Taylor Falls

Taylor Falls

No swift here, still you will be swifting with the flow if you don’t know canoeing or kayaking. Taylors Falls is a city in Chisago County, Minnesota, United States, often known as Village on the river. There is an Interstate State Park, built on the beautiful St. Croix River which comes under Taylor Falls and serve as a good outdoor spot just outside Minneapolis.

Warning-Bear(Balu) Spotted

One fine day, I was in conversation with a friend discussing weekend plans, by the way that’s my daily discussion since spring. He informed me that he likes to go out, but didn’t get company. I said, that’s it.. I can give you company and the plan was decided for Taylor Falls. Well you know that I am always in to go out. Personally, I believe that -as much as we go out, we learn new things from new people we met. Yes its expensive, but its fun.

We drove in my Honda accord V6 coupe for this adventure. We started late, still reached on time as its just 1hr drive from our place. There are 2 trails available-one will take you on the river side and another one towards road side. We took the river one while going and road while coming back. On the way, we stopped for Ice-cream, it was good and cheap. If you have not taken any lunch/breakfast you can have it here, it’s good. Local street food is always good to have, it gives a diff taste and makes sense of the quote, When in Rome.

Next adventure and a real one was Canoeing, I have done paddle boating in resting calm water but not the canoeing in any kind of water. I tell you, if you are planning to do canoeing for the first time, have 2 persons in canoe, but let only one drive the boat. Else it may keep on rotating and if it’s flowing water, no matter where you are taking the boat, there are chances of the boat going with the flow. We drove the boat 2 times, and the 2^nd time we learnt how to drive it. Next 2 days my hands were hurting like anything due to canoeing, but I must say it was fun activity.

One more friend Balu accompanied us and the most interesting thing is the park people already knew that he was coming and posted warning notice which states “Bear Seen”

MayDay Parade

Explodes into Bloomington Avenue Downtown Minneapolis every year at the 1^st Sunday of May. Around 50,000 people join the parade which ends in Powderhorn Park followed by day long celebrations and Tree of Life Ceremony. For many in Minnesota, the MayDay Parade is a time to celebrate the coming warmth with hand-built puppets and masks (some over 10 feet tall), music, and performance in the street. In other words welcoming spring with music and celebrations.

It is organized by a popular group known as “In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre”. You can visit them on web @ HOBT.org. I knew this group from the Lantern Festival held in January and hence I was able to witness such a cool crowd of Minnesota. Sunday morning as usual, I visited my Church and afterwards one friend from Church joined me for parade. Although we reached there enough late, parade was already over, still there were celebrations going on inside powderhorn park. They had different kinds of dance-native American, belly dance etc.

The best thing about this event was you cannot only see it, but you can join them and dance, enjoy with them. I would like to give a special thanks to my friend who came with me and the organizing group-hobt.org. One more thing, I would like to add here is Lemonade, in US at least in Minnesota, its quite famous drink. Everyone is mad about it. There was a long queue just to get lemonade, although there were long queues for ATM and Ice cream, but that’s understandable.

There were stalls for all kind of food stuff, even there was a stall of Indian God and people were selling Ramayana/Mahabharata there. It was new for me. Then there was a fight between 2 gangs and in last it started raining. The most interesting part was it took us 15-20 minutes to search for our car on the way back. Serious problem in downtown areas. Then I dropped my friend at his place and came back. This was the first US parade experience and I must say, it was pretty cool.

Did you find Lake Minnetonka?

Group Pic

Few days back, I got a shock when I got to know that I have explored only 5% of the earth. I want to keep up to explore the rest area and hence I am roaming now a days, so I am not able to find any time to document every trip.

Foood

Here’s an example of a different experience that I had 2 weeks back. If you are from India, you might have heard Tiffin Party concept, in US it is called as Potluck. People will make dishes at their home and bring em to a picnic spot to eat together. I never visited such functions in India, but with the help of a friend, I was able to join it here. Thanks for that. It’s known as Potluck in US.

Yummy

We were planning for a potluck from quite a long time and finally the day came when we visited Lake Minnetonka-the famous Venue. Dishes were planned in advance, everyone brought one dish, some brought snack others rice, chapati and sweets. My signature dish was different shaped Chapatis and Moat Beans (Sprout Gravy).

Nearby Places

I always wanted to have a parade of Cars as it looks spectacular, and as most of us stay at single place and were going to a same place, it was possible this time. Hence I proposed this before starting, but people didn’t agreed. I was ready on time, but after some time I got to know that I have to pick a family which lives in a nearby location and most funny thing, they weren’t answering my calls, so obviously I was supposed to be late. I went to their place, picked them, put address in my GPS and reached venue in 15 mins. I was searching for people, thinking I would be late, but to my surprise no one reached before me. In fact all of em were roaming around here and there, they visited every place nearby but not the Lake Minnetonka Regional Park, now if they would have followed me, and all of us would have reached on time. Anyways I watsapped my location to the group and then they followed me.

Njoying Water

As soon as everyone reached, we started eating like hungry Indian which makes sense as no one had any breakfast. I must say, I am not a very good cook, but a true eater. Yes, I like to eat and try different dishes. I belong to a city which is known as Street Food capital of India, just type “Indore is known as Foody City” and you will find on WIki. After lunch, first thought came in mind was of sleep. Ha ha ha typical me. But we started playing games like Ramudi-Sita, we will write characters of Ramayana in separate chits and one will be provided to everyone. Ram will be revealing his identity and then he has to find out Sita. If he is not able to do so, then Sita will be punishing him. Punishment can include anything, it’s just like truth and Dare game with a religious touch. Then we started giving a task to everyone, each has to share a funny, good, any story. There were few real good stories.

Last, we explored some nearby spots of park and then headed back. Overall trip was good, planning to have more potlucks soon.

Chicago Road trip

Sue

Day 2

Day 2 started with another major attraction of Chicago-The Field Museum-One of the World’s Largest natural history Museum. As we entered, Sue-a magnificent dinosaur was there to welcome us.

Under the Ground

The museum had a lot to offer, right from remains of dinosaurs to animal artifacts. Old heritage places, wudoo power, black magic and many more. Few real mummies were there, I was thinking just in case if this Museum comes alive in night, like the movie “Night at the Museum” then that’s it- Chicago is done. Well that’s just a hypothesis but there is a place which is under the ground and it is prepared to give you a under the soil feeling and sometimes, it became scary. There were few more interesting things like gems, fossil lab but due to less time, we had to drop these places in order to enter Mission Moon.

Adler-Space Xploraration

Yes you are correct, our next adventure was Adler Planetarium. At this science station, they tell you how to search a habitable planet and I was thinking, I am not even able to find a good parking spot in Chicago and they have capacity to search for life on other planets, seriously. Adler is America’s first planetarium. All these places-Shedd, Museum and Planetorim are at walking distances, but its tough to cover em all in a single day. There is an event called as hidden wonders which is shown in a big spherical theatre. Complete roof will become space, its worth watching show, you will feel as if you are in space. They also have some big size telescopes and a place where you can walk through space and time.

Mota hogaya hu shayad

Next we headed towards John Hancock observatory, again after spending one hour in searching for a parking spot. The important thing about this skyscraper is it allows you to tilt and see Chicago, yes theres a fee for that. Rest everything is same as in Willis. I would suggest going at one skyscrapper rather than both. Now all of us were hungry and this time, we had proper dinner. It was Chicagos specialty Chicago Style Pizza from one of the 4 restaurants which sells it- The Lumanatis.

Angry Girl

Last but not the least, we visited Millennium Park. They have made a park just to celebrate Millenium, I don’t get these things, but they are surprisingly funny. Park has a lot of things to offer right from free events to exhibitions to Pavillion to marvelous Cloud Gate to a lot more things. Lets explore em one by one. Pavillion is the centerpiece of park with capacity of 4000+7000 people. You can symphony orchestra and chorus there. Next we have a cloud gate also known as Bean due to its structure is a stainless steel sculpture which provides our reflection. Next we have something called as Crown Fountain-a watery Video sculpture where they play videos of Chicago people under a water fountain. There are many other things to explore as weather permits like the Lurie garden, Ice rink, Pedestrian Bridge, wrigley Square etc.

Bean

Right after Park, we headed towards back to Minnesota. On the way there was a small incident on highway, I wish God forbids me for that. Overall journey was good. Normally I write about my crew, this time I have forgotten that, I’ll try to include it in next post, Thanks. 

This is just a Beginning

Shedd Aquarium

It’s been some time now that I have been to a trip. I was waiting for the spring and now when its here, I am ready to roll, ready to explore all corners of the USA. Recently, I got the opportunity to visit 3^rd most populous city of US-Chicago. I believe this is just a beginning of my US trips, now Spring is up and I have started visiting places.

Star with Stars

We have been planning for this trip from sometime and suddenly on a sunny day, I got ping from a friend asking for Chicago Trip. I said “are u serious, I am definitely in.” Soon, 5 people were finalized and we booked a car, yes it was a road trip. First trip in US and that too a road one, isn’t that’s aaaaawesome.

Lookin @ Chicago

There were 5 guys-2 boys and 3 girls, so we were somehow able to accommodate in a single Toyota Camry taking in account physique of people with us. We started around 4 AM from Minneapolis and reached Chicago around 11 AM. First we visited a place called as Willis Tower (one of the tallest Skyscraper, it was the tallest in the world for at least 25 years), also known as Sears Tower. It is a 108 story building and provides a good view of Chicago Downtown. We bought Chicago City passes from Sears which allows us to visit 5 major attractions of Chicago. Some of the attractions have choices in them. Once we had a sky view of Willis, we moved on to our next attraction Shedd Aquarium. It’s really a biiig aquarium and has all kinds of fishes, too many fishes. At one point of time, you may feel all are just fishes and you may start ignoring them. But I must say, some of them are really worth watching like sea horses, penguins, whales, some weird kind of fishes which doesn’t even look like a fish.

Live baby fish

Driving from early morning and visiting 2 spots all of us were exhausted, so we thought of going to our reserved hotel-Quality Inn and get fresh. One of our friend wanted to have Indian dinner, unfortunately we ended up having a completely different food at Devon Street. All of us were hungry like hell, but none of us was able to eat anything due to huge quantity of food they offer and other specialties of restaurant. It was a long day, so next day in next post.