Nelson Family Blog: 2026

Friday, January 16, 2026

Duluth Trip 2025

The weekend after Labor Day, we took a family trip to Duluth. We planned this trip while my dad was still alive, so it was very bittersweet to go on this trip without my dad, who was so excited and looking forward to going to Duluth. We reserved an Airbnb over a year ago. It was a big beautiful house with a large wrap around porch, a fire pit, a hiking trail, a pond, and a stream. It had 8 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a huge kitchen, indoor fireplace, and more. We couldn't have asked for a nicer place. But, we could have asked for nicer weather. It was cold, rainy, and windy basically the entire time we were there. We wore hoodies, and pants the whole time, and we couldn't even enjoy our beautiful deck.

We pulled the kids out of school on Thursday and Friday. We headed to my mom's house on Wednesday night, and then we headed for Duluth on Thursday morning. Ryan and Emily took mom in their car, and then the 4 of us rode in our car. We made good time, and ended up in Duluth around 1:00pm for a late lunch. Then, we headed down to Canal Park to see the lift bridge, walk around the museum, explore some shops and breweries, and just do touristy things. After all that, we stopped for groceries, and then headed to our Airbnb. We got unpacked, settled in, and then made some supper. While we were playing some pool in the basement, Rachel, Carlos and Elena arrived. We all ended up in the kitchen, having some drinks and visiting. Then, we headed to bed. Our family slept upstairs, Ryan and Emily took the master on the main floor, Mom had a bedroom on the main floor, and then Rachel and Carlos took the basement.

On Friday, we did some exploring. We went to Split Rock Lighthouse, Gooseberry Falls, Betty's Pies, and the lookout tower in Duluth. We had some cloudy, chilly weather, but overall it wasn't bad for hiking. We saw some beautiful waterfalls, ate some delicious pie, and just enjoyed a laid back day of exploring. We also stopped at Castle Danger Brewery, but that was very crowded and cold and rainy, so we did not have the best experience. But the beer was good. By late afternoon, we were back at our house ready to make some supper and hang out. It was once again too cold and rainy to be on the deck, so we hung out in the kitchen and visited with some beverages.

On Saturday, we did some more exploring. We went to Tettegouche State Park and did some more intense hiking and exploring. Ryan, Emily, Emma, John and I went because we were more of the hiking/adventerous crew, and the others stayed behind and went to the Duluth Aquarium and did some things in downtown Duluth. After all the hiking, we did a little brewery tour. We went to Bent Paddle, Ursa Minor, and Warrior Brewery. It was fun to explore all of those, but I felt bad dragging Emma to all of those breweries. Then, we met up with the rest of the party at a BBQ place for supper. The food was a little underwhelming, but it was a fun experience. Then, we headed back to the house for our last night.

On Sunday morning, we had a big breakfast, and then we all started packing up and got ready for the long trip home. And we had had enough family time for one weekend. Everyone headed out around 9:00am. We actually ended up going to Canal Park one last time, and we timed it perfectly to see a Laker Ship come into port. It is always so cool to see those large ships come into port and the kids really enjoyed that. That basically made the whole trip for us. After spending some time in Canal Park, we decided on a whim to go to Spirit Mountain Adventure Park. We had such a blast at this park. We did all the rides. We did the ski lift scenic ride which gave us a gorgeous view of the Duluth skyline and Lake Superior. There were also Mountain Bike riders riding around and they were really fun to watch. Then, we did the Apline Coaster ride, which was really fun. When you ride in this coaster, you can control how fast you go with the brake, and the kids enjoyed just flying around the track. We also did the zip line, which was also really fun. We also found some weird loophole, and the workers were not asking for tickets in the beginning, so we rode all of the rides for basically free, multiple times, until they started asking for tickets. It was a really fun capper to our vacation weekend.

Then, we actually had to drive the 6 hours home. It was a long drive, but we made it. We are definitely planning on going back to Duluth someday. It is such a beautiful, fun place to visit.

Emma's butter beer

Canal Park

The famous lift bridge

Cheers

Split Rock Lighthouse

Gooseberry Falls

Betty's Pies

Tettegouce State Park

Ursa Minor Brewing

Here comes the Laker

Spirit Mountain Adventure Park

Ski Lift

Getting ready for the Zipline

Summer 2025

Well, I don't know what happened, but I forgot to blog for the past 7 months. I'm going to attempt to catch up on what has been happening, but they are going to be short updates with pictures to catch us up to January 2026.

June 2025:

-Emma turned 13, and for her birthday I took her to a MN Lynx game for free. We got some free tickets from a family member of the Polzins, and we enjoyed a great basketball game. The Lynx won, we had a good girls' weekend in MN, and it was overall, a great time. We also fit in a trip to Mall of America, and visited grandma Patty while we were in MN.

-Emma had a friend birthday party right after we got back from MN. She invited Hannah P, Hannah T, and Lily for a sleepover, and then the next morning we all piled into my car (even Katie joined us) and we headed to Yankton to paddle board, swim, eat, and just hang out on the beach. We had a beautiful day, an empty beach, and we all had a great time.

-Emma also played fastpitch softball again with her friends. They had a great time, improved throughout the summer, and we spent many evenings in June watching our favorite softball player.

-Emma also attended SDSU basketball camp in June. We were hoping she would have a great time, but she ended up absolutely hating it. She didn't go with anyone, so she didn't really have any friends to hang out with and the camp was really intense and overwhelming. It actually caused Emma to hate basketball, and I regretted sending her to the camp. She's back to liking basketball a little bit now, but I'm not sure she will ever recover her love for basketball, and that is really sad to me.

Mall of America

Kitties on the farm

Birthday Party

Softball season

The dreaded SDSU basketball camp

Elliott and Jacob paddle boarding

July 2025

-Over 4th of July, we went camping at Lewis and Clark Recreation in Yankton, SD. We had a great, long weekend. We saw fireworks, we went to the city park for the 4th of July celebration and saw live music, worked on a community mural, and then got absolutely poured on and had to run 8 blocks to our car. We were soaking wet by the time we got back, but it was memorable. We spent the rest of the weekend biking, have campfires, and just generally having a good holiday.

--John and I volunteered at Lallycooler. This was a new music festival at Great Bear. We volunteered on the second night in a beer tent. We worked our 4 hour shift, and then we were able to hang out in the volunteering area and have great seats to see PitBull live. It was a really fun night. We also got to watch TLC, Frank Ray, Kory and the Fireflies, and Uncle Kracker. We really had a lot of fun. We hope to volunteer there again next year.

-In the middle of July, Elliott and John joined Jeff, Jim and some family friends to go to Canada on a fishing trip. They all had a great time, caught some big fish, and I think they plan to do it again sometime. Elliott especially liked the road trip, the fishing outings, and just hanging out with the boys for the week. Emma and I enjoyed some quiet days at home, had some swimming days, and just had some lazy summer days while the boys were gone.

-I played Bethel softball again this past summer. It was pretty fun, and the kids (and John) came to watch quite often. We weren't very good, but we had fun. It's never a bad night to be playing softball in the summer. Our year-end tournament ended without us winning a game, but we had a good time.

-We also said goodbye to the Wordells in July. We had Vicar Wordell for a year, and his wife Erica, taught the lower graders, played softball, and was a good friend to Emma and myself. It was sad to see them go.

4th of July Bike Parade

Camping Shenannigans

Community Mural

Art Sculture Walk

Volunteering at Lallycooler

August 2025:

-2025 marked my 20 year class reunion. Not sure how that happened. But, we made it to the reunion, and actually made a whole day out of it. We really like New Ulm, and they were having their "Spike in the Street"event where they haul all kind of sand in, and over 4 city blocks they set up sand volleyball courts. Then, the crowd can grab food and drinks from the surrounding businesses and watch the games. We did that for a while. John and I got a drink at Sweet Haven, watched some volleyball, and ran into my aunt Janel. Then, we met Michelle at Black Frost, and had a drink with her before going to my class reunion. It was really nice to see everyone, and we actually had a really good time at the reunion.

-Turner County Fair. It was a pretty typical fair season. We brought our campers to the fair and stayed in them all week. The bunny show went well for both kids and Emma actually got overall Champion rabbit, so that was very exciting. The static projects did well. And we did our 4-H food shift like usual and overall had a good fair. We also celebrated our 15th Anniversary during the fair, and the kids decorated the camper for us, it was really cute. John and I decided we would officially celebrate sometime later in the fall.

-My co-workers and I rented the Sip N Cycle on a Saturday in August. We all had a blast. We just pedaled around, acted like idiots, and sweated our butts off because it was like 95 degrees outside. Most of us drank too much, we ran through the splash park to cool off (and I maybe collided with an 8 year old and made her cry, and made myself bleed). But it was a great work outing. We went downtown for food and a couple more drinks after. It was such a fun night.

-First day of school! The kid's went back to school on the 21st. Emma is now an 8th grader (that is so hard to believe) and Elliott is a 5th grader (also hard to believe). They wouldn't admit it, but they were actually ready to go back to school.

-Emma also played on a Memorial/McGovern fall fastpitch softball league. It was so good for her. Her skills really improved over the season, but more importantly, she met some girls that will be going to Jefferson with her next year, so that was amazing. She made a couple really good friends, which should help with the transition into high school next year.

-We also went to the SD State Fair for a day. We had fun walking around, seeing all the sights, eating the foods, and seeing the projects that the kids brought to the fair. On the way home, we stopped in Mitchell to eat supper and then stopped by the Corn Palace. A great way to say goodbye to the summer.