Friday 9-14 Dancing to Bill Haynes

Keeping Cool

A couple weeks ago when we were dancing at WIPAC we picked up a flyer about an advanced dance weekend in St. Anthony, Minnesota (the twin cities area) with Bill Haynes calling. We have been slowly working our way there.    

Today we left Wisconsin and drove to Minnesota. The first thing we did was stop at the welcome center to get information on Minnesota. There are very few camping opportunities in the Twin Cities area, there are a few county parks outside the cities that are full most weekends and quite expensive. All of the cities in close proximity to the twin cities area have passed parking ordinances against staying overnight in vehicles so you can't even stay at any of the nearby Walmart's. The closest Walmart that we could park at was about 20 miles away, we found a Lowe's near the Walmart and are staying there considering it's a lot quieter.

St. Anthony is a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul. The event started today at 7:30 so we had time to check out some sites. We drove around downtown Minneapolis looking for a place to park, everything was really busy and we could not find anywhere that the Minnie would fit. We did find a big city park called Como Park. The park has hiking/biking trails, Hamm Memorial Falls, a big Pavilion looks over the river and they have paddle boats to rent. The pavilion has a stage and places to eat while you dine at the restaurant. The falls are just across the street. They are man-made and very small. We sat in the pavilion and enjoyed the breeze that came through. Then we walked around the falls area and headed back to the Minnie. We moved to a park near the church we were going to dance at and stayed there for a few hours. The temperature is an unseasonable 90 degrees so even though we found a nice shady spot it was still very warm inside the Minnie so we started up the generator and turned on the AC. Luckily it cools off at night.

The pavilion that looks over the river

Hamm Memorial Falls

The dance was at 7:30, we had five squares and a few people sitting out. They had cookies, brownies, water, coffee and hot chocolate for refreshments. The dancers were happy to have us. We had just danced with a lot of them at WIPAC. Bill Haynes was also happy we decided to come. Tonight's dance was advertised as an easy A dance, Bill Haynes started easy but fortunately he quickly became his normal challenging self. We had a very fun night of dancing.