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.