Andrew and I left for MN bright and early Friday morning (after doing the chores). It rained part of the journey, but did eventually stop. We were both amazed at how perfectly flat the North part of MN is...
Andrew drove all the way! :) We took his small, stick-shift car which gets great gas-mileage and only had to fill twice on our whole journey. Not counting the time it took to do some shopping in Fargo, it took about 6 hours to get to the Krahn's farm and corn-maze. (Here is a link to their blog:
http://greenpasturesfarm.blogspot.com/)
Here's another view of the flat land there. Isn't it pretty?
We saw lots of sugar-beet fields and equipment. The ground was very wet!
We drove by one town that made/sold tracked vehicles (or maybe they just sold the tracks, I'm not sure?)...
It was neat to drive through Warroad, past the thousands of petunias the Krahn family plants each year for the town and then weeds throughout the summer...
At long last, we came to a sign that let us know we'd come to the right place.
Yay--we made it!
There were several things for people to do besides going through the corn-maze... Here is the human-fooseball area:
The petting zoo had several farm animals for people to enjoy...
This part was fun, even though I missed the target! (It's a water-balloon sling-shot).
The cow-a-saurus...
At 4:00, there was a treasure-hunt in the straw for all kids 12 and under...
The bale-stack for people to climb... There was a bale-maze too, but I never went through that as they said it was pretty wet and smushy in there.
:)
I went on a hayride with some of the Krahn family. Mr. K. stopped the tractor by the fence so people could feed the cows some corn-stalks...
It was so great to finally meet Naomi (formerly Krahn) and her husband and children! It's because of her that we met the Krahn family in the first place (we read each other's blogs because we both enjoy cake-decorating), but by the time we met the Krahns in person, Naomi was married and had moved away. They were back for a visit now. (Naomi's in the black coat here, so it's not a very good picture, but her husband and little girl are easy to see).
A cute scarecrow...
Priscilla and a friend kept the grill going... Miriam is in the red shirt. I helped a little bit with running the admissions/concession stand on Friday. Andrew helped Mr. Krahn and Silas with odds and ends (loading hay trailers and taking tree branches off of neighbor's roofs).
Hosanna K. made this cute cake in celebration of 5 years of having a corn-maze.
This is the K's kitchen----and Miriam and Hosanna in it!
I helped Hosanna make several batches of popcorn balls to sell at the maze...
Yummy!
Mrs. K---and the popcorn-ball makers...
They looked and smelled wonderful!
Looking through picture albums...
Now back to the corn-maze...
This is part of the obstacle course:
The "Granery" was full of creative things to buy, many of which the K. family had made...
The food and eating area... If you look closely, you'll see the campfire that the guys moved under the shelter so people could be out of the rain while they dried off. :)
The area back there is where the bale-maze and slingshot was...
Saturday was a very wet and cold day...
Andrew and I went through the maze when the rain stopped late Saturday afternoon. We were probably in there around an hour as the maze is that huge!
When you go into the maze, you're given a map so (hopefully) you don't get lost!
The deer-stand in the maze:
While going through the maze, you're supposed to find all of the animals that are marked on the map by a star. Then, you can also find the 3 bonus animals which aren't marked, which means you need to travel every trail--at least until you find all of the animals.
It was a lot of fun! I was glad I had my mud-boots along though...
An example of the information about one of the animals found in MN...
This one shows what the maze looks like from the top of the deer-stand. The beginning of the maze is way back by those flags and buildings...
We had such a nice time with the Krahn family!!! We played games one evening and watched a movie that Mr. Krahn was in during the second evening (while eating cake and ice-cream). Plus, we visited a lot about farm life and about witnessing to people (they showed us some neat tracts we hadn't seen before)---and also went to church with their family Sunday morning. Andrew and I left right after the meal after church.
Next stop? The U. family! :) Their place was right on our way home and was about half way inbetween the K's home and our farm.
In between getting a tour of the U's place (the last time we were there it was very cold outside, so we stayed in the house mostly), and helping them get some corn stored away in the barn-loft for winter, we played several games of volleyball!
After eating supper and visiting a while, we got started on some fun thinking games.....and didn't stop for another 3 hours or so. :)
I only snapped a few pictures, so here they are... The string-game was funny to watch!
Basically, two people were tied together with strings (looped together once) at their wrists and had to try to get out without cutting the string. There's a neat trick to this----which we eventually showed to them so now they can tie up all of their friends to see if they can get out. :)
Hmmmm....
Getting tangled up!
Mr. & Mrs. U...
They got really close to getting it figured out!
My brother...
The U. brothers... This is a blurry picture, but is funny to see how twisted up they got while trying to get out!
Playing "Bing, bing, bong..." They taught us a couple of games like this too, so now we can see if the rest of our family/friends can figure these things out. ;)
Thinking hard..... They actually picked up on these games pretty quickly. My favorite game was the "Scissors game"!
We stayed overnight there, then after breakfast, I helped Lydia milk their 2 cows. We looked through photo albums then, while Andrew figured out what was wrong with their computer. :) We joined the ladies for lunch (the menfolk left for work early in the morning) and helped with the dishes, then headed for home.
It rained again a good portion of the 3 hours home... We finally made it!
Lauretta called me when we were just a few miles from home and asked if she could buy a DVD that Andrew made of Chris and Sarena's wedding. She actually ended up being 2 vehicles behind us on the HWY, so she pulled in our driveway right after us and got the movie. :)
It was such a joy to spend parts of 4 days with such wonderfully fun, Godly families!
My dad said that not much happened at home while we were gone---it just rained, and rained, and rained.
