Camping over MEA

Until I moved to Minnesota and had school age children, I had no idea what MEA was. Every fall the Minnesota educator's take three days in October to break from school and meet (I think). I'm not actually sure what the educator's do, I just know the girls have three days off of school for it and they call it MEA.

We repeated our experience from last year and headed to Bray Lake, a county park northeast of Mankato to close out our camping for the year. The lows were in the low 30s and the highs each day were in the 50s.

The fall colors were beautiful again, and it was nice to experience all the leaves. There is a paved trail that winds through the trees that is perfect for strollers and bikes. John and the girls had fun playing with the leaves with their walking sticks. Since the trees canopy over the trail, there was a pretty thick layer in places.

We also hiked the other trails and observed some serious tree damage from a storm this last year that made hiking in some places more tree climbing than hiking. The girls also had a good time hiking off the trail trying to follow some deer tracks we spotted.

The park has a small swinging bridge over a little ravine that we got to try out this year. It was missing last year because they were replacing it. Of course, it was best experienced going across one at a time!

There is a large open area in the center of the park that we made good use of this year playing with our Aerobie. It's like a frisbee without the center, essentially a flying ring.

John and the girls played so late one night, they lost it in the dark and had to get a flashlight to find it. We tried to include Sarah by letting her pick it up and bring it to us. Since she tended to be in the center, we also had to try not to hit her with it!

One of the funniest moments of the trip was the night we had popcorn as a snack. Sarah has a pop up toy and discovered that popcorn left on top would fly when she opened it. Her laughter was hysterical as she thought that was the funniest thing ever. She was very focused on doing it again and again and again. Of course, then we had to find all of it!

On the way home we stopped in Waterville at the local ice cream place called Shake It Up for lunch - burgers, fries, and a large cookie dough flurry to share.

No little pieces of cookie dough here, more like a couple large spoonfuls. Sarah had difficulty sharing as we all took turns. She thought she needed a turn after every other person! Yum! We highly recommend it!