me the marriage licence and said we'd meet up afterwards to get things signed.  The ceremony itself was fairly brief.  Tim was really funny, and the breeze off the lake helped keep everyone cool.

Steph and dad walking up.

After the ceremony everyone headed over to the reception, except Steph and Jake who went to take a few more pictures.  When they finally showed up there were a few more family pictures before we ate.  I was disappointed with the food, but that seems to be common for most weddings I go to.  When the party died down, I went back to the cabin to change before coming back to help take down decorations. After that we headed to Koreen and Dan's cabin again for some more Farkle and Bean Bag Toss. I stayed until just after it got dark and the fire was going.

The following morning everyone was planning on grabbing breakfast together, however when we got up and started talking to people they all began to bail on breakfast.  After saying our goodbyes Erin and I went over to the lodge to checkout and have breakfast.  We both had the french toast special and were very pleased with it.  The waitress told us that they had just switched to a new bread for it that day.  When we were done with breakfast we headed out of the park and down to Park Rapids to do some geocaching.  We found a fun PMO only cache and cleaned up a cache we had missed on a previous trip.  From there we stopped a couple of times for caches before arriving in Detroit Lakes.  We tried to find the final of a multicache we had started previously, but even with an extra hint from the cache owner we couldn't make the find. We then headed south of town for some new caches that were put out for a recent event, but it was getting hot out and we were feeling a little frustrated so we decided to call it a day.