Spring Break - Duluth, MN

Over spring break, we decided to spend a weekend in Duluth. It couldn't have worked out better. The weather was fantastic, tourism was low, and the 2 hour drive was just right.

Saturday had temps in the upper 50's, which is awesome for Duluth in early April. We decided to spend some time at the historic lift bridge, which the kids really liked. The timing worked out well since one of the larger freighters was coming into the harbor while we were there.

We stayed at a hotel that had a waterpark, and that served as a good family event center as well. On Friday, we celebrated Nikki's birthday, part of which was spent cleaning up one of our child's throw-up 4 times that day. The joys of being a parent.

On Sunday we went to the Great Lakes aquarium - which took a few hours to visit. It's mostly stocked with the same fish you see everywhere, but the kids liked it pretty well.

House on the Rock

When we go to visit Chicago, we've started to make a stop in the Wisconsin Dells for the kids. This year, since Easter was at the end of spring break for most schools in MN and WI, the rates were jacked up big-time when we decided to go to Chicago over Easter weekend.

We opted for a plan B: doing House on the Rock instead. This is in the same general area of Wisconsin, but a little off the beaten path. Still, there are signs all along the interstate that we've always ignored, so this looked like a good opportunity to make.

As an aside, the weather didn't cooperate. The Madison, WI area has had record snowfall, and the day we were passing through the area was pretty crummy due to another snowfall of 6-9 inches of fresh snow. The positive is that the House on the Rock had very view visitors - it was almost like we had the entire tourist trap to ourselves.

This is a an interesting place that I guess you need to go through once. Nik and I commented that we won't be bothered if we don't go back for another 15-20 years. The place was hit or miss for me. A few rooms were interesting and unique, most were boring to me, much less the kids. Karsten and Kiera both used the words "dark" and "scary" to describe it. I couldn't imagine this place during peak tourist season and having to maneuver around lots of people. Still, the House on the Rock took several hours just to tour all the rooms since it's a pretty sprawling place encompassing several large buildings that have been added over the years.

Oh, and did I mention that there's shag carpet everywhere - including most ceilings? I'd hate to have to be the one to vacuum this place.

Here are some pics. My favorite was the Infinity room, which juts off the top of the mountain and goes ~100 ft. straight out over the valley. Visibility was bad due to the weather, but the effect was still stunning.
This is a pic. of the Carousel Room. Supposedly, there are 20,000 lights on that thing. I counted them, and that's a bit of exaggeration. I stopped at 599,527, but I'm not sure if I counted some lights more than once since the Carousel was moving the whole time.

Lastly, we were told to check out the bathrooms. They were pretty cool. This is one of the nicer men's rooms.


This bathroom below helps men keep man law #12: avoid using the urinal right next to another dude at all costs. There was easily 5-6 feet between the urinals, and each urinal had it's own sink to boot. On the downside, the picture looks like some dude still has bad aim, if you know what I mean. That, or they just hosed the place down for a cleaning... I stayed away just to be sure.

THE Office

Unfortunately this isn't a post about the TV show, but it's still pretty important.

When I'm not jet-setting for work across the Midwest, this is my new space where I occasionally get to work when I'm actually home. We finished part of the basement in January, and I'm just now getting around to posting some pictures from it. I still need to hang my art (you can see some of the Ansel Adams prints in front of the bookcase), but it's functional and provides some level of privacy (though it could use more sound-proofing...).

What my inner geek is thinking about these days...

I consider myself a serious gadget guy, but have to confess that I don't own one of the most prolific gadgets available today: a GPS.

This may seem odd since I travel aplenty for my job, but I've managed to work around this by either planning ahead or using Google Maps on my Blackberry with large success. Rarely do I get lost or am unable to find where I need to go.

That doesn't mean things can't be better. Enter a new company called Dash. They just launched a new GPS that offers some significant features no other GPS available can provide. Allow me to elaborate.

By far then best feature is two way communication that gives you real-time TruTraffic updates. What this means is that the GPS unit has a basic cell-phone-like feature that always communicates with Dash and receives information from Dash as well. So if other cars are stuck in traffic due to an accident, the Dash knows about this almost instantly and can send you to your destination via another route. Once more of these units are sold, the data will only get more accurate and effective.

The service also automatically updates maps which is often a time-consuming and even costly proposition.

The Dash also has wi-fi so you can enter addresses and points of interest on your laptop and wirelessly send them to your car in the garage/driveway if you have a simple network set up in your home.

True, it's nowhere close to being the smallest or sexiest-looking GPS on the market, but right now I'd prefer functionality over form.

It's priced fairly resonably at $399. There is a monthly service fee of $12.99 though. I'll let you know if I bite on this one or not...

If you go to Dash's website, there's a short video that shows how this works.

[photos are from Dash's web site as well]