I was blessed with a rare three-day weekend this past weekend. And the weather cooperated all three days. Ross and I didn’t travel far as we did that the previous weekend, but we found things to do within a 100-mile radius of Marshall.

Ross has been car shopping for the last few months, so our Sioux Falls excursion on Saturday involved going to a couple of different lots. The first one was within walking distance of Last Stop CD Shop and Target, among a few other stores. He was test-driving a car. I browsed the shelves of books, CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays at Last Stop. But you can only do that for so long. There is plenty to choose from, but I resisted the urge to buy different things. I ended up spending a little more than $6 before I headed to the Target. And believe it or not, I walked out of Target without purchasing anything, not even a pop at the snack bar. So I went back to the car lot to see how Ross’ test drive was going. He wasn’t there by the time I came back, so I waited. And waited a little more. I felt a little weird loitering, but no one made too much of a fuss. He finally came back, chatted a little more with the salesman and his manager and then we were on our way to another car lot.

But we got to take a couple of walks in Sioux Falls parks we’ve been to — Terrace Park’s Japanese gardens and the Veterans Park and then a short jaunt in Falls Park. While we were in Terrace Park, a woman was tossing bread to the geese that congregate in the park. She encourages both Ross and I to take some bread to feed the geese. And she wasn’t using old stale bread that she wanted to get rid of, she mentioned it was fresh and that we could eat it if we wanted to…OK… So there I was breaking up bread and throwing it toward the geese, getting some hisses in return. Anyways, everyone and their uncle seemed to be at Falls Park. Well, it’s a nice sunny day on a holiday weekend, so why not? It was getting to be after 8 p.m., and we still haven’t had dinner. Ross punches in restaurants to search for on the GPS and asked if I wanted Vietnamese food. Lam’s Vietnamese wasn’t too far from Falls Park. I did a quick search for reviews on the place and people were raving about how it had the best pho around. Ross had pho, while I had ginger chicken fried rice. It was wonderful, I kept gobbling up my fried rice. For an out-of-the-way place, it was a great find.

Sunday afternoon saw us on the way to Alexander Ramsey Park. We made a quick detour to the Redwood County Museum as I wanted to check out the ax used in the Kleeman murders that Marty Seifert wrote about. The ax is in a room that has other murder weapons as well as a paranormal exhibit. One of the weapons used in a crime back in the late 1800s was a potato masher. Yep, a potato masher. If the game of Clue was ever looking to change any of its weapon game pieces…We wandered through the museum for a little while before hitting the park.

There have been some improvements made to Alexander Ramsey Park. We noted the concrete on the paths. I noticed the fragrant air of the woods. According to the exploreminneota.com website, the park is the largest municipal park in the state and called the “Little Yellowstone of Minnesota.” It’s a nice park to explore and includes four miles of hiking trails, scenic overlooks, including waterfalls, and a zoo.

I hadn’t been swimming yet, so on Monday we headed to Lac qui Parle State Park as there was a swimming beach. It was a little later in the afternoon and the weather wasn’t as hot as it was on the 4th and Wednesday and Thursday. After applying sunscreen, we waded out into the water. Brr, was it chilly. After a few minutes of trying to get used to the water, one of the other beach-goers told us to basically dive in. So we both flopped into the water, willing ourselves to at least get our faces and hair wet. We had fun splashing each other for a little while before lounging on one of the large flat rocks on the beach. As the afternoon wore on and the sun disappeared, we decided to leave. We took the long route back, going through Appleton before ending up at Jake’s Pizza in Montevideo. If you haven’t been there, I highly recommend it.