Day 2: "So I would've lost all my cows here?"

Although this was the second official day of class, it was the first official day of the road trip and our first stop was Minnesota.  We left from Coe bright and early at 9:30 a.m. and after packing the van with all of our luggage, we were off to the great state of 10,000 lakes.  As a Minnesotan attending Coe College, I can tell you from personal experience that the drive from Iowa to Minnesota is ridiculously boring.  This day was no different and so almost immediately we began to devise ways to entertain ourselves.  While a few losing suggestions were thrown onto the table (erick's cow game...spotting barn quilts...sounds fun, right? yeah, I didn't think so), we ultimately ended up playing a kind of celebrity name game (not sure what to call it) that lasted for quite some time.  It goes as follows: I say Joe Mauer and then the next person has to come up with a famous person whose first name starts with an 'M' (for Mauer).  For example, they could say Michelle Obama.  The next person would then have to come up with a person whose first name starts with an 'O.' The only other rule is that if someone comes up with a double (like Mike Myers or Hugh Hefner), the order of play gets reversed.  After a long battle, Conner emerged as the champion.  He was pretty excited, as you can imagine.

After finally making it to Minnesota and finding our super fancy hotel, the Crowne Plaza, we were all pumped to check out our sweet digs. The excitement dwindled for some as we all discovered that instead of two beds per room, there was only one.  While this was not a problem for Stephanie and I who will always have one room to ourselves, the room of four boys was not quite as thrilled.  They worked it out though.  We then met with a couple of Coe alums for a picnic dinner before heading to the Twins game.

Being that this was our first major league game, it seems only natural that we would have to wait out an hour of rain, lightning, and occasionally golf ball sized hail.  Once that delightful situation cleared up, and a few thousand fans cleared the stadium, the game resumed and we got to watch the Twins lose to the Tigers with a final score of 10-2.  It wasn't too bad though, we got to move down to sit pretty close to the field and Erick even got on the big screen...briefly ;) However, we were pretty tired after spending roughly 5.5 hours at Target Field so as soon as the game finished we made our way back to our hotel to get some sleep for our 5 a.m. wake-up call. 

Stay tuned for an update on Day 3 where we ventured to Milwaukee to see the Brewers vs. the Padres!

The group (and Erick's finger...guess he was feeling left out)

Champion Conner

We didn't mind that there was only one bed. We fell in love with it, actually.

The weather at the game started off being really nice!

Annnd then quickly turned into this, hence the tarp on the diamond.

Check the hail on the field. It was ridiculous.

But the game went on! This is how close we ended up getting - and we could have even gotten closer!

Also, Danny made a new friend ;) "Yeah I was spitting mad game with that old lady"