Weekend in Crosslake

On Friday, Andi and I drove up North to Crosslake, Minnesota to check out a cabin we're intersted in renting for the summer. Ideally, we'd like to buy a cabin up North sometime in the future, so we thought we'd 'test drive' one this summer and see what areas we like and what are some of our 'must have's.' The cabin Andi found for us to possibly rent this summer was definitely nice - oh my gosh. It's nicer than some people's houses! Here's a few photos of the cabin:

Outside Cabin (lake side)

Drive way / Covered Patio

Upstairs Living Room (windows look out to lake)

1 of 3 finished bedrooms

Master bath w/ hot tub, shower + washer/dryer

Kitchen / upstairs living room

Downstairs living room / walk-out patio

Chloe lounging by the fireplace
(she loved it!)

The cabin is sooo nice...almost too nice. I almost worry that we'd ruin it except none of us are all that crazy. There's a cute little covered patio outside and a wrap-around deck for many beers to be drank. The cabin sits right on the water...so close you could almost throw a stone in it from the patio. Also, it's on a private lake so the boat traffic would be minimal. Perfect really ... except it is 2 1/2 hours away from the Cities. And with summer weekend traffic it could be more depending on the time we leave. Also, the cabin's for sale so it could sell at any time and we'd be out w/ 30 days notice.

We also looked at another cabin today (Sunday) on Gilbert Lake near Brainerd. It's a half hour closer to the Cities and near our friends John and Carna but not as nice as the one above. It was nice enough though, and more in line with what we envisioned a summer cabin to be. More quaint if you will. Andi's going to do some price checking this week and see what our options are. The good news .... we'll have a cabin this summer! It's going to be a fun summer for sure.

While we were up in Crosslake this weekend, Andi rented a snowmobile to cruise around on Saturday. I'd never been snowmobiling before so I was a little nervous at first. Andi got a nice helmet for me to wear so I stayed nice and warm all bundled up in my winter gear. The sled also had heated seats and handlebars so that helped for sure! We started out on the Paul Bunyon Trail which was straight and fairly easy, then rode some trails near Backus and Hackensack.

Sporting my rockin' helmet Andi got me!

Ready for a day of snowmobiling

A few photos of us and the beautiful backcountry!

Andi did a great job guiding us around all the trails

In all, we rode about a 100 miles ... which turns out was about 40 miles too long. At around hour four, my behind started to hurt and I started to get cold. I said to Andi "I don't want to do this anymore" and unfortunately we were about 40 miles away from town. It started to go downhill from there. It plain sucked. There was nothing we could do but keep riding as it got darker and colder. Finally we arrived back into town around 6pm. I didn't even complain when we drove over a frozen lake (one of the scariest things ever in my opinion) only because I desperately wanted to be done. Then we were back in the car, driving back to our warm cabin and all was good again. We ordered pizza and sat by the fire all night. Such a good weekend to reconnect again.