While we’re enjoying the animals and spices of northern and central Africa, I decided to give you a little overview of some of the fun we had this summer. We spent most of our time in Minnesota but we crossed the state several times between visiting parents and camping near the boundary waters, and visiting friends and family around the twin cities. We also planned and hosted our Welcome Home Reception party, which was in a way part of our wedding, but also a celebration of our “honeymoon” lap around the world in the first year! We also did a road trip to Colorado with Mr. Wander’s parents where we caught up with some family, friends, and some new national parks for me!
Family Time
When I was first back from Europe with my sister back in May, we spent some time between each of our parents for awhile to catch up after not seeing them much since January. While visiting my parents I got to help my mom frost some cupcakes for a friend of theirs. My mom and I both enjoy baking and that’s where my cake decorating interest comes from.
Early in the summer we planned a few trips with each of our immediate families near Ely. First we enjoyed a weekend not far from Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota staying at a campground in my parents’ camper and sister and BIL’s camper.
It was quite buggy where we were at but it was good catching up and getting to play some games of dice and cards and doing some laps of the campground biking with our nephew. We of course went golfing one of the days as it has been something like a tradition most years since we were kids. This was such a small course they let us all 7 go out together but they only had 2 of their 4 carts left so Mr. Wander and I walked and managed to fit our bags onto the other carts.
One evening we visited this particular bear sanctuary area. It’s a bit unique as it started by someone that was trying to keep the bears out of his food, and decided on a non-violent approach of dumping scraps away from his house back in the 70s. The bears soon learned to be kind to the man with the buckets and they’d wait for him to drop off the food. As the bears had gotten used to it, it has now been turned into a sanctuary area where no one can hut them and the foundation continues to feed the bears daily in the evening, and offered tours to an upper boardwalk to see the bears chowing down.
The family also stopped at some nearby rapids one of the days for a little walk and checking out the views. My nephew really enjoyed climbing around on the rocks
We had almost a week to ourselves where we spent it exploring neighboring towns around the area known as the Iron Range. We eventually would like to build a home and this is one area we are considering, so we were getting a feel for the different towns.
Soon it was time to join up with Mr. Wander’s family at a cabin right on the edge of the Boundary waters. Here we stayed a week, enjoying quality time together and watching some families of ducks. We rented their pontoon for an afternoon and explored the lake. Twice Mr. Wander, his brother, SIL, and myself tried out the wood fired sauna, alternating with some dips in the very cold lake!
Throughout the week we all worked on this puzzle our nephew found in the main building that we got together by the end-but it was missing a few pieces.
One of the days we went towards Ely and explored the wolf center. We saw one of the wolves walking around behind the glass and got to see a few wolf pups hiding under a bench. They were so cute!
Welcome Home Reception
Soon it was time to host our party. We spent the weeks prior mostly getting ready which included making a few tasty desserts from our travels: Millionaire short bread from Scotland (my favorite) and Alfajores which is a sandwich cookie made with Dulce de leche and was one of Mr. Wander’s favorites from Argentina. Funnily enough I never took a picture of the completed goods, but here’s an example of a millionaire shortbread I had last year in Scotland!
Our families and close friends were so helpful in making this day a success, from our moms making tasty cookies from our childhood, my sister and her husband making sure the food ran smoothly and Mr. Wander’s brother and his wife getting everyone’s picture and notes in a guest book she made for us with pictures from our wedding. A close friend of mine and her daughters helped me make all these centerpieces from flowers my sister in law and I dyed for the ceremony.
Going back to December of 2023, we decided to do a destination wedding at Glacier National Park, with the hopes of a winter wedding. We really lucked out because not only did no one have any travelling issues by car, train or plane, but we got a snow globe of a wedding that came overnight, and it wasn’t even a blizzard! Here’s a few pictures from the festivities out West.
Back to this past July, we were able to briefly catch up with about 150 or more friends and family that came to see us, and I know many of you are reading this now, so thank you for coming! It was fun getting to see people I hadn’t in years and my hope is we can spend more time with many of you as we start travelling around the US in a campervan.
I just want to give another special thank you to our families and friends for all their help, it would not have turned out nearly so well without everything you did!
Colorado
A few days after the party we took off for Colorado with Mr. Wander’s parents. We had originally planned a trip to the mountains to begin a bit of acclimatization to altitude before we climbed Kilimanjaro this September. His mom was wanting to visit friends from when she used to live in Colorado Springs and his dad has a few cousins in the area.
So we planned to go together but just before we left we found out that our friends we wanted to climb Mt Kilimanjaro with needed to cancel and asked if we would postpone until next year. So we switched the focus of hiking at altitude to just getting to visit with friends and family, while exploring two National Parks together.
It takes about 2 days to drive there and then we were able to stay with Mr. Wander’s dad’s cousin and spent a few days catching up with her family and brother that lived nearby. Just before the trip we also found out one of our friends from the bike ride in Wales last year had just moved there so we caught up over beer and Sasquatch ice cream sandwiches.
We did a hike one of the days but this time didn’t opt to climb Pikes Peak, a popular “14-er” in the area. Before leaving the area, we caught up with a few of Mr. Wander’s mom’s friends in both Colorado Springs and Pueblo.
Our next stop was Great Sand Dunes National park, where Mr. Wander and I hiked to the saddle of one of the first dunes. We started early around 8am so the sand was nice and cold. Just as the sun was starting to come out of the clouds we decided to head back down and went to the visitor center.
Then we headed up towards Aspen where we caught sight of the Maroon Bells with an evening pass to visit after xpm. There were deer and fox walking pretty close to some of the people. We spotted a wedding taking photos by the lake but soon we heard thunder and decided to head up to our hotel.
The following day we drove on back roads through the mountains and crossed Rocky Mountain National Park, stopping only at the pullouts on our side on our way to Estes park where we stayed for the evening.
That night I managed to get a pass by signing in at the right time to their online system to Bear Lake for early the next morning. We got one of the last parking spots in the top lot and Mr. Wander and his dad did a little hike around the lake, while his mom and I enjoyed the quiet and stillness of the sun rising over the mountains.
Then we made our way back across the park, visiting the alluvial fan and several other longer pullouts, sometimes taking a little hike for the sites.
We stopped in the town of Grand Lake at a quilt shop and enjoy the town until we could check into our hotel. Finally we made our way to Steamboat Springs for the night. The next day we went to a nearby town to visit one of my mom’s cousins who hosted us for a lunch of some delicious barbecue ribs. It was really fun to hear of my mom’s shenanigans when she was young with her cousin, and a few stories of my grandparents.
We left their house for a small town called Craig to spend one more night in Colorado. Mr. Wander had found a 5k and a balloon festival there so we made plans to do the run and meet up with my cousin (the daughter of who we saw the night before) and her mom came to join us.
It was our first actual color run, and the only time we saw a balloon as the weather turned quite windy. There was a carshow and I really enjoyed catching up with her since it had been over 10 years since my last visit out there. We were all excited for the cardboard regatta but they only had about 6 boats, so it was over pretty quick.
After saying our goodbyes we made it a good distance to Wyoming for the night, and made it all the way back to his parents house the following night to sleep in a familiar bed!
More Visiting
After returning we visited each parent’s house for several days before we headed towards the twin cities. On the weekend we had signed up for a camp with fellow finance nerds. It was fun to meet up with so many like minded people and made some new friends who really enjoy travelling. One of them even joined us for a day at the Minnesota State Fair after the camp, which we hadn’t been to in several years.
We tried mostly just the new foods that didn’t have a long line and had some amazing things like this cheese curd taco (the lettuce was a nice change from fried food!) but some misses like this raspberry sour beer soft serve. I was expecting something more creamy like an ice cream but it was more like an icy sorbet with carbonation! Very strange. I did of course enjoy a tour through the creative arts building full of crochet, knit, quilt and baking projects
While back in the cities, we caught up with several friends and stayed with one of Mr. Wander’s uncles that lives close to the airport, and managed to finish all of our errands such as getting more contacts, some Malaria medication, and investing in some new sun shirts.
Resting up for the Next Adventure in Châtel, France
At the end of the summer it was time to set off for the next adventure! We had a few days layover in Miami due to some flight schedule changes but then we made it to Geneva. We took a train into France and then a bus up into the alps in a small town called Châlet. It was shoulder season between the high summer travel and until the snow flies for skiing so we got a great deal for 2 weeks at an Airbnb.
It was nice to relax and catch up on some sleep, and just have a little time to ourselves. This was where I was finally able to catch up on blogging as the party and travel planning took a good chunk of our time during the summer.
We cooked most of our own meals, except where we visited the local bakery a few times for copious amounts of croissants, eclairs, and delicious tarts.
We walked up to this lake a few times and it was pretty relaxing. One of the days we went farther and decided to hike all the way to Switzerland! There was another lake up here, and it was about 700 ft of climb over about 1.5 miles from our Airbnb.
On the way back we went to this restaurant overlooking the lake in town and had I think the BEST fondue ever! I think there was a mix of cheeses and it was bubbling so good. We splurged with some wine and dessert of creme brulee and a pistachio and chocolate ice cream sundae. I had never seen creme brulee served with marshmallows!
Our two weeks were up and it was time for a bit of a travel marathon. We started by taking a bus back down the mountain. We stayed in the town of Thonon-les-bains which was in the middle on the south shore of Lake Geneva in France. The following morning we walked down to the lake to catch a ferry to Laussane, Switzerland. Here we had a few hours to walk to the train station, stopping at a cafe for tasty pastries on the way.
Our train took us to the center of Milan where we found another bus to take us to the airport. We were a little early so we had to wait to check in and managed to get into the lounge about 30 minutes before it closed, as we were the last flight out for the night. We made it to Amsterdam at about 1am, completing a day of a boat, train, bus, and plane!
We stayed over at a hotel just outside the airport, leaving our big bags checked, and caught up with the family at the gate for our flight to Tanzania!
Next Time
While our Kilimanjaro plans had gotten cancelled, our family had flights to join us there so we instead joined them in Europe for the last flight to Arusha, Tanzania. Here we started two weeks together with a 4 day safari around three of the national parks, a stopover in Istanbul for a few days, and nearly a week in Marrakesh, Morocco. I hope you’re ready for some amazing animal interactions and beautiful trees, I got a bit obsessed with the Umbrella Acacia trees all over Tanzania and especially the Serengeti. Until Next time, Au Revior!
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