A Heritage Tour
For Memorial Day weekend, we took an abridged vacation to Brown County, Minnesota, meeting up with the Wurzbergers and Killmers at Fort Ridgely State Park. The trip was abridged because Joel had call at the hospital smack in the middle of the weekend, and so we drove up to Minnesota on Sunday morning and drove home again on Monday afternoon. Still, despite the brevity of the visit, we managed to explore ruins from the mid-1800s, buy penny candy at a historical general store, memorialize our grand-parents graveside, get all sticky with s’mores around the campfire, and tour a brewery.
One of the most memorable parts of the trip happened as we all witnessed Adelaide toddle from leg to leg, taking some of her first real steps this weekend. She confidently maneuvered around the campfire, grabbing onto a nearby knee for support and balance and would then take off for the next human pit stop, covering a span of a couple feet at a toddle-run. At our cheers and urgings, she has learned to applaud her efforts by clapping now whenever she attempts to walk.
In between admiring Adelaide and hobo dinners and blueberry pancakes at the campsite, we visited Sleepy Eye and New Ulm.
My dad’s paternal grandparents lived in Sleepy Eye – a town memorialized in my mind by Charles Landon as Pa in the Little House on the Prairie television program; wasn’t he always trying to get to Sleepy Eye for supplies or provisions or Christmas presents or something? Sleepy Eye may have been a buzzing junction of prairie life then, but this weekend it was a pretty, quiet, little town with a few fishing boats on the lake and most of the downtown storefronts closed for the holiday.
We searched the cemetery for Wurzbergers and Hoffmans, and managed to find my great-grandparents and great-great grandparents in their spots of eternal repose in a tranquil, shady corner of the cemetery.
On Monday, we picnicked in New Ulm and then headed up the bluff to Schell’s Brewery. We learned all about fermentation, hops, and wort on the brewery tour, and then sampled some Schell ales and lagers. Adelaide and Erin enjoyed the 1919 Root Beer while the rest of us indulged in quite a few samples of the local brew.
We strolled the grounds sipping our complimentary beverages, listening to the loud wail of roaming peacocks, searching for signs of life in the all-too-quiet deer park, and imagining ourselves living in August Schell’s formidable mansion at the turn of the last century.
And then, just like that, our vacation time was spent.
