The vacation begins

Proving just how financially creative we can be, Peder and I have begun our week-long vacation. We are staying local and doing some "touristy" things in our own town.
Yesterday we started out by hitting the Powderhorn Art Fair. We ran into friends Nan & Jim ayers who makes these amazing carved birds: Then we did lunch with Donna & headed to Canterbury Downs for some horse racing. She had a blast! I enjoyed it too. Peder & I finally won something in the 5th race, me with the horse "thirty below zero" Wishful thinking after last week's heat wave?
Donna also bestowed upon me some Fisher~Price toys. (see next post)

Today we went to Como park. Site of our very first face to face date. We walked around the lake, stopped into the pavilion for a drink, and ventured to the consevatory and the zoo. We walked through the Japanese garden. It had been quite a while sine either of us had been through it. Gorgeous. I can see how it would be calming to sit in such a place and escape from the hassles of life.

As we walked through the zoo, Peder marveled at how many strollers there were. It was pretty crowded. I regaled him, yet again, with my stories of buying a little bag of fish bits to feed the sea lions, and of the time I got lost and spent time in the tiny little office by the old (horribly small) cages. I came away from that trauma with a free plastic gorilla. Seems I was rewarded for wandering off.
We strolled through the newly remodeled rides area. The sentimental part of me misses the old crappy rides, but the new park is pretty darn nice.
The rest off the day was pretty mundane. Went grocery shopping. I decided we were going to shop for vacation food. To me, that means bologna, white bread, Doritos, mini Snickers & Pepsi. (I only actually purchased a couple of those) Total Camp VanVac food. Then we went home to veg & nap. If we were on a "real" vacation we'd have taken a long nap in a hotel room anyway.